LETTER: War in Iraq was completely unfounded; don't perpetuate lies
Thursday's letter to the editor "Iraq policies have prevented attacks" contains some reasonable arguments, but is rife with the kind of wishful thinking and blatant wrongheadedness that has come to typify the apologist explanation of our presence in Iraq.
Invading Iraq was not a part of our strategy to pursue al-Qaida. No way, no how. The simple fact is that al-Qaida did not exist in any tangible form inside Iraq before our invasion. The Bush administration and the 9-11 Commission have admitted as much.
And to say that Saddam's repeated (and true) declarations of "I have no weapons of mass destruction" was actually a clever ploy to fool the world into thinking he DID have chemical weapons defies anything but an extremely circuitous explanation - especially considering that the verdict was out in our own intelligence community when we actually did invade.
And don't even get me started on ancillary benefits. Most people forget that Afghanistan is a larger and more populous country than Iraq. We had a battleground for al-Qaida in Afghanistan, where they were basically isolated. We had global support for our presence there, we only needed to commit a fraction of our troops, and we had strong local support from citizens. By invading Iraq we invited al-Qaida into a new playground, tied up our military (thereby eliminating a significant political deterrent for countries such as North Korea and Iran), inflamed anti-American sentiment around the world and plunged ourselves hundreds of billions of dollars into debt. And if we were really interested in saving lives, why not invade, say, Darfur, where more people have died in the last five years than in the last 15 of Saddam's rule in Iraq?
Now, I'm not saying Saddam was a nice guy or that we should pack up and leave now that we're there. As unmitigated of a disaster as our foray into Iraq has been, it's hard to imagine it getting any better by just leaving. But what I can't and won't tolerate is an attempt to portray our actions there as intelligent, rational or reasonable, because they simply weren't. And now we citizens, and our men and women in uniform, must pay for them.
Nathan Schulz
Senior
Chemistry
Invading Iraq was not a part of our strategy to pursue al-Qaida. No way, no how. The simple fact is that al-Qaida did not exist in any tangible form inside Iraq before our invasion. The Bush administration and the 9-11 Commission have admitted as much.
And to say that Saddam's repeated (and true) declarations of "I have no weapons of mass destruction" was actually a clever ploy to fool the world into thinking he DID have chemical weapons defies anything but an extremely circuitous explanation - especially considering that the verdict was out in our own intelligence community when we actually did invade.
And don't even get me started on ancillary benefits. Most people forget that Afghanistan is a larger and more populous country than Iraq. We had a battleground for al-Qaida in Afghanistan, where they were basically isolated. We had global support for our presence there, we only needed to commit a fraction of our troops, and we had strong local support from citizens. By invading Iraq we invited al-Qaida into a new playground, tied up our military (thereby eliminating a significant political deterrent for countries such as North Korea and Iran), inflamed anti-American sentiment around the world and plunged ourselves hundreds of billions of dollars into debt. And if we were really interested in saving lives, why not invade, say, Darfur, where more people have died in the last five years than in the last 15 of Saddam's rule in Iraq?
Now, I'm not saying Saddam was a nice guy or that we should pack up and leave now that we're there. As unmitigated of a disaster as our foray into Iraq has been, it's hard to imagine it getting any better by just leaving. But what I can't and won't tolerate is an attempt to portray our actions there as intelligent, rational or reasonable, because they simply weren't. And now we citizens, and our men and women in uniform, must pay for them.
Nathan Schulz
Senior
Chemistry
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