September 27, 2005
Iraqi Anti-War Protestors Are Misguided
With the recent arrest of Cindy Sheehan in Washington for yet another anti-war protest has finally prompted me to post my thoughts on this issue. To start, I don’t want to belittle the beliefs of Mr. Sheehan as, unlike most protestors, she had a lose in her family directly because of this war. However, in the fight to protest this war and the policies of the US, these protestors are missing a very important issue, they live in a democracy that allows them to protest, unlike the people in Iraq to whom the protestors are supposedly standing up for.
The beauty about a democracy is that we can express different opinions, talk about sensitive issues and slam our governments when we think they are wrong. The problem with dictators is that if you happen to do any of those things, you die. How can any person, living in a democracy, actually believe for a minute that the people of Iraq are in a much worse situation today as opposed to when Saddam was in power?
I often hear the argument that the “war in iraq” was not sanctioned by the UN, therefore, it is an illegal war. But wait a minute, wasn’t it the UN that left Saddam in power after his invasion of Kuwait? Was it also the UN and Kofi Annan who developed the Oil for Food program in which Saddam and his goons pocketed billions of dollars. Who else benefited from the Oil for Food program? France, Russia, Germany, China, Canada and other nations, who interestingly enough all opposed the war in Iraq.
People blame the foreign policy of the US for causing the problems in the middle east. What about what Britain and France did to the middle east and Iraq after WWI? They marched in and started cutting up the nations to suit their needs. What about the fact that Russia, during the cold war and after WWII, was trying to court all the nations in the middle east to continue to promote its communist beliefs. The fact is that the situation in the middle east is one that has been brewing for many years and now has hit a critical point.
People looked at France and Germany for standing up against the awful Americans and British for wanting to invade Iraq. Did anybody stop to ask why? How about the food for oil program? How about the contracts French/German companies had with Iraq? If you are going to chastise the US, for Christ’s sake don’t think France and Germany are the poster countries for “ethics”.
The one fault that I will put on the US and Britain is that they used the wrong reason to invade Iraq. Clearly the weapons of mass destruction did not exist, however, if the war was not going to happen now it would have happened later. The middle east was a time bomb waiting to explode and I believe the moderate nations, the women in the middle east, and all the pro-democracy supporters are applauding this invasion. They are not applauding invasion, because there is nothing funny about war, they are applauding because societal change only happens when society is shocked and that requires extreme measures.
Praise the day when the people in Iraq can jump into their air-conditioned SUV’s, after dropping their kids off at daycare and hold up signs that say “peace not war”. Praise the day in Iraq when people like Cindy Sheehan can get arrested and fined $50US for protesting without a permit, only to run home to their air conditioned house, turn on their plasma tv, microwave their dinner and watch their own protest on Channel 3.
Is it not time that the people of Iraq have these freedoms, or are they only reserved for people like Cindy Sheehan?
A good point well made.