The truth about the War in Iraq must now be told. I’m ready to tell it.
In order to help you, I have highlighted in Red all words which are my opinion alone. The rest comes from objective research and understanding. I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said, War Never Solved Anything. It's just not true. It’s so much more complex then that. http://northerngleaner.blogspot.com/2005/06/war-has-never-solved-anything.html
I ask that you read all 5 parts of this really long piece. Argue if you want to about what I send as I send it, but keep the final arguments (Iraqi war, beneficial or not?) until the full panoply is set forth. I have always been told that liberals were smarter than the rest of us, and that they were certainly more open-minded than right-wingers, so, here’s the question: Are YOU? To whet your appetite just a bit, Clinton comes out much better in the final analysis (much to my chagrin and surprise), Reagan and Bush 1 much worse. This was interesting research for me too. It opened my eyes. This war is essential.
I was going to post this as one piece but it’s too much, even for me. So, I’ll post it a chunk at a time.
This must of necessity be long, arduous and comprehensive. There are no sound bites in history. There is only a slog forward thru the facts. But, like Santayana said, if we don’t remember and consider history we are condemned to repeat it. So let’s take a look.
If you choose NOT to read this in its entirety you have no right to comment or disagree with the conclusions made. Oh, you have a right, that’s constitutional, but we have a right to discount what you say because you have chosen to be just partisan, ignorant and uninformed. What follows a rehearsal of the facts leading up to the Iraq War that make it the essential conflict of our day. My opinions are in RED.
Iraq has been compared to WWII. While for the most part that doesn’t hold up, there are some similarities:
World War I’s outcome propagated the roots and internal Nazi justifications for WWII. It took a long time to develop. 1918-1940. Hitler rose steadily and engaged willing participants in Italy and Japan. The Axis. He kept poking at the free world and waited to see what they would do. Mostly they did nothing. So he continued to poke. Eventually when the world had enough and was threatened they took Hitler and allies on. Some on Nazi turf, some on turf occupied by or contested by the enemy.
Japan was different in a way.
Even though Iwo Jima didn’t attack the USA at Pearl Harbor, even though the Ogasuwara Islands of which Iwo Jima was a part was originally settled by Americans (claimed later by Japan), we used that Island a few others to establish a beachhead for victory in the Pacific. Iraq is that, a beachhead. Afghanistan was conquered but made a poor beachhead. The leader of Iraq was a potential ally of an enemy that attacked us. He was already an unvanquished enemy of the US. He certainly wasn’t a friend. Iraq was a better beachhead to establish what will be a very long long occupation like was in Okinawa. There was also this long held fear that he may have had WMD’s. Democrats and Republicans since the end of the Gulf war were deeply concerned at this prospect.
The beginning of what has now become a World War of which Iraq is a beachhead, on which we have chosen to do battle, starts at the birth of the State of Israel. It’s important to note that this war in Iraq is a part of the continuing troubled history of this country that in fact not really a country per se but is a fabrication of Great Britain. See this review.
http://northerngleaner.blogspot.com/2005/06/why-iraq-is-such-conundrum.html
After Israel was founded as a country in 1948 in response to the UN's Balfor agreement of 1918 establishing the land of Israel, the end of WWII and the European refugees who needed a homeland. Arab nations surrounding the area of Palestine immediately began to venture to wipe Israel off the map. That was the 1948-49 war. The Arab countries were pushed back. The 1956 war started by Arab countries attempted to take back ground, in fact they lost more. Then There was the 6 day war. Huge armies came against Israel. 10-1 odds. It was 1967. Again the outcome was huge losses of land after a stunning defeat of the Arabs. The last major conflict and the one that began what we now are engaged in was the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and 1974. This generated more losses of ground for the Arabs including the city of Jerusalem, The Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank and other areas. The anger as a result of this war triggered the Oil Embargo of 1973 against the west. The west, particularly the USA was a supporter financially, politically, and militarily of Israel. The cut off of oil was designed not only to punish us, to exercise some muscle but to weaken us economically. It worked. We buckled.
The other overt conflict involving the USA and Israel and Arab nations was in 1982 in Lebanon. More on that later when I discuss the Reagan administration.
It became easy for the Arabian and other Middle Eastern countries (Iran) to hate us for our support of Israel. The fact that during the Oil Embargo we took no direct action caused the Arab Countries to consider us weak. This was during the Nixon Administration, Vietnam was a oozing sore, and no more Vietnams was the cry of the populace. The opposition by war doves to anything like taking a stand military emboldened potential enemies.
When Nixon left office and Ford took over, nothing much happened. This was a time of healing. The economy began to tank. Ford lost popularity. Our enemy was communism. We were blinded to everything except stopping Russia, China, Cuba etc. We didn’t consider the Arabian fundamentalist Islamic bloc a problem, yet.
TOMMORROW: JIMMY CARTER PLANTS THE SEEDS OF THE IRAQ WAR
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