a conservative response

a good friend of mine, kyle martin, recently weighed in on the controversial issues of the war in iraq and the president's handling of cindy sheehan from a liberal point of view. his is an opinion and pov that i respect and he is a man that i admire. so, i enjoyed getting to better understand his approach to these situations. you can read his article here: please don't send me a bumper sticker, but... it's long but very well articulated.

here's my response. if you don't read his post, it might not make much sense.

i too think rush is a complete ass. he's arrogant and rude and very condescending. nonetheless, i listen to him. i listen to him because he is probably the most educated on current events and issues that face our body politic (i know you are probably going to disagree with that and say al franken or some air america talking head should get that title, but whatever, my opinion, not scientific fact). rush studies the issues, he knows the facts and he knows what he believes. that i can respect

i also agree that bush should not meet with ms. sheehan. not because she would make him look bad, but because of what it would/would not accomplish. this is little publicized, but she has already met with the president and voiced these concerns. he answered her questions. now it's time to move on. what it would accomplish, i fear, is a precedent that if you make a big enough stink about something and get the media on your side, you too can meet with the president, even if you don't have a legitimate reason. and where does that end? i sympathize with her, but i agree with you. it is a volunteer army. bush didn't draft her son. he didn't train the terrorist insurgents. and he didn't plant the ied that killed her son. she can disagree with why we are there, but her blaming the president for her son's death is shameful. and her demand that we cut and run from iraq with our tail between our legs is the most ill-informed notion. democrats, like joe biden, john kerry and harry reid, have been calling this the modern day vietnam for 2 years now. and if they got their way, that would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. we have to finish the job, not for our national pride, not for the memory of our dead, but for the people of iraq. they cannot stand alone. we must support them.

why are we there?

i'm not sure. there are a lot of good reasons. and some bad ones.

