Dolphman, I really do enjoy with you watching the discomfiture of all the lefties, socialists, neo-Marxists, and others of the "feel good" crowd. I lump them all into the catchall "Hate America Left."
I guess I'm one of those leftists. Funny how you like to lump them into "hate America". America cannot be a respectable nation without a voice to tell it when it is doing something wrong. It's all the people who fall right in behind whatever the adminstration wants who are the lemmings. The people who aren't free-thinkers. The variety of opinions and evaluation of situations from various angles is what attracts me to the "left". It is the herd mentality of the "right" that drives me away from them.
As for this here leftist, I'm not sad to see Saddam go. For most of us, we're not saying Saddam is a great guy. We just don't like America deciding who's right and who's wrong and making up the flimsiest of reasons for a reason to depose another leader - especially when the international community who is not blinded by our press and propaganda machines does not agree. On one hand, it's because of WOMD. Where are these WOMD, by the way? I'm still not eating crow on that. Or it's about 9-11. Excuse me. Remember a guy called Osama bin Laden, that we've failed to find and bring to justice? Or was it really Saddam? Did we invade Afghanistan and leave it a mess by mistake? And then it's to liberate the Iraqis, who we now allow to run lawless in the streets. And no, it's not about oil.
Iraq is now a mess. Looting and lawlessness are widespread, water pipelines have been damaged and areas are in desperate need of water. Why are these things happening? The tide is turning. Many Iraqis who were happy as American tanks rolled in are now blaming the Americans for not doing anything to establish order. Where is the aid for these dear people we travelled thousands of miles to liberate? Guess we don't give a rat's ass about them after all. So why did we care so much about liberating them?
But with all the looting and lawlessness, guess what? The oil fields are nice and secure. So... why are we there again?
How America handles things from here on will speak volumes about why they really invaded. Several reasons have been given, although only one was presented to the UN for justification. As you watch in the coming months how America deals with Iraq, see whether it matches up with the reasons you bought into this war. You might have to even write it down to remember why, because most Americans have short memories and the US is rewriting things as they go. It started off to disarm Saddam via regime change. Now the propaganda says it's to liberate Iraq.
If no WOMD are to be found, how will they spin it? Will they hope by then that the people have forgotten all about WOMD and now buy into the "liberate Iraq" party line? Will they claim that they were there and did exist, but they must have moved them out of the country? Will they claim they need more time to find them? Should the international community come to the aid of Iraq to kick us out if we stay too long? Say, you've had enough time to find them, it's not working, get out - much the way we treated UN inspectors.
It's kinda like saying somebody has drugs, the police storm in, cut open all the sofas and mattresses, break apart all the furniture, make a total mess of the place. When it's all over, they don't find anything, say, oops, sorry and no, you can't bill us, then leave. Oh, but if you want, we'll fix things up by using money from the sale of your goods. I think that would be a terrible injustice.
We will see. Us left-wings are not eating crow yet.
