Wrong, wrong, wrong -
The protesters were wrong.
The human shields were wrong.
France was wrong.
The left was wrong.
The media was wrong.
The world was wrong.
Iraq is liberated, thanks to the US and its allies.
The genocidal monster Saddam
is deposed and executed, thanks to the US and its allies.
His regime is destroyed.
2003 was a wonderful year for the world,
a moment of hope for all peoples suffering under tyrannies
across the world.
Tragically, though, the forces of evil
(totalitarianism, torture and religious genocide)
have fought back since 2003.
They refuse to stop killing.
They refuse to allow the Iraqis live in peace and freedom.
The western left, which opposed the liberation of Iraq from Saddam,
now says that Iraq must be abandoned to these people.
They say, in effect, that
if evil fights back, evil should win.
The fact that Iraq had in the past
a nuclear weapons program,
and was assumed to still have one,
was one of the main reasons for war,
but not the only one.
It now looks like Iraq's nuclear weapons program was actually inactive.
Why didn't Saddam let us know?
The amazing answer
seems to be
that:
"Hussein was afraid to lose face with his Arab neighbors.
Hussein concluded .. that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates
and other countries paid him deference because they feared he had weapons
of mass destruction. Hussein was unwilling to reveal that his cupboard
was essentially bare"
The true story of Saddam and WMD
- Saddam needed his supposed WMD program as a deterrent:
"So he told only a few senior military chiefs
- and not until December 2002
- that he was actually telling the truth: he really didn't have any WMD.
He had even bluffed his own ministers and intelligence service"
Another theory is that
Saddam himself did not know the full picture
because his terrified subjects were lying to him.
As
The Scandalous Treatment of Dictatorships
by Joseph Kellard says,
dictatorships are always built on lies at all levels:
"This fact suggests how mass-murdering dictatorships are inherently untrustworthy,
and that their dictators should not
only never to be trusted, but deserve only to be executed."
As he bluntly says, the scandal is the existence
of the dictatorship.
Transcripts
of Iraqi meetings show Saddam telling his own deputies there are no WMD.
Because dictatorships are built on lies,
maybe even they didn't believe him.
Even if Iraq (as at early 2003 at least)
had no active nuclear weapons program,
the war is still clearly justified.
These reasons remain:
Saddam's nuclear program would have started again
as soon as he got a chance.
Saddam won't even keep his tyranny at home,
but is a threat to all his neighbours,
including: (a) half the world's oil supply,
and: (b) the democracy of Israel.
The US needs to change the Middle East,
and Iraq is a good place to start.
This is the no.1 "realpolitik" reason.
And it's a perfectly good reason to invade.
The US needs to take the war home
to the Middle East, and this it has done.
Instead of killing unarmed women and children in
US shopping malls
(which is what they would prefer to be doing),
the Islamofascists are now forced to take on heavily-armed US soldiers
in their own countries.
If there has to be a war, this is where the war belongs, not in America.
And the Islamofascists are dying in huge numbers,
while achieving nothing so far at least.
Looking Back at Iraq:
A war to be proud of,
Victor Davis Hanson, May 26, 2006
- "Some believe that the odyssey of jihadists to Iraq means we created terrorists,
but again, it is far more likely, as al Qaeda communiqués attest,
that we drew those with such propensities into Iraq.
Once there, they have finally shown the world that they hate democracy,
but love to kill and behead
- and that has brought a great deal of moral clarity to the struggle.
After Iraq, the reputation of bin Laden and radical Islam has not been enhanced as alleged,
but has plummeted. For all the propaganda on al Jazeera, the chattering classes
in the Arab coffeehouses still watch Americans fighting to give Arabs the vote,
and radical Islamists in turn beheading men and women to stop it."
Saddam, the Bomb and Me,
by the head of Saddam Hussein's nuclear centrifuge program,
makes these points:
That Saddam didn't know what a bad state his nuclear weapons program was in.
"Sort of like the emperor with no clothes, he fooled himself into believing he was armed and dangerous.
