Why We Must Go To War! Part Two

Editor's note: This is the second half of a long article by William A. Whittle. Go here for the first half.

Why we must go to WAR!
PART TWO

NOW LET'S DEAL WITH SOME of the reasons why people oppose this war.

"Innocent people, innocent children will die in this war."

That is true. Innocent people will die at our hand. But let us never forget that action is visible and direct, but that inaction also bears consequences.

We will do everything in our power to limit civilian causalities in this war. In fact, during the days and weeks ahead, we will see something unheard of in military history: a campaign designed not only to minimize civilian casualties, but one aimed at killing as few enemy soldiers as possible. We have already dropped leaflets on Iraqi regular army units, telling them they will not be harmed, but if they mass for a counterattack, we will destroy them. As Steven Den Beste repeatedly has pointed out, they have recent experience in this matter, both with our destructive capabilities and our generosity and kindness to prisoners of war.

Saddam's miserable, poorly-fed and disgracefully-led conscripts have no love for the man. That is why he consolidated what loyal soldiers he had into the Republican Guard. This body, too, became understandably unreliable after Saddam's bloodthirsty and paranoid purges, so he created the Special Republican Guard, a further decimated cadre that may in fact fight for him, since they are the predators at the top of this dictatorial food chain, and therefore have the most to lose and, certainly, the most to fear from an outraged and oppressed populace.

I fervently hope that Iraqi regular-army conscripts decide to sit this one out. No one who watched them surrender, kissing the garments of American sergeants, could feel anything but compassion and pity for these men. I do believe that those who do chose to fight will be the hard core element of Saddam’s blood-stained police state, the sadists and executioners who have tortured and murdered their own people on Saddam Hussein’s orders for decades. Don’t forget that. Don’t forget the number that have disappeared in the night during his monstrous reign of terror. Don’t forget well-documented, disgustingly common accounts of the children tortured to death in front of their parents, of girls raped in front of their fathers, not to mention the roll-calls of horror that will emerge when that evil is finally swept away.

And finally, don’t forget your friends and family, the good people you work and play with, the innocent men women and children of New York or Los Angeles or Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Boston, or whichever city we may condemn to radioactive vapor because we were too cowardly and indecisive to act on what we knew to be a threat.

"We have thousands of nuclear weapons…it’s hypocritical to say Iraq can not have them also."

We have had nuclear weapons for almost sixty years now. They have been used, twice, within the first days of that ownership to end the most horrible war in history and prevent many times the number of casualties, on both sides, that would have been lost had the war continued through the invasion of Japan. Despite many provocations, they have not been used since then. We have had Chemical weapons for even longer.

Saddam, on the other hand, used his chemical weapons the instant he got his hands on them: first on the Iranians and then on his own Kurds — this after not once being used by any nation in the desperate six decades between 1920 through 1980. What does that tell you?

Many adults are given alcohol, credit cards, automobiles, guns and jet aircraft, once they have shown themselves worthy of the responsibility. We do not put these things in the hands of four-year-old children, and with very good reason. It may seem hypocritical to you; to me, the idea of keeping a drunken second-grader from waving around a loaded automatic while behind the controls of a hurtling 747 just makes sense.

"This war is all about oil."

Demonstrably false for the reasons listed above. Nevertheless, let’s grant the premise. Oil is the only power source currently available to meet the needs of our post-industrial society. Not only our automobiles depend on this oil: it is also a primary source of electrical energy in this country, and is essential to the plastics we use in everything from MRI machines to CD players.

To say this war is all about oil is factually identical to saying that this war is all about maintaining our society and lifestyle. If that is not worth fighting for, what is? One may find that offensive ideologically, but as I see it, to be true to such a philosophy you must either drive a solar-powered electric car, ride a horse or a bicycle, or walk. You must remove your home from the city power grid. You must discard all plastic items. You must also abandon television, radios and movies, all of which rely on electricity generated by oil. You must forgo modern medicine, surgery and dentistry, likewise driven by oil-fired electricity at many stages. You must grow your own food.

Do all of these things, and you will have my frank admiration for your dedication to a moral cause. Do anything less and you are a hypocrite mouthing an easy lie in an attempt to strike a pose of moral superiority.

