Was This Trip Necessary?
By Michael P. Tremoglie (11/14/03)
This Veteran’s Day it is especially important to recognize our newest veterans. It is vitally important that we answer some questions about our nation and our nation’s policies. The most important question is about Iraq.
Was this trip necessary?
This is the $64 question about Iraq. The question that needs to be answered for those in uniform in Iraq, for those who have returned, and especially for the families of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice.
Was this trip necessary?
I for one did not think so. Not for the reasons proffered by a coalition of communists/Islamists/Baathists and others who just plain hate George W. Bush. I simply thought that the costs were not worth the benefits.
So was this trip necessary? In order to answer this one must review the facts.
No one really wanted to go to war except Hussein and the Baathists. They indicated that they did not intend to cooperate with the world community. They routinely demonstrated - both with their own people and with foreigners - that they have no problem engaging in wholesale slaughter. They have indicated that they wanted to participate in worldwide terrorism campaigns and that they wanted to establish a pan-Arab world.
All of these concepts have been verified repeatedly by the discoveries made as a result of our military action.
Recently mass graves have been discovered that contained about 300,000 people. The actual total of innocents killed by Saddam and the Baathists are probably in the millions. People who were slaughtered for no reason other than that they did not like Saddam and the Baathists or did not want to be part of a Baathist Iraq.
We have captured terrorists - wanted by the international community for decades - who were being harbored by Saddam and the Baathists.
We have captured training facilities for terrorists in Iraq that were operated and financed by the Baathists.
We have learned that Saddam and his Baathists were communicating with and sharing resources with the Al-Qaeda terrorists.
We have learned that Saddam and the Baathists were bribing at least one member of the British government to protest any sanctions or war and financing Muslim terrorists in Israel – all while his own people starved.
We have gained access to the intelligence files of the Baathist intelligence unit and now know more about terrorist operations worldwide than we ever knew.
So yes Saddam Hussein and his Baathists were a concern for the world. Like Fascism and Nazism and Communism it was an ideology of genocide and slavery - one that would cause destruction and chaos worldwide. Baathism was a philosophy of racism and hatred, joined in a common cause with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al- Qaeda for a common purpose if not a common policy. As former CIA Director James Woolsey said, Islamists are like Mafia families always killing one another, yet uniting for a common purpose.
We learned in the 20th Century – specifically during the 1930’s - that whenever a superior nation seeks to return to its halcyon days of empire, that whenever a superior race or a superior ideology wants to impose their beliefs we must eliminate them.
The Hamas covenant, Osama bin Laden’s November 2002 letter to the people of the United States, and Saddam Hussein’s Baathism all reveal an intent to a establish a pan-Arab world. Hussein and his Baathists ( which means Arab renaissance) dreamed of a renaissance of the days of Saladin’s empire, much the way Mussolini dreamed of a new Roman Empire, or Hitler a new German Empire, or Tojo an Empire of the Sun.
The Germans with whom the Arabs were allied in World War II, and the Communists with whom they were occasionally allied during the Cold War influenced the Baathists. Their leaders and founders studied in Europe and learned about totalitarian infrastructures and procedures.
So yes this trip was necessary. As much as I did not think it was initially, I do so now.
In the coming weeks and months many – for purely politically partisan reasons – will say to our newest veterans that they were fooled and duped to participate in this war. They will say that America is to blame. They will say that we taught the Arabs to hate us. They will say that we exploited them. They will say we are the evildoers.
Our veterans should not believe them. The veterans were not fools. They were intelligent and courageous. Our veterans knew that this war against terrorism, that this fire that was Baathism needed to be extinguished before it became a conflagration. Before it became an inferno that consumed the world the way Nazism did.
The veterans know that this trip was necessary.
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