But unlike that fairy-tale ruler, Saddam Hussein fooled the rest of the world as well."
That the nuclear weapons program would have started again properly as soon
as they got a chance.
Who cares what the reason for war is:
Jonah Goldberg
is blunt and shocking, and yet really I agree with him.
If a democracy wants to depose a tyranny like
Saddam's Iraq, well who cares
what the reason is.
It's a good thing.
Even if the aim was to seize all of Iraq's oil for profit,
I would still support it.
Because I want to depose all tyrants, everywhere.
And that's why I am not a leftist.
"Why Iraq? Well, there are two answers to that question.
The first answer is "Why not?"
...
The second answer: Iraq deserved it.
Now. Here's the important part:
Both of these are good answers."
"after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim
world ... Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we
could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world."
Iraqis don't care about WMD's.
They just want to be liberated.
Broken Baghdad Brutal, Bloody and bellowing
by Tish Durkin, November 3, 2003,
quotes an Iraqi after liberation
- "Everybody in the world is so obsessed
with weapons of mass destruction. Nobody in Iraq gives a shit."
The
"anti-war" protesters say:
Don't do anything.
Never do anything.
Leave tyrants to do what they like.
And then we are innocent.
We have no blood on our hands.
It's seductive.
I just don't know if it is moral.
"On 15 February 2003, about a million liberal-minded people marched through London
to oppose the overthrow of a fascist regime.
...
Saddam Hussein was delighted, and ordered Iraqi television to show the global day of action
to its captive audience.
...
these were history's largest co-ordinated demonstrations .. millions,
maybe tens of millions, had marched to keep a fascist regime in power."
"Jose Ramos-Horta, the leader of the struggle for the freedom of East Timor,
noticed that at none of the demonstrations in hundreds of cities did you see banners
or hear speeches denouncing Saddam Hussein. If this was 'the left' on the march,
it was the new left of the 21st century,
which had abandoned old notions of camaraderie and internationalism
in favour of opposition to the capricious American hegemony.
They didn't support fascism, but they didn't oppose it either,
and their silence boded ill for the future."
"Ian McEwan caught the almost frivolous mood: 'All this happiness on display is suspect.
Everyone is thrilled to be together out on the streets - people are hugging themselves,
it seems, as well as each other. If they think - and they could be right -
that continued torture and summary executions, ethnic cleansing and occasional genocide
are preferable to an invasion, they should be sombre in their view.'"
"Reverend Jackson, let me speak!"
by Amir Taheri
- An Iraqi dissident watches the march:
"These prosperous, peaceful and fat Europeans
are marching in support of evil incarnate."
He said that, watching the march, he felt Nazism was
"alive and well and flexing its muscles in Hyde Park."
The Iraqi Prospect Organisation "wanted to persuade
people that the anti-war movement did not speak for the Iraqis or Kurdish
people. After all, their Iraqi relatives were praying for the invasion to
happen."
Western voices
Marching for terror
by Mark Steyn
- "One day,
not long from now, when Iraq is free, they will despise those who marched to keep them in hell."
Dear marcher, please answer a few
questions
by David Aaronovitch
- ".. Finally, what are you going to do when you are told - as one day you will be
- that while you were demonstrating against an allied invasion, and being
applauded by friends and Iraqi officials, many of the people of Iraq were
hoping, hope against hope, that no one was listening to you?"
The marchers are doing Saddam's work
by David Pryce-Jones
- "Behind the demonstrators' slogans lies the assumption that Arabs should be left alone: they don't mind being brutalised,
tortured and murdered by a fascist thug like Saddam. Where they come from, it is the natural order of things.
That line of thought is nonsense. More than that - it is
racist
nonsense."
Freedom and Dignity: Iraqis get a taste
(extended version titled
Long Distance Arabs)
- Amir Taheri on Liberation Day
just 2 months later:
"Here is the first lesson to draw from the liberation of Baghdad: Iraqis, and Arabs in general, are no
different from other human beings. They, too, prefer to live in freedom and dignity."