Furthermore, people who apply this argument are usually accusing us of stealing the oil. Now I suppose it's theoretically possible that everyone else at the gas station gets a wink, a nod and a don't be silly hand gesture when they try to pay for their gas — me, I'm shelling out $1.89 for the privilege.

There has been a river, a Mississippi of our fives and tens and twenty-dollar bills flowing into the middle east for decades now. The idea that most of this has been squandered on scores of madly extravagant palaces, solid-gold toilets and leggy hookers should only further direct all fair-minded people toward the cause of Invasion. One of the many reasons I support this action in Iraq is because the people of that nation are sitting on a significant hunk of loose change. It is indeed being stolen from them — and I for one am convinced that that once we deal with the thief who stole it, those revenues will be of enormous benefit to the people of Iraq, and aid them in the rebuilding of their country.

It is true we depend on oil for our lifestyle. However, if you look at it objectively, you might agree that oil does no one any good hundreds of feet below a barren desert. For us it helps power our society; for them it is a valuable commodity and a legitimate means of transferring a lot of our cash into their pockets. My car does not care where that oil comes from, but I do. And if my $1.93 / gallon can in the future go to the people of Iraq, I would find that both a blessing and a relief.

Still, the whole point is, as I mentioned, logically flawed — fatally flawed. Gas is cheaper now, in adjusted dollars, than it has ever been. Evil Oil KKKorporations don't need more oil on the market: it depresses the price. More of something makes it cheaper; less of something makes it more expensive. Although I do understand why this confuses some people — the whole supply / demand concept does seem to give the far left a great deal of trouble.

When gasoline is $13 per gallon and lines stretch for miles around empty service stations, THEN I will begin to reasonably suspect this political decision has oil-based overtones.

"We need a ‘smoking gun’ from the UN inspectors."

The problem with a smoking gun is you can't find it until it's gone off.

It is clear from documented reports of bribery attempts on UN Inspectors on the part of the Iraqis, to French inspectors tipping off Saddam about team destinations, that to accept this argument we de facto lose the game. This is why it is so popular. It ignores reams of testimony from defecting scientists, and all of the other evidence stated above. In fact, it raises the question that ignoring such a mountain of existing evidence requires such a willful burying of one’s head in the sand as to make any proof insufficient. To such people, the smoking gun they require is a pile of radioactive rubble where Tel Aviv once stood, or legions of dead commuters in the London Underground, or the wildfire spread of smallpox through greater Chicago and beyond. Scores of independent sources repeatedly and emphatically demonstrate that Iraq has massive quantities of biological and chemical weapons, and is working frantically to attain nuclear ones.

Those unconvinced by the existing evidence will be convinced by nothing less than their actual use against our military or civilians.

To hell with those people.

"North Korea admits to having nuclear weapons and is threatening the region. They are a greater threat and must be dealt with first."

That a rogue nation can threaten the three most prosperous economies of Asia with nuclear blackmail (although, admittedly, China would not likely be as threatened as South Korea or Japan) does indeed raise a troubling question. And that question is, with such a clear example before our eyes, who can NOT believe that removing such a powerful lever from the hands of Saddam Hussein should not be job #1? North Korea already has these weapons. We cannot undo that. We can only prevent it from happening in the future.

Our options are dramatically reduced, and the consequences of miscalculation on either side astronomically raised, by such weapons in the hands of such an unbalanced, isolated and desperate regime. This is precisely why we must intervene in Iraq.

"It is hypocritical and contradictory to negotiate with North Korea, which already has nuclear weapons, and advocate war on Iraq, which does not."

I will grant that it may appear so at first glance. But consider these two points:

First, we relied on negotiations, diplomacy and signed agreements in order to prevent North Korea from obtaining these weapons. They developed them in direct violation of these international agreements. There are those who oppose this war, who say we should try this spectacularly unsuccessful strategy with Iraq. I would like to sell these people their next automobile.

Second, North Korea thinks they can pressure us while we are preoccupied with Iraq. They are betting their empty, crop-free farm on this. They want us to become alarmed, right now. They hope to blackmail us before the last vestiges of their state collapses around them. That is a trap we have so far avoided.

