Iraqi War

There's an editorial posted in January 2003 by a certain fellow named Thomas L. Friedman. He presents two potential scenarios for the aftermath of the war in Iraq –one of which is turning out to be prophetic.

Link

Hopefully things will change for the better, but it’s looking more and more like the Unites States has inherited what Friedman has called the “Arab Yugoslavia.”


An artificial country congenitally divided among Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis, Nasserites, leftists and a host of tribes and clans that can only be held together with a Saddam-like iron fist.


Yep, that sounds about right. But is the United States really to blame?

Or perhaps I should put it another way: Is the Unites States justified in paving the way for a better life for the freedom-loving citizens of a country by removing a mass-murdering dictatorship?

Of course there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to the question, but if your answer was “no” in 1941, you’d be a pretty lonely protester in WW2. If your answer was “no” in 2001, there’d be thousands of Al-Qaida members in Afghanistan learning the most creative ways to mass murder thousands of innocent civilians.

Well, the United States felt justified in going to war with Iraq in 2003, and in turn eliminated one of the most brutal dictators ever. The collective response in Iraq was to hate the new freedom-loving government just as much as the old one. Some even see the newly-found freedom as an opportunity to blow up scores of fellow countrymen and women that they disagreed with. Maybe we just need to flood them with Arab books on anger management. Perhaps they need something a little more remedial. A title like the following should suffice: 'Suicide Bombing: It's not the answer you're looking for.'

Just right next door, Afghanistan –one of the most resource deprived countries on earth– had to deal with the whole “invasion thing” and they seem to be doing fine. Iraq is just turning into a giant metaphor of the “uncle no one likes to talk about.”

Iraq –not the Unites States– is an embarrassment to humanity. Heck if I’m going to lose any sleep over an Arab Yugoslavia, and I don’t think many other Americans should either. Imagine if every Iraqi was in the streets holding hands and singing 'Kum Ba Yah'. The Bush Administration would have been hailed as one of the most brilliant peace-keeping political figures in modern history.

This hypothetical situation has nothing to do with the action of the United States and everything to do with the reaction of the Iraqi people. The United States is not the proper scapegoat.

Saddam was a terrible dictator who killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people. If you think the United States is just as bad, harken unto the immortal words of Eddie Izzard:

Other mass murderers have gotten away with it...Stalin killed many millions, died in his bed, well done there. Pol Pot killed 1.7 million Cambodians, died under house arrest, age 72. Well done, indeed. And the reason we let them get away with it is because they killed their own people. And we're sort of fine with that. Oh, help yourself! You know? We've been trying to kill you for ages! So, if you kill your own people, right on, then. But Hitler killed people next door.... stupid man. After a couple of years, we won't stand for that, will we? Pol Pot killed 1.7 million people, and we can't even deal with that. We think that if someone kills someone, that's murder, you go to prison. You kill 10 people, you go to Texas, they hit you with a brick, that's what they do. 20 people, you go to a hospital and they look at you through a small window forever. And over that, we can't deal with it. You know? If somebody's killed 100 thousand people, we're almost going, "Well done! You killed 100 thousand people?! You must get up very early in the morning! I can't even get down the gym! Your diary must look odd: Get up in the morning, death, death, death, death, death, lunch, death, death, death, afternoon tea, death, death, death, quick shower.