In the US, the "anti-war" protests
were organised by
International ANSWER /
The Workers World Party /
Party for Socialism and Liberation.
This group,
with links to the Soviet Union's KGB,
supported Stalin,
supported the Soviet crushing of Hungary
and Czechoslovakia,
supported Mao's democide and the Cultural Revolution,
supported China's killing of the Tiananmen Square protesters,
supported Libya,
supported the butcher Milosevic,
supported (and still supports) Castro,
and today supports
(not just supports appeasement with, but actually supports!)
the genocidal tyranny of North Korea.
At the time of these demos, it actually supported
(not just supported appeasement with, but actually supported)
Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Yes, that's right.
The "anti-war" protests
were organised by
people who openly support Saddam.
Marching With Stalinists
by Michael Kelly
- "This is whom the left now marches with. The left marches with the Stalinists.
The left marches with those who would maintain in power the leading oppressors
of humanity in the world."
The lifelong tyranny-supporter
and opponent of human rights,
Lynne Stewart,
hardly needs refuting.
Her words speak for themselves.
Speech to National Lawyers Guild, 2003,
openly supports genocidal dictators:
"And modern heroes, dare I mention? Ho and Mao and Lenin, Fidel
and Nelson Mandela and John Brown, Che Guevara
who reminds us "At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let
me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love."
Our quests like theirs are to shake the very foundations of the continents."
Interview
(also here), 2002,
openly supports democidal communist tyranny:
"I don't have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders
or certainly Fidel locking up people they see as dangerous."
Wrong again.
Wrong before.
The "peace" marches were wrong, wrong, wrong.
Proved wrong, proved immoral, within weeks of happening.
The Iraqi people wanted liberation.
The Iraqi people supported the war.
They yearned for the freedom we live in.
The liberation was a brilliant success.
In only a few weeks, Saddam's barbaric regime was destroyed.
There were few innocent casualties.
It was a triumph by any historical standard.
Iraq was liberated.
Uday and Qusay were killed.
Saddam was captured and executed.
Every dictator in the world was nervous.
2003 was truly a year of hope.
"What in the world do you mean?" I asked.
"How could you not want peace?""We don't want peace. We want the war to come" he continued.
.. telling them of progress in the talks
at the United Nations on working some
sort of compromise with Iraq I
was welcomed not with joy but anger.
"No, there is no other way! We
want the war!
It is the only way he will get out of our lives"
Here I had been demonstrating against the war thinking I had been doing it for the very people I was here now with
and yet I had not ever bothered to ask them what they wanted.
"We are not afraid of the American bombing. They will bomb carefully
and not purposely target the people. What we are afraid of is Saddam
Hussein and what he and the Baath Party will do
when the war begins."
In relation to that last point,
about the Iraqi people trusting America,
Iraq: A Moral Reckoning
by Charles Krauthammer
points out that the Iraqi people
voted with their feet:
"one of the more unnoticed facts of this war was the absence of
refugees
- the Iraqi people's silent homage to their trust
[in the Allies]"
More stories of the human shield idiots
(and here)
- "The
Americans don't want to bomb civilians. They want to bomb the government and Saddam's palaces.
We want America to bomb Saddam. All Iraqi people
want this war."
Christopher Hitchens, 2006,
asks why the human shields aren't in Iraq when they are really needed
- to protect ordinary Iraqis from the resistance:
"What happened to the human shields? ...
would not now be the ideal time for those who hate war to go to Iraq and stand outside
the mosques, hospitals, schools, and women's centers that are daily subjected
to murderous assaults?"
Richard Waghorne:
"What they recognise and reveal in their actions,
...
is that unlike the United States, the insurgency in Iraq will pay not one moment's notice
to how many human shields they do or do not kill."
The first liberated Iraqis
- "You just arrived. You're late. What took you so long? God
help you become victorious.
I want to say hello to Bush, to shake his
hand. We came out of the grave."
What took them so long?
The UN, France, and the "anti-war" youth in the west, that's what.