• wmd's (bad) - this reason is the most popular amongst critics. this is only a bad reason because we didn't find them. had we found them, very few critics, i'd say no critic, would have a leg to stand on. much ado was made of their physical absence. little attention was paid to the evidence of their prior existence (ie the compounds needed to create chemical weapons, the labs necessary to grow biologicals, and components used in creating nuclear devices and enriching uranium, for starters). we all know that government intelligence is unreliable. intel is inherently flawed. because we never get to see the whole picture until it is too late. we gather scraps of information and connect the dots as best we can. this means we must often guess. these are educated guesses, but guesses nonetheless. people make mistakes, misread information, or sometimes (and i think much less often) read into intel what they want to see. however, it is what we must depend upon in making decisions of national security. it sucks, but that's life. i still have a hard time believing all of this intel (both ours and that from the international community) was wrong. it's far more plausible to me that these weapons and agents were smuggled out, destroyed or very well hidden. we each must make our own decisions about this. you get to choose what you wish to believe. those predisposed to opposing the president will choose one thing, while i choose another.
• finishing desert storm/ousting a brutal dictator (mixed) - let's face it. the first pres. bush bowed to political pressure and pulled out of iraq without removing hussein. we thought we could keep him on a short leash. we were wrong. for the next 10+ years, saddam continually violated the cease-fire agreement he signed in '91. he fired on us fighters patrolling the no-fly zone which is an act of war. he refused to let weapons inspectors do their jobs as proscribed in the aforementioned cease-fire agreement. and according to intelligence, he pursued wmd's which he was specifically restricted from doing (not to mention the millions of pounds of conventional explosives which he wasn't supposed to have, claimed not to have, but when we invaded, what did we find? millions of pounds of conventional explosives). we found jet fighters and tanks buried in the sand that he supposedly destroyed after desert storm. he could not be trusted. he was breaking the rules and laughing at us with impunity. c'mon, this was a bad guy. he assassinated political opponents, imprisoned and tortured anyone who disagreed with him or spoke their mind, and committed mass genocide against the kurds and war-crimes against the iranians. thousands upon thousands of bodies have been found in mass graves. he, unprovoked, invaded a sovreign country, kuwait. his evilness hadn't quite reached hitler status, but it wasn't for lack of trying. today's world has no room for someone like this. i would like to know where the liberals were on this. where was their outrage? as many as 1 million iraqis have been killed, tortured or wrongly imprisoned by this man and it never even made a blip on their radar. but after a few marines die, they're asking for the resignation of bush, cheney, rumsfeld and rice. they are not the evil in this world. saddam is. he should've been dealt with 10 years ago. no rational person can argue with this. still, i don't know if this was a good reason to go to war now. i think it needed to be done sooner than later, but perhaps we should have focused more squarely on the broader issue of terrorism. which brings me to my 3rd reason...
• the war on terror (good?) - there was no clear link between saddam and osama. that i will admit. but there is a long money trail that connects iraq to al-qaeda. for years we have known of prior terrorist training camps located in iraq. saddam also had links to other terrorist leaders, not al-qaeda, but terrorists nonetheless. al-zarqawi, an al-qaeda lieutenant, was born and raised in iraq. hello!?! was he the only one? doubtful. terrorists know no boundaries. democrats seem to think that all of the world's terrorists live in afghanistan. what about syria, iran, pakistan, saudi arabia, indonesia, philippines, egypt, morroco, sudan, and the list goes on. we can't go to war with every country that contains terrorists. what we need to do is overthrow regimes that sponsor and support terrorism and pick those battles based on their probability of success. we don't go marching into iran because they might have nuclear weapons and many more american soldiers would die in that war. afghanistan and iraq were (believe it or not) the safe bets. these were battles we could win. would they be easy? certainly not. but compared to invading saudi arabia, from which the majority of the 9/11 highjackers came, they would be a lot easier and result in fewer casualties. but i do disagree with the argument that if we fight the terrorists there, we won't have to fight them here. it's flawed. if that's why we were going there, why weren't we better prepared for the insurgency? if the goal was to draw terrorists to us in iraq, why were we so surprised and caught off-guard when they showed up? i just think that's a losing argument.
• democracy in the middle east (very good) - but this isn't a losing argument. name a truly democratic country in the world that openly sponsors terrorism. name one that continually abuses its power and oppresses its citizens. you can't. the middle east and the nation of islam has been high-jacked by fringe elements. islam is being perverted and demonized. if moderate and conservative muslims were allowed a vote and a voice, what effect do you think we would see? like him or not, pres. bush has brought some resolution to the isreali/palestinian conflict. they are on the way to peace. egypt, saudi arabia and lebanon are slowly but surely moving closer and closer to becoming truly democratic. two extremely oppresive regimes have been removed and replaced with fledgling republics. and much pressure has been brought to bear on surrounding countries in the region to move in the same direction. i think for the first time in decades we are seeing some progress in the middle east. it is a very tenuous situation over there. and the mission has to be completed. you win wars not simply by killing the enemy, but by destroying their infrastructure. and we will not beat terrorists by killing terrorists. we will beat them by making it more and more difficult for them to operate. we will beat them by giving all of the followers of islam the privileges of democracy. if this is not true, then our system is built on a lie. maybe it's too big a dream, but we our it to ourselves, our children, and our world to try. we must try.

i don't want to blame the media. but i feel they harp on the bad or more questionable reasons for the war and don't mention the good. republicans are stupid. they are terrible tacticians. they gambled and went for the easy sell, wmd's. the intel was wrong and now no one seems to care about the other, more important reasons. we see our body count and mourn. we become outraged at the sacrifice we have made and the lack of gratitude expressed. but we should make it count for something. we should be proud as we mourn, ms. sheehan. the 1800 dead american military is a disturbing statistic for us. the stat we will never see is the number of american and iraqi lives saved by this action. we may never know the full benefit of our actions there. but i have to believe there will be benefit from this. call me an optimist. i want to believe good will come out of this war. i believe good already has.

thanks, kyle, for getting me on my soap box. i'll get down now.