Personal observations.


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A torrent of flag waving has been flooding the Internet lately, but these kinds of speeches diminish the very principles of our country. Typically they praise the freedoms we enjoy while at the same time begrudging the exercise of those freedoms.

When someone says we are pursuing an unjust war they aren't speaking poorly of the brave soldiers fighting that war. The skill and professionalism of our military forces are undeniable. They will fight when told to fight. They know the policies are set by others. Their duty is to fight, and sometimes to die.

The engagement of our troops doesn't miraculously bring virtue to bad policy.

There are many good reasons to remove Saddam. They are the same reasons we have known and lived with since well before the Gulf War. Nobody suggested removing Saddam by force when he massacred the Kurds.

We had at least one clear and defensible reason to drive him out of Kuwait. Open aggression against a neighboring state is clearly something the world should never tolerate. After that war we probably should have pressed the UN to indict Saddam and his sons and top generals as war criminals. We had the evidence. Our troops looked on as he brutally destroyed hundreds of thousands of Shiites and Kurds.

This is a mirky war at best. It will be good to be rid of Saddam, but we have taken a huge step backwards in establishing the rule of law among nations. We have bullied our position and acted like a gunslinger in the old West. If we could have gotten even the weakest mandate from the community of nations to do this thing it would have been far better.

Our brave troops will fight and the President is probably right that the outcome is certain. Nobody can withstand our superior training and technology. This country that so many say is falling apart remains, after at least three decades of that kind of talk, the strongest militarily, best educated, most stable politically and enjoying one of the highest standards of living. The only thing that can change that is if we stop appreciating our diversity and our freedom to disagree and to speak out against ideas while still embracing our opponents as fellow Americans.

posted by Unknown at 9:57 PM