Will these deeply ignorant voices,
proved wrong again and again,
now shut up?
The left were wrong
They were wrong
by Andrew Bolt,
on the failure of the left in Australia.
- "This is the Vietnam of the Left."
On the outside by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
- Doesn't it matter when people are proved wrong?
Surely it counts for something??
- "The left has been wrong for so long that no knowledgeable observer even expects
its pontificators to be right.
... Yet after all these decades of erroneous pronouncements, the
American left remains both intellectually and morally superior to you and me.
The American left is the only intellectual force in Western history
to gain moral superiority by being wrong."
Can We Talk?,
Eric Alterman,
The Nation, April 3, 2003,
is a masterpiece of failed leftist prediction:
He sneers at Richard Perle:
"Did Perle, for instance, genuinely believe "support for Saddam,
including within his military organization, will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder"?"
He sneers at Paul Wolfowitz:
"Is Wolfowitz really so ignorant of history as to believe the Iraqis would welcome us
as "their hoped-for liberators"?"
He says the war is going badly:
"Rapidly shifting conventional wisdom has already begun to blame Bush advisers' "bum advice,"
according to one Washington Post report,
for the war's decidedly not-so-cakewalk-like character."
Later that week (!),
support for Saddam,
including within his military organization, collapsed
and his regime fell.
Opinion polls
showed the majority of Iraqis welcoming the US as their hoped-for liberators,
as many Iraqi bloggers explain,
such as the eloquent
Husayn Uthman.
Out of the "Quagmire"
by J. Michael Waller
- "Daddy, are we there yet?"
- The hysterical, panicking, extremely short-term,
deeply ignorant
(and constantly wrong)
coverage of the Iraq War
in the western media.
Once again, just like Afghanistan, the military
were a far more trustworthy guide to what was going on
and what would happen next
than journalists were.
Hoaxes, Hype and Humiliation
by Charles Krauthammer
- The western media were wrong
about the
looting of the National Museum.
The whole story looks like
"A way for opponents of the war ...
to change the subject and relieve themselves of the shame of having
opposed the liberation of 25 million people."
I thought it looked a bit like this at the time
(it was simply amazing how quick they changed the subject!)
but I feared that it was also true.
During the Iraq War,
the BBC were nicknamed the
"Baathist Broadcasting Corporation" by pro-war bloggers.
Like RTE in Ireland,
the taxpayer in Britain is forced to pay for a centre-left, anti-American,
anti-Israeli station.
Stupor, shame and repentance
by Marc De Scitivaux
- France wakes up with a hangover after the liberation,
after
its disgraceful, shameful support for Saddam.
This is the most shameful event
in French history since Vichy.
Alain Hertoghe describes
Le Monde
as "Saddam's Gazette".
- "It gave a picture from Baghdad of
Saddam's units perfectly controlling the situation.
...
Then when the Americans made their move, we read how they were
massacring the Iraqis. The explanation for the collapse was that
Saddam's fedayeen had so much compassion for the population that
they stopped fighting."
France's policy is still sharply criticized by Iraqis,
Remy Ourdan,
Le Monde, 18 Mar 2004
- on how,
oddly enough, Iraqis aren't grateful to the French
for their opposition to the war
and their long loyal support for Saddam.
"With the exception of former Ba'athist officials, it is practically impossible to find anyone who supports Paris'
position in the crisis."
"Chirac and de Villepin must understand that no Iraqi finds their position courageous... What did
France do to help Iraq free itself from the dictator"
"Once the war was over, we saw that
France's promises to help the Iraqi people were only wind."
"We wanted to be friends with the French,
but they supported Chirac who defended Saddam to
the end. And I still haven't understood why."
And an Iraqi on the disaster of Madrid:
"Pacifist and anti-American
Europe is celebrating the Spanish withdrawal from Iraq as if this were a great victory!
We Iraqis think that France's and Germany's refusal to help us and the announced departure of Spain are a
catastrophe."
