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Not Treason To Question Government War Effort.Sep 19 '02 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Self-explanatory.
Recently, as President Bush moves closer towards his mandate of removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, some people have started to adopt the Nixonian tactic of dealing with people who may object to the war effort, regardless of what their reason may be. Many of the extreme Hawkish war supporters are now calling any opponents of war with Iraq a certain word. A word that has become synonymous with an American known as Benedict Arnold and a Norwegian known as Quisling. Yes, according to a few of these people, if you do not totally support the war with Iraq, you are disloyal to your country and you deserve the full weight of penance for it. Well I do not join in that particular crowd. I personally do not like the idea of war, yet I do understand that sometimes we do have to fight. Yet I do not support giving the government a blank check for the purpose of dealing with Hussein. For those who are in favor of it and are currently 30 or older, how soon we forget. Once upon a time we actually gave the government a blank check. And it turned out to be the costliest mistake we ever made. If anyone needs a reminder, look to a large black wall in Washington DC with the names of innocent people all over it. For those who are introducing the T word to describe war protesters, I ask them to put themselves in the shoes of a young American about to finish college. His life is going about as smooth as it can in the wake of what has happened to us since September 11th of last year. Yet there is the threat hanging over him that he may get called upon to serve his country and is shipped off to possibly die in the steaming hot deserts of Iraq. Let’s suppose that this man is married and his wife has just learned that she is pregnant. Suppose he gets a call up notice the next week saying that he has been drafted. Suppose the fighting starts almost immediately after he gets off the transport ship. Now, think about how his wife will have to struggle to support both herself and this young daughter. And think about the daughter who will never know her father. I also suggest that the people screaming “traitor” think about how they might feel if they were Iraqis themselves. Back in 1991 at the height of the Gulf War, President Bush Sr. told the Iraqi people that if they rebelled against Saddam he would help them. They rebelled, yet no American help was forthcoming. As a result, many innocent Iraqi civilians, many who wanted nothing to do with Saddam’s bloodthirsty greed and his invasion of Kuwait, were slaughtered. Then there is the matter of the fact that Saddam later used poison gas against the Kurds. Did Bush lift a finger to help them? Did camels learn to fly? President Bush has stated that if the UN does not support us in our war with Iraq, we will have to go it alone. But I wonder why Bush Sr. couldn’t have had that same idea back in 1991 when the possibility of taking out Saddam came up. If he had grabbed him then, we might have avoided quite a bit of the trouble we ran into down the road and Bush would have been re-elected by a landslide. Come the 92 elections, everyone would have been asking “Bill Who?” Now I feel that the words “missed opportunity” can adequately be used to describe the Clinton administration itself in certain ways. They can also be used to describe the Gulf War itself. Now I don’t want anyone to get the idea that we should just pretend Iraq doesn’t exist or that Saddam should remain in power. Iraq does represent a threat that may not be too real at the moment, yet could become very real in the future. As for Saddam himself: The man has broken enough international laws to warrant removal from office ten times. Yet I find myself wondering: Is starting a war for the purpose of advancing a political cause against International Law? What about promising support against a villainous, slimy dictator to innocent people and then leaving them to twist in the wind?  |
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