I probably should stick to comics. I'm not exactly the most eloquent of writers. Still, it's my blog, and therefore the place for my thoughts, and I've been thinking a lot about politics lately.
The horse is dead, and well beaten, and people are so firmly entrenched in their own opinions that nothing either side can say will change anything. So I'll beat some more, starting with this article which is a good starting point for discussion about the apparent lies of the Bush Administration. The money quote is this: "There were really two WMD debates. One was about chemical and low-end biological weapons. The other was about smallpox, nukes, al Qaeda and pretty much everything else under the sun." The article goes on to say that there was never any question of the first, but the war was sold to the American public using very shaky and even fabricated evidence of the second. I've already seen a counter-argument about how those chemical and low-end biological weapons were in fact in violation of UN Resolutions and thus justified the war (and now I can't find a link to that argument, which is more a testament to my bad memory than anything else). But the other UN countries disagreed on those, and the war was pushed forward thanks to the bigger threats of "smallpox, nukes, al Qaeda" which the Bush Administration was so absolutely sure existed that they even claimed to know exactly where those WMD were. They lied. Even in the fog of war, if they knew right before the invasion where those things were hidden, they would have found them by now.
So, does it matter? Yes. The folks in the Bush Administration who knew they were deceiving the public need to be punished. It shouldn't be ok to lie to start a war. Period. End of story.
Now I read a lot of Republican ranting about how the war was justified because (take your pick): The Saddam Hussein administration itself was a WMD that had to be destroyed, the people of Iraq were suffering and needed to be freed (just look at those mass graves!), Saddam was consorting with terrorists, Saddam was already violating UN sanctions and therefore had to be taken out... and so on and so forth. Some of those reasons are definitely good enough to justify going to war, particularly the one about freeing the people of Iraq from a brutal dictator. But the ends don't justify the means, and the "means" in this case were a pack of lies told by the Bush Administration. They never said they were going into Iraq just to free its people. If that was the case, there are quite a few other countries more desperately in need of an American invasion than Iraq was. No, they said that there were Weapons of Mass Destruction that would be used in the next three years. That was a lie, and those who lied need to be punished.
Was the war in Iraq a good thing in the end? Well, it's hard to say. There's a lot of hope, but then we seem to be going backwards in our last imperial conquest (Afghanistan), so it's hard to judge yet. I suspect it will be easier to help Iraq rebuild than Afghanistan because the infrastructure and education are better in Iraq. But in Afghanistan we're already negotiating with the remains of the Taliban, how soon before the Bush Administration starts consorting with the remains of Saddam's administration? Or will the Bush Administration go haring off to battle another foe before completing the job in Iraq, like they did to Afghanistan, leaving the people even worse off than before and good candidates for terrorist groups looking to recruit? And it's hard to say that any operation is a success when we are still losing an American soldier every day.
Then there is the looting story. No one agrees on the numbers, and they are constantly being revised, but that hasn't stopped folks like Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan from making fun of anyone who believes that the number was higher than 33. Tough to say if they'll be eating their bytes later on, but I keep hearing "33 priceless artifacts from the main collection, and a couple of thousand from lesser collections". Hopefully all will turn up, but I can't help but think Instapundit and Daily Dish are hurting their credibility by harping on the topic. For the record, I think the looting was a shame, but I can't really blame American troops. The battle plan they were given seems to have fallen apart once they hit Baghdad, so the proper blame goes to the looters.
Speaking of battle plans, was there any actual follow up plan for troops? It seems from, reading first-person accounts (and hearing from wives of soldiers) as well as news and blogs, that troops raced into Iraq and "secured" a few places, and now are sitting around wishing they could either help the people or go home. We've got thousands of highly trained and highly capable men in Iraq sitting around doing nothing. I'm not impressed with the leaders who put our people there.
Ok, enough about Iraq. On to politicians themselves. I've already spiked Orrin Hatch, but he's made himself a target from nerds everywhere, and more dirt is being dug up on him every day. Then there's Howard Dean's unwise son. Again, I'm more annoyed by Dean's aggressive and impersonal on-line campaign than in his son's stupidity. You want stupidity, look at Bush's daughters. Then there's Gephardt's mistaken belief that Executive Orders can undo Supreme Court decisions, a belief apparently shared by Dennis Kucinich. Whoops! Speaking of Kucinich, I've already made fun of his comparing his campaign to Harry Potter's battle against Voldemort. Again, the politicians are staying true to politicians, and there's very little good to say about any of them. Gary Hart continues to blog, and has some interesting things to say, but since he's not running, he'll be ignored as just another liberal voice.
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