i think it shows an amazing lack of leadership ability when the idea of deposing Saddam Hussein is a tough sell, after all this time and all these years and all that he has done.
when you step back and look at the chronology of the existence of Saddam Hussein, the attrocities he has committed, his constant quest for bigger and better weapons, his use of those weapons, his defience of the UN and the misery and death he has brought to his own people... its a very sad testimony to the notion of peace, the weakness of the international community and the innefectiveness of the UN, that the world can say "lets give the inspections more time some more time" or "we are categorically against war".
the Pope himself recently said that "war would be a defeat for all of humanity"
What about peace? How is it that millions suffering, dying and living in complete terror at the hand of one man, and the inability of humanity to effectively agree, reach common ground to help these people is not? How is that more noble?
Saddam won the war. I wonder why people dont see it like that? He was never defeated. He was empowered. He was never weakened at home. His grip on power was strengthened. He stood up to the West and walked away, both defiant and victorious. He lost some hardware and we called it "an amazingly swift and successful defeat after one of the largest military mobilizations since WWll". While the world was patting themselves on the back proudly exclaiming "we liberated Kuwait"... they could have also been claiming "we continue to enslave the Iraqi people"
12 years later, things are worse. The world is against war, but somehow some of the highest mortality rates in the world of children under 5 for the last 12 years is ok. Its ok that these children can die while muliti-billion dollar Presidential Palaces now totalling 45 have been built since the Gulf War.
Peace, often causes more death, destruction and suffering than war - yet somehow, it is an idea that is more preferable. its more civil. its socially acceptable.
People forget that peace kills too. the intention of war is to remove approximately 100 people from power and rebuild a country and set it on a democratic course. Continued "Peace" with Saddam Hussein is putting the world at risk. It is killing people today. It has been killing people for 12 years. it is killing children, mothers, the young and old already. each day without war, kills more. Each day we "give the inspectors more time" - more people suffer as a bloodthirsty dictator continues to maneuver as he has for the last 12 years of defying the inspectors.
Giving the inspectors more time to play hide and seek with a murderous madman - is the same as passionately demanding more suffering and more death of the Iraqi people. Its those same people, who in the minds of peace activists become real only if a war happens. They only begin to exist, when war happens. To people who want peace, the Iraqi people somehow only become victems if war happens. To proponents of peace today, those same people are nothing more than a statistic... and its quite ok to ignore their plight, their misery, suffering and death today, as long as you promise not to remove the man who makes it happen.
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