Every now and then, I'll take a peek at the hard drive on my computer and do some housecleaning - removing old games I no longer play, programs I no longer use, and spyware that sneaks onto the system. When I get motivated enough to actually open Windows Explorer and take a look, sometimes I see interesting file names with old creation dates that pique my interest. I found one of those today, from January 30, 2003. The title of the document was war.txt (I do most of my drafts in notepad).
Here's what I wrote, in response to a pro-war posting on another forum:
Quoting: "...nations that have the ability to right the wrongs being perpetrated on humanity around the world, should have a moral obligation to do so. Human rights are universal, and should be enforced."My words actually mean more to me now than they did in January, 2003. Back then, I was expressing my distaste for the red meat hell-bent-for-leather track that the U.S. was taking with respect to Iraq. Today, those words reinforce for me why I was so adamantly opposed to getting involved in Iraq.
My response:
The last I checked, the U.S. had not been elected "cop" of the world. We do NOT have a moral obligation to enforce or project our view of humanity and human rights around the planet by force. If this was truly the case, the U.S. would have been in Iraq, Rwanda, Ivory Coast, and other global human rights hot spots many years ago.
If there is a demonstrable threat to our sovereignty or health / well being as a nation, we have an absolute right to use force. The obligation of our government leaders is to we, the folks who write the checks -- that obligation is to prove the threat exists. That hasn't been done. All we've gotten is a lot of "trust me on this one" coming from Washington. A lot of accusations and harsh words have been forthcoming, but not enough evidence to convict Saddam of enough malfeasance to support even a traffic ticket.
Excuse me if I'm a bit jaded in my old age, but I don't trust the beltway bandits a lick. Ok, Iraq's got chemical weapons? Fine. I want someone to detail what, when, and where, and what type of delivery system Saddam has to get mass destruction level quantities to Atlantic City. If so, I also want to know how long our government has known about it -- because if true, someone in government should hang for not addressing this issue 10 years ago.
Lastly, Iraq has no physical plant capability to do anything nuclear. Nothing. Nada. Zip. North Korea does, but not Iraq. Anyone that thinks you can "hide" weapons grade plutonium processing knows nothing about nuclear fission.
The bottom line is: do you trust your government to tell you the unfettered truth? If you do, you didn't grow up in the era that I did, and that simple fact may be the thing that divides us and our respective opinions.
And it's a strange feeling, with Abu Ghraib and Fallujah now quickly receding in the rear view mirror, how close to spot-on I was about the "human rights" excuse, and how wrong the justifiers were.
Sometimes, I hate when I'm right.