There is a reason we treat Iraq in one fashion and North Korea in another. It is a very simple reason. In the case of North Korea, time is on our side; with Saddam, time works against us. This is not hypocrisy, it is sound and cogent strategic thinking.

And finally,

"The United States has no right to launch a pre-emptive attack; we can only respond if we are attacked."

This is the most pernicious and dangerous argument of all, because it plays directly into our natural revulsion at being an aggressor and causing the deaths of innocent civilians.

As I mentioned, I see both Iraq’s attack on Kuwait, and the Islamicist attacks on 9/11, as the pre-emptive attacks that started this pending conflict. But perhaps you do not buy that argument. Well, consider this:

We were attacked before, on December 7th, 1941, by a vast navy that had been assembling for years. We watched the Japanese build the Pearl Harbor fleet. We did nothing. We — the French and English especially — also did nothing as a bitter and vengeful Germany grew stronger and more daring. Appeasement was all the rage back then.

In the years following that naval sneak attack, and after a war in which unchecked militarism nearly brought civilization to ruin, it made sense to think that we could stay free by being strong enough to deter or repel any invasion. We would do — indeed, we have done — whatever it took to create a defense so formidable that the mere idea of defeating it has become unthinkable, and to willingly provoke it becomes an act of state suicide.

Those days are gone.

We face an enemy willing — eager — to carry a suitcase into Times Square, press a button, and in one millisecond inflict more casualties on the United States than we have seen in all the wars of our history, combined.

It is an image so horrible that many simply refuse to believe it.

Believe it.

We ignore September 11th at our mortal peril. We no longer have the luxury of watching an enemy build military and naval strength over years or decades. We no longer face uniformed divisions massing at the borders. We face instead a group of depraved murderers to whom nothing is off-limits, who fear no earthly retribution, who love and glorify death for its own end and who hate not only all that we do, but all that we are with a black bitterness that we cannot begin to imagine.



I BELIEVE WE ARE STANDING at a doorway in history, squinting at forms we can barely make out in a dark room. We will, in the years to come, look at the confusion and doubt of the present hour as a turning point in the history, and indeed the identity, of our nation and ourselves.

For we are waking up to a simple reality. In a new millennium where a few diseased people can carry a suitcase with the power to kill millions, the lesson we must learn is simply this: the only way we will be safe, prosperous and free is when everyone is safe, prosperous and free.

Critics of this War on Terror call it ‘eternal’ and ‘never-ending’ as a means of discouraging us from fighting it at all.

But there can be an end to this war. It will end when all people are inside the bubble we have built for ourselves and our children — warm, well-fed, free to pursue our dreams and ambitions, women liberated, racial and tribal hatreds put aside, and so on.

The quiet idealist deep inside in me, on a speak-when-spoken-to basis, actually believes such things are possible. After all, it works — pretty well — for us, and we Americans are children of all the world. We know what such a society looks like, and we have documents of such stunning clarity and hope as to show anyone the way.

The conservative I have become, however, is certain that if it happens, it will happen because of the actions and sacrifice of US Marines and not because of middle-aged naked hippies spelling PEACE on a golf course. It will take decades. It may take centuries.

Can we FORCE freedom and democracy on people? It seems, from the example of Germany and Japan, that indeed we can. These societies once harbored fanatics no less dedicated to our destruction than the ones we face today. Now they are our trading partners, and often our friends and allies. The point at which it becomes necessary to force such a regime change will be determined by how ugly the swamp has become. And can anyone seriously argue that the people left after the defeat of the Nazis, Japanese Imperialists or American Confederates are not far better off today than they would have been if they had WON?

I am not an ideologue in this regard, and I certainly don’t want to send our sons and daughters out to fight and die for anything less than our safety and survival. But that, to me, is looking like what it might come to. Each success makes the next case easier, and each triumph further shames and silences our critics.

Sixty years ago, we were willing to sacrifice millions of American soldiers, sailors airmen and marines to keep our homeland safe. Such a task may be before us today. With our soldiers’ skill, training and professionalism, and our unparalleled technical innovation and creative genius, we will not need anything like millions of soldiers. But it will not be free — it will only be necessary.

