The War with Iraq
The United States invaded Iraq a few weeks before this was written. During the subsequent period, I exchanged many e-mails with various people, some who thought the invasion was a good idea, some who thought it was not, and those in between who were initially opposed but decided that once it started, it was too late to do anything but push for a speedy end. This section is written based on those e-mails.
As you can see from other pages on this site, I opposed the invasion of Iraq. I tried to convince other people to oppose it and had a small amount of success. A few people who originally supported Bush eventually changed their minds, but most who supported him before continue to support him now. As a further attempt to convince others who might stumble on this site to oppose further invasions, here are some answers to questions asked by those who support Bush.
Question: Why didn't you protest when Clinton invaded Kosovo?
Answer: In the eyes of the world, Clinton did not invade Kosovo. The US went to Kosovo with full UN support. The primary reason for the military action was to bring an end to the vast suffering in the region. The invasion of Iraq, on the other hand, was done as a preemptive strike. There were many supporting reasons given after the invasion started (Hussein is a criminal, many people were suffering, Iraq violated UN resolutions, etc.), but these were not the original reasons put forth to Congress. Bush and Rumsfeld played the invasion as necessary to protect US security, not as necessary to save the Iraqi people.
Question: How can you protest when our troops are putting their lives on the line? Don't you know how bad it makes them feel?
Answer: This is a strange line of questioning. Who supports our troops more, the people who send them to fight or the people who try to keep them at home? Nevertheless, the troops do feel let down when they see people protesting, so why not just fall in line?
I am genuinely sorry that our military personnel feel let down when I publicly protest. But I think that has little to do with whether or not I should continue. I'd rather that the troops feel bad now but stay alive than that they feel good but wind up dead. You can recover from being sad and depressed; you can't recover from being dead.
I'm trying to keep Bush from feeling like he can do anything as long as he gets it started. Consequently, I think it's important to stay as public as possible. If those who feel as I do just stay out of the public eye, it will deprive those who are on the fence of the opportunity to hear the other side of the story.
Question: Don't you feel sorry for the Iraqi people? Shouldn't we help them?
Answer: Yes I feel sorry for them and yes we should help them. Somehow bombing their country after so many years of sanctions just seems like a bad way to go about it. They suffered not just because of Hussein but because of US led sanctions. Now this administration decides to help them by invading. I'm sure there will be many people who wind up better off. I'm equally sure there will be many people who will wind up dead. Maybe they would have died under Hussein, or maybe not them but somebody else.
Question: Don't you think we have the right to protect ourselves against terrorism?
Answer: Yes. However, there was little evidence that Hussein was directly or indirectly responsible for helping the terrorists who attacked the US. There is much more evidence that those terrorists received help (indirectly as far as I know) from other governments more friendly to the US, such as Saudi Arabia.
All in all, the Bush administration has behaved very badly with respect to the rest of the world. They now seem bent on bringing back colonialism or something similar. And they are threatening more of the world. This cannot lead to good things. So I did not support Bush's war on Iraq and I will not support any further aggression by this administration.