Iraqi prime minister slams delusions of "pacifist" French,
Hala Jaber, September 05, 2004
-
about France's outraged complaints
all of a sudden
when two French journalists get kidnapped by the fascists
(that France has long supported)
in Iraq:
"a newspaper regarded as a mouthpiece for Allawi's party
.. said President Jaques Chirac must share responsibility for the kidnappings
because he had opposed international initiatives aimed at restoring Iraq's security."
"A second editorial complained that France was proud not to have helped topple the regime of Saddam Hussein
and had remained silent while "terrorist attacks were being carried out against the Iraqi people and infrastructure
... Now France can't sit still. Its envoys are everywhere, including in Iraq, calling on all Iraqis to intervene
to free their citizens"."
Beirut, Baghdad
by Fouad Ajami, August 25, 2003,
on the utter failure of the Arab intellectuals.
- "We needn't apologize to the other Arabs about our presence there,
and our aims for it. The custodians of Arab power, and the vast majority of the
Arab political class, never saw or named the terrible cruelties of Saddam.
A political culture that averts its gaze from mass graves and works itself
into self-righteous hysteria over a foreign presence in an Arab country
is a culture that has turned its back on political reason."
Long Distance Arabs
by Amir Taheri
(version also
here)
-
Is the Arab world humiliated by the liberation of Iraq?
"If they
are, so what? They should jump in a river. Today,
Iraq is free"
What's Wrong with the Arab World?
by Jonah Goldberg
- The Arab world's appalling, and incredibly ignorant,
response to the war in Iraq.
"Many Arabs sinned
... against the Iraqi people when they stood by its executioners,
when they underestimated the savagery with which the [Iraqi] regime treated its own people,
when they opened up their media to anyone defending this ghoulish regime,
and when they refused to treat others' opinions tolerantly.
It is about time that some of them stand, with a minimum of self-respect,
and apologize to the Iraqis...!"
"These plastic bags in the mass graves contained bullet-riddled skulls,
[bodies] wrapped in rags, [tied] in ropes, [or] dressed in worn pieces of clothing
... Ropes still tied a mother's bones to her infant's, and a father's to his son"
Baghdad parents name baby boy after Bush
- "I tell you all Iraqis hated Saddam's regime. It was only George
Bush who liberated us, without him it wouldn't have happened.
If he hadn't done it the sons of Saddam would have ruled us for
years. He saved us from Saddam and that's why we named our
son after him"
Iraqi writer Hamid Ali Alkifaey
- "No Iraqi can forget the moment when Saddam's statue was pulled down by Iraqis, assisted by US forces, in Baghdad.
..
Iraq is now a free country thanks to the courage of George Bush and Tony Blair, and the US and British people who backed them."
Ahmed Chalabi
thinks that someday France and Germany
".. will see their way clear to apologizing to the Iraqi people"
Thank You:
An Iraqi poet celebrates the dictator's fall
by Awad Nasir
- "Those [US and British troops] who died
to liberate our country are heroes in their own lands."
[Not to the freaks of the left they're not!]
"For us they will be martyrs and
heroes.
...
The U.S. and its allies took grave risks and showed exceptional courage
in standing up against powers such as France and Russia
.. who tried their desperate best to prolong Saddam's rule.
... [The US and Britain]
should not leave Iraq until they are asked to do so by a
freely elected Iraqi regime in Baghdad.
In the meantime
Jacques Chirac,
Vladimir Putin,
Kofi Annan
and others have no authority to speak on behalf of my people."
The Iraqi Prospect Organisation
on the sickness of the "anti-war" left
- "I find it absolutely incredible that
the anti-war people are now calling for the coalition to leave straight
away. Nobody in Iraq wants that. The opinion polls show it's just 13 per
cent. Don't they care about the Iraqi people and what they want at all?"
"We are grateful to the allied forces for the sacrifices
they have made and continue
to make in destroying the regime of Saddam Hussein and freeing Iraq.
... people are so happy not to have to
fear being kidnapped, tortured or disappearing from one day to the next.
They now have complete religious freedom and
can express themselves as they want to."