In this, I am guardedly optimistic due to our recent victory in Afghanistan. Not the military victory, magnificent though it was.

No, I am thinking of things like the reopening of their soccer stadium, the field where I have seen — thorough the camera obscura of the internet — women in burqas forced to kneel and then shot through the back of the head for the crime of adultery. Kids play football there again. That’s a win, Noam Chomsky, you lying son of a bitch.

Little girls march to school in the morning, singing. That’s a win, Robert Fisk. Old men wept as the Afghan national flag was carried by an actual Afghan army during their first free National Day in two generations. That is a win for the Good Guys, too, Harold Pinter. I hear of Special Forces sergeants organizing little league teams and I just smile like a little kid.

I’m smiling because, at last, we have dragged ourselves back from the mud and filth of the Cold War, from allying ourselves with what was only marginally the slightly lesser of two great evils in our proxy wars in Asia and South America and Africa. I’m smiling not just because of my bursting pride in the dedication and skill of our military, but in the essential kindness and compassion of these kids of ours who just want to do the right thing and come home. I’m smiling because I start to see before us an age where, in the words from the 1963 movie The Ugly American, we are no longer “so busy telling people what we are against that we forget to tell them what we are for.”

We have a long and difficult road to travel in these coming years, and there will be ample opportunities for us to fall off the path. But I reflect on our own greatest peril, the dark days of our own Civil War, and I draw comfort from something not often remembered about that turning point in our history.

In the early days of that conflict, Abraham Lincoln saw one objective, and one only: he must save the Union. That was what marched the men in blue off to Bull Run: Save the Union. Lincoln said as much when contemplating the Emancipation Proclamation:

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.”

But as the war dragged on and victory continued to recede, Lincoln found a new voice. Southerners could be counted upon to fight because it was their homes and institutions under attack. One poor captured Rebel, when asked why he was fighting on behalf of the rich plantation owner’s right to keep slaves, replied, “I’m fighting because you’re down here.” Lincoln needed something with that emotional imperative, and he found it.

He found it after brave Negro soldiers — like the men of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, immortalized in the movie Glory — showed to their northern skeptics that they were as gallant and effective soldiers as any in the Union Army. He found it in the words of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth. He found it by turning the dirge “John Brown’s Body” into the inspirational “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Lincoln turned the Northern cause into a crusade to set men free.

If we have the courage of our convictions, if we do indeed feel that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is worth fighting and dying for, then we may find that freeing the world is in our national interest, regardless of the cost.

So on the eve of this new tempest, let us remember, together, a final image — to me, the most hopeful of all.

Let us remember Afghanistan.

Let us remember that the brutal Soviets we so sullied ourselves fighting during the Cold War had installed in their southern neighbor a puppet dictator, who ruled small enclaves at the point of a tank cannon and tore their nation into civil war that culminated in the atrocities of the Taliban. Let us remember the million Afghan civilians who died forcing off that yoke.

Let us remember an image from that ruin of a nation, in June of 2002, at a meeting hall in Kabul. Inside were all manners of warlords, refugees, opposition leaders, even their old king. Women demanding positions of power, wizened old tribal leaders opposing them at every turn, mullahs and warlords making veiled threats and all the rest of the unruly, loud, preposterous accouterments of democracy that make up a Loya Jirga or a US Congress.

And let us remember the image of US soldiers, forming a cordon, a bubble of security around this howling, screaming catfight. Not inside. Not dictating terms. Not so much as laying a hand on a gavel. But rather outside, armed and powerful, seeing to it that the future of that tortured country rested in the hands of their own people, protecting this newborn, imperfect, and astonishingly fragile proto-democracy against the legions of Taliban, Al Qaeda and petty warlords who would like to see nothing so much as its failure. Remember them guarding the life and pure, undiluted courage of Hamid Karzai. And remember our soldiers giving them, day by painful day, another week, another month without torture and repression so that they in all their infinitely adaptable humanity have the time to come to find such things intolerable.

Remember that, and smile. Because that is America at war.


© Copyright 2003 William A. Whittle - all rights reserved