Dr. Forbush Thinks

Fighting the Good Fight

Even to this day many supporters of the Iraq War contend that the war is an effort to battle terrorism. The confusing statements from the Bush administration prodded the naïve to believe that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11/2001 attacks on New York and Washington. The more savvy supporters of this aggression believed that Saddam Hussein had dealings with terrorists or supported them in other ways. The implication was that Saddam Hussein was bad and he deserved to be hanged, therefore a guy that bad must have had terrorist connections and deserved to be attacked and held up as a terrorist icon.

Even at the time of the invasion many people knew the truth and spoke out. But, as we all know the leader of the free world gets a lot more press than the academics with the real information. The American people tend to put faith in their leaders and believe what they say until they are proven wrong. And, it takes some time to prove that lies are lies and truth is truth. The sad truth is that it is easier to accept as fact something that someone tells you than it is to weigh the evidence and come to a true conclusion. In this way religion and politics are quite similar. No wonder the old taboo about talking politics or religion has so much support. This is because to challenge someone’s religious or political beliefs is to challenge their faith in what they believe to be true and is often unsupported by strong pillars of fact.

The facts are beginning to come out on many of the Bush administration’s articles of faith.

When it was discovered that the terrorist organization al Qaeda had attacked us on 9/11/2001 many of us already knew that they had terrorist training centers in Afghanistan. We knew this because we had already retaliated against al Qaeda with cruise missiles, and this had been in the news. We had already known that the fundamentalist leaders of Afghanistan were thugs with no respect for ancient culture when they destroyed the giant stone Buddhas. Human rights activists on the political left had been pleading for some action against these people for their treatment of women in their country. So, retaliation against the Taliban and al Qaeda was considered a reasonable reaction by most Americans - left, right and center.

On the other hand, Iraq was singled out from other nations that might not be behaving as we might like them to behave. The majority of the terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. Some funding of al Qaeda came from Saudi royal family accounts. Iraq was actually our proxy against the terrorist supporting Iranian regime. And, al Qaeda moved from Afghanistan to Pakistan where they found safe haven from the long arm of American military forces. Why did we go into Iraq, instead of Saudi Arabia, Iran or Pakistan?

Iran, was mentioned in the President’s “Axis of Evil” State of the Union speech. This means that at least George W Bush thought that they should be a target of our government. But, for some reason it was determined that Iraq was priority number one. The administration went to extremes in order to justify taking action in Iraq. Of course the possibility that Saddam Hussein had begun to develop weapons of mass destruction was the key issue sold to the public. The fact that Iran, North Korea, India, Israel and Pakistan had nuclear programs didn’t come up in the discussion. Of course, Iran and North Korea were singled out as being members of the axis of evil, but Pakistan, Israel and India were left off the list. Of course all three of these countries have extremist groups that would love to have nuclear weapons in order to make the world bend to their will.

Even after the infamous weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq, the administration continued to justify their action in Iraq by claiming that Saddam was not Democratically elected, just like General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan. Or, ten years ago Saddam had violated the human rights of his people, just like many of the current African leaders. In fact, just about every excuse that the administration used to defend and justify the war in Iraq could be applied to several other countries. In fact, most of these very claims could be applied to Iran, North Korea and Pakistan. But, for some reason Pakistan never made George W Bush’s list of the axis of evil powers that threaten our civilization.

So, why was Pakistan left off this list? Why was Barack Obama ridiculed for such an obviously rational thought that we should attack the perpetrators of 9/11/2001 where they live - Pakistan?

We have been assured and reassured that Pakistan might have extremist groups, but Pakistan was not a state sponsor of terrorism. This distinction was just about the only thread that could be drawn upon in order to distinguish Pakistan from any of the other countries in the axis of evil. But, today under the Freedom of Information act we now know that Pakistan was actually a state sponsor of terror. Why was is so difficult to get this information? Was this information held back for political reasons.

Personally I am against preemptive war in general. Even if Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction the invasion of a sovereign nation requires some international agreement that we certainly did not authentically have before we invaded Iraq. Therefore I am not making the case that we should attack Pakistan. Instead, I am simply pointing out the hypocrisy of taking action in Iraq when we were even more justified in following al Qaeda into Pakistan and finishing the war against al Qaeda. Pakistan should not be let off the hook in this global war on terror. With Pakistan we have a country we need to be aware of their motivations and actions. Just don’t single out one country and tell us how much more evil they are and then refuse to do anything about the rest of these countries that are just as evil.








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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


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