Why Invading Iraq Was Right

Politics

Iraq: Do it Again

written by Vincent Lanci.

Based on the successful re-taking of Mosul this week, it felt right to look again at our original invasion of Iraq under GWB.  Certainly it felt right because my own liberal friends had become increasingly hardened in their own opinions. One  can just look at the shouting down of others opinions by symbols on the left, the progressive idealists who mastered rational discourse to protect people's  rights years ago.

While the prose I write is no doubt filled with imperfections, it is the information I've learned that while the public was lied to or improperly "sold" on our reasons  for going in (WMD), we were right to go in. And as I learn, I amend. 

Despite all the obvious conflicts of interest, corporate benefits, the US's seeding of these wrongs  and my own disdain for Neo cons. We were right to go in. And we are wrong to lose our moral compass now after we learned that our Gov't sold  us  on invasion under false pretenses. Our Government's propaganda posting press thinks us dumb. That was the logical  backfiring of a system that has been trying to place us in a holding funnel for years with lowest common denominator rhetoric . But we were right to go in, even if our government couldn't explain why. 

Here is a reason they could have told us. Iraq had fulfilled all 4 requirements to be considered a failed state.

There are four ways a country can lose its sovereignty according to international law

  1. Irresponsible development of nuclear weapons Violating the non-proliferation act in letter or spirit.
  2. Invading and aggression against other sovereign nations Iran, Kuwait.
  3. Genocide: Kurds
  4. Playing hosts to terrorists etc. it was a retirement village for terrorists.

But we were to dumb to understand that apparently. They trotted out Colin Powell to lie to us instead.  

And the UN and international law failed us yet again. Like many legal systems that become encumbered with need to perpetuate their own existence, their rules and  laws proved toothless and unenforceable. They didn't enforce their own  rules. So we went in using false pretense and great salesmanship. 

And while history may never hold W in high regard; while the propaganda machine undermined their own cause by thinking the public was too dumb to handle any reason other than a 3 letter acronym for going in; we were right to do so on purely humanitarian reasons.

But this is not revisionist, and certainly not apologetic for our government's horrible abuse of power and its blatant manipulation of the public it holds in such low regard. But invading Iraq was justified. And while it may be bigger than me to understand truly if  I am right. Seeing a video last night changed  me. It was  the right thing to do. And while there are many other regimes that we did nothing about, that doesn't make doing nothing in  Iraq right.

I hold it is bigger than us and cite how the  world is going now. We did not create this situation.  You do not ask if a man who walks into  a school  and kills a dozen kids is justified in doing so because some wrong was done to him. Why would you do  that here? Question your own culpability in enabling it yes. but stop there as  I did. Yes, The West incited the foment of the ME. But that does not justify what is going on now. 

I saw the original broadcast of Saddam's overthrow of the Iraqi Republic complete with subtitles last night un-narrated . It unnerved me greatly in a way I had not felt since bearing witness on 9/11 to man's inhumanity to man. That is not to equate the 2 remotely.  

On September 13th 2001, after not sleeping and  trading for 24 hours straight to liquidate risk in my small firm Berard Capital's 15 traders, I collapsed in extreme pain. The event was over, the responsibilities to my employees portfolios ( and a friend or 2 who needed  liquidity on margin calls) were gone, and I was struck in the gut by an emotional bomb. I was next inexplicably in a bathtub vomiting uncontrollably in what I could only conclude was a psychic exorcism of the evil I had witnessed and could not process. 

This was also more confirmation to me of the collective soul Jung speaks of, the thread that ties us all together. That even with my own poor antennae to the ether that ties us together, the experience was so powerful and incomprehensible my body revolted  at it. G-d by another name. 

No, the video of Saddam was nowhere near that experience, but perhaps because i have a new sensitivity to that feeling, it did register  as something as close to an unprocessable event that one can witness. 

And then I found Christopher Hitchens' discussion on it. This is a man who is I disagree with on a great many things; but here, I found my own thoughts made into words by  another man  on this surreal moment.

