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Why I still protest the War in Iraq:
1. Ethics: The amount of people that have been victimized through violence and death (Coalition soldiers, Iraqi civilians and yes, if one is to be unbiased, Iraqi soldiers) outweighs the flimsy justification of guarding the world against Weapons of Mass Destruction. This W.M.D. supposition has not been proven. It is a weak reason to sacrifice lives, based on an abstract scale, with no evidence to justify the administration’s stated reason to attack. With all this media bombardment it’s difficult to remember, but liberating the Iraqi people is not why coalition forces attacked. If it was, it should have happened years before today.
2. Economics: The Bush administration’s new tax plan does not include how much money the war will cost the U.S.A. Over ten billion dollars was offered to Turkey for financial aid, in exchange for their airspace. Over two billion will be spent to set up up the new regime in Iraq. Uncalculated billions will be spent over the next few decades as forces occupy Iraq and attempt to keep a democracy stable there. At the same time the Bush administration is spending money, they are cutting taxes, mostly to the upper class that helped to elect them and they hope will do so again in 2004. With all this money disappearing, how will America pay for the newly created Homeland Security (a more feasible defense against terrorism than reforming nation states), education and other waning state finances?
3. Diplomacy: It can be argued that North Korea is a far more threatening nation to world order. And yet the administration believes North Korea can be assuaged with diplomacy. What made Iraq incapable of diplomatic solution? Geography? Oil? International trade? Non-secular society? It is clear that the administration hopes to install “democracy” in the Middle East region, to stabilize their own motivations.
4. Hypocrisy: The Bush administration was elected under the campaign that it would not support “nation building.” Reworking nation states into U.S. controlled governments is hypocritical to what the administration claims to believe. Also, by invading Iraq without United Nations backing, the administration is ignoring a world body it belongs to. This sets a context for other nations to behave the same. If the United States disregards the U.N. as an effective organization, then it should withdraw its membership.
5. Democracy: If one is to argue that democracy is the better form of government that will give its citizens political freedoms and civil liberties, then it is important that the people of the region are allowed to implement it themselves. I believe that forcefully changing a government can be disastrous and may open a chaos that is unpredictable and even more difficult to defend against.
These five reasons applied to me before the war began and they apply to me today.
I am still against the war.
Question: Do you think it is accurate to say that one motivation for pro-war advocates is to have a historical event that allows them to define themselves as great and with cause or purpose? How much of this war rhetoric has been haunted by the shadow of World War II? Do people want to believe in a mythology that they are liberators and not conquerors? |
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