He dismisses the "resistance" as Baathists and Islamofascists.
He is opposed to the US leaving quickly.
And on the occasional sermons in Iraq against America he is scathing:
"The Iraqis have had enough of these meaningless speeches on
nationalism, Arab unity and the struggle against the West, responsible for all our misfortunes.
We have had enough of this kind of rhetoric for thirty years.
It has lead us to where we are now. The great majority of
Shias are Iraqis who no longer want to hear these hollow words.
They want good relations with their neighbors, with
the West and a better life for their children."
After being forced to listen to weeks of panicking
ignoramuses in the Irish and British media,
it is a breath of cold reality to read
Victor Davis Hanson's columns for March and April 2003
and understand
what happened during the Iraq war, and
why the Allies won.
The Anglo-American alliance wins again
by Martin Walker
- "Their war plan vindicated, their critics at least briefly silenced, the two English-speaking leaders who had defied so
much of world opinion and conventional wisdom
....
Iraq, the Middle East and - if they so choose
- a new world order is now for Bush and Blair to define. The world's
enduring, and only reliable military alliance has done it again. Or rather, the world's two best militaries delivered the
outcome"
Cakewalk In Iraq,
February 13, 2002 - His predictions, long before the war.
"I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) It was a cakewalk last time; (2) they've become much weaker; (3) we've become much stronger; and (4) now we're playing for keeps.
...
Gordon and O'Hanlon say we must not "assume that Hussein will quickly fall." I think that's just what is likely to happen."
"Cakewalk" Revisited,
April 10, 2003 - After liberation.
"Granted, I'm an incurable optimist, but even I could never have envisioned the coalition controlling the enemy capital within three weeks"
So far,
the War on Islamism is the most successful major war in US history
- Victor Davis Hanson writing after Iraq.
- ".. our present
offensives going into the third year of fighting have cost far fewer lives than the first 25 months of
any major conflict in American history - the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I, or
World War II.
...
fewer American soldiers have been killed in two years of fighting than often were lost
in one week in Vietnam"
Arabs at War,
Kenneth M. Pollack - Why Arabs lose.
- Again, it's not bad races.
It's bad ideas.
If they adopted western ideas, they would win.
(Of course, if they adopted western ideas,
they would not be fighting the west.
They would be allies of the west.)
Lessons of the War
by Victor Davis Hanson,
notes how the Iraqi army and security forces
were very good at killing and torturing unarmed civilians.
They were very good at shooting helpless, unarmed, civilian men, women and children.
But when faced with a real army, they were annihilated in three weeks.
Triumph of the free
by Andrew Bolt
- The brutal 30 year tyranny of Iraq did not fall in 8 years
(8 years!) of war with
the fellow tyranny of Iran,
but fell in 3 weeks (3 weeks!)
when it came up against the men and women of
the free world.
We win because we are free.
We are rich because we are free.
We dominate the world because we are free.
Why is the world too stupid to see this?
Why don't they embrace freedom too?
Democrat quotes on Iraq before the Iraq War.
See full list.
Al Gore on Iraq, 1992.
Charles Johnson
(back when he was good)
on the liberation of Iraq:
"This is a truly historic moment, LGF readers.
To the naked protesters, the
Hollywood whiners,
the Indymedia haters,
the BBC
and CNN and MSNBC
and Al Jazeera
and Arab News:
This moment is IN OUR NAME.
Those who sought to keep the Iraqi people in their living hell, who stood in
the way of their liberation, and insisted that the US and Britain and Australia
and our many other partners had no right to take action to defend both the
Iraqis and ourselves: This was NOT IN YOUR NAME.
And we won't forget where you stood, in your ignorance and
fashion-driven hatred of America. We won't forget."
openly supports genocidal dictators:
"And modern heroes, dare I mention? Ho and Mao and Lenin, Fidel
and Nelson Mandela and John Brown, Che Guevara
who reminds us "At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let
me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love."
Our quests like theirs are to shake the very foundations of the continents."
Since 1995.