From the Youtube Poster

Archival footage married with part of a Christopher Hitchens speech, showing Saddam Hussein's final purge of the Iraqi Baath Party leadership. You'll notice a couple of small details are different than Hitchens remembers. The audience is larger, and the confessor does not come in wearing chains (metaphorically, perhaps, but not literally.) We don't know exactly how many hundreds of party members were killed in this purge in the whole of Iraq, but of the 68 taken out of this room on July 22, 1979, at least 22 were executed (by their fellow party members). Sadly, the bloodbath for Iraqis and the region was only just beginning.  

Hussein's Tactics would make Stalin Jealous:

"Bad guy" was a phrase bush used to describe Hussein. That is insulting. And I've seen video tape, perhaps the only one made in the 20th century  of a coup... of his own cementing of power by getting a tortured parliamentary member to name names and then getting those unnamed senators  to kill the accused ones. It is chilling. 

Islam is not the issue per se. There will always be ignorant people,disenfranchised people, and  poor people that I acknowledge are in part a product of western imperialism. 40 years ago, the extreme right of Islam was nowhere near as influential as it is now. It is getting hard to separate the 2 now. And that is the Fascism we are looking at now.

 

Islam: Theocratic Fascism is Fascism: 

Salafism/ Wahhabism is to my growing understanding, not just the religious right of Islam, it is a political system wrapped in the flag of Allah. 

[VIDEO] An Islamic Salafi Classroom in the UK

 

Scaling Dictatorial Dogma:

It is a decentralized dictatorial mentality that succeeds previous dictatorships lead by individual dictators in the past. The issue is those who Co-opt religion, which gives a captive (religiously and likely socioeconomically) united community in which any would-be dictator can step in and infect it.

It is the next logical evolution of evil in a world that is increasingly decentralized. Technology, war, networks all do this. And the encoding of Salafism rules is to dictatorial rule what taking a businessman's  intellectual capital and writing a software program with it does. It scales it and obviates tehneed for a central dictator. The dogma is the dictator

What Hussein was, the Salafi and Wahhabi  are now. Political opportunists hiding behind the veil of religion. But the dictator is the ideology hiding in the religion , not embodied in a personality cult of one. 

It is scaling the idea outside the single dictator, without whose presence a dictatorship usually falls. 

Like the business that gets a higher multiple for leveraging the intellectual capital of its owner into a systematized software program, Salafist dogma is the dictator made scalable , decentralized, and globally positioned to capitalize on the network effect (another business tenet).

A tyranny of ideas. And it is a war worth fighting I am starting to feel. 

Israel?

In Israel, the influence of the extreme orthodox is growing on a secular government. Israel has a national religion, but all are free to worship how they want. It is not a theocracy. And it is a modern miracle to me. I wish it to stay that way. i've been there, and wearing a kippoh found many reasonable muslims just wanting to live. I suspect they are shrinking in number as Salafism expands

 

Opposing Forces Are Waking Up: 

Sadly, the rise of extremist Islam makes it that much easier for extremists of other religions to rise in opposition,  whether Christianity, Judaism, or Hinduism. Any good physicist will tell you about actions begetting reactions.

That is not good a good development, but is not unnatural. And this may be beyond what we deem is good and evil. I've found to be necessary in event of crisis to at least acknowledge that much.  Even Ghandi would probably pick up a stick if Hitler  visited and the British navy were not there to enable his passive protests. Channeling  this growing opposing force properly towards the real target of those who are incentivized to kill or convert us is the key. Psychic energy and emotion can easily be coopted towards the wrong target by idiots with agendas. Ultimately, maybe a global  self-clearing event is  in order. As George Carlin  said to ecologists: Earth will be fine, it's the humans who should be  worrying

 

Bullies, Whether Fascist Islamics or the Multiculturalists who enable them are Dictators

The Husseins of the world, the western incumbents wed to relativism and evangelical multiculturalism that shout down new ideas (previously the movement that was progressive discourse) , the leaders of Salafism and their use of a tolerant west to spread intolerance. And others. 

Compelling someone to do as you say is totalitarianism. And it must be met with equal or greater force to stop it. And that force must be  controlled  by sane minds outside of the fray who can put that necessary force in check when it is done. 

If you've taken the time to read this far. Thank you. 

VBL

vlanci@echobay.com

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