Following What Flag?
by William Norman Grigg
There are two very troubling ways in which the U.S. military campaign against Iraq is unique.
First, "Operation Iraqi Freedom" is an undeclared war against a regime that has not attacked us, poses no credible military threat to us, occupies not a single millimeter of foreign territory, and rules over a country that itself has been occupied for more than a decade.
Second, this is -- to the best of our knowledge -- the first "war" in our nation's history in which American troops will not be fighting under the Stars and Stripes. According to the March 20th International Herald Tribune, U.S. troops poised at the Kuwait-Iraq border have been forbidden to display "regimental, state or even the American flag…. Officials say the flag could give the citizens of Iraq the wrong idea about the convoys of artillery, ammunition and soldiers. They are not, these officials say, an army of conquest, intent on claiming Iraqi land or treasure for the United States, but a liberation force. They are concerned that streams of American flags would be seen as provocative."
How "streams of American flags" would be more provocative than, say, attacking Iraq's capital city with a cluster of cruise missiles, the article did not explain. Nor did the article explain why displaying the Stars and Stripes would detract from the image of American troops as liberators: No concerns of that sort prevented our flag from flying over American troops who liberated Nazi-occupied France during World War II.
Many front-line soldiers were understandably upset by this order -- which, as professional soldiers, they dutifully carried out. Major General David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, insisted that removing our national symbol from forward-deployed units is "`the right thing to do' as a way of underscoring the American commitment to regime change for security and human rights, and not to seizing the country," commented the Herald Tribune.
Which is to say that displaying the U.S. flag is not appropriate because this is not an American military mission -- but one undertaken on behalf of the UN-led "international community."
This point is so obvious that Rush Limbaugh can see it, despite being shrouded in a haze of petty partisanship. "We are going with the total sanction of the United Nations, they just don't want to admit it," Limbaugh observed during a March 20th critique of an anti-war speech by Senator Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.).
In his March 18th letter to congressional leaders signaling that the attack would begin, President Bush stated that "reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A) adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq…."
Of course, the "threat" posed by Iraq, as defined by the Bush administration, is the regime's persistent defiance of UN Security Council resolutions. In other words, our national security supposedly depends on making sure that the UN's "words mean something," as President Bush has repeatedly stated.
Conservative defenders of the president's policy toward Iraq really need to make up their minds: Is the UN an entirely illegitimate, anti-American body? If so, it makes no sense at all to justify the administration's war on Iraq by invoking UN resolutions.
Those same conservatives should also ask themselves the following question. If President Bush can legitimately commit our nation to war against Iraq on his say-so, in what fundamental way is our political system different from that headed by "President" Saddam Hussein -- who can also commit his nation to war on his say-so?
It's true that we enjoy freedoms and prosperity denied to the long-suffering Iraqis. But as Abraham Lincoln pointed out, giving a single man the power to plunge a nation into war results in "the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions…."
Much is owed to the American fighting men presently on the front lines in the Persian Gulf. Deferring momentarily the question of the wisdom of the Bush administration's policy, our fighting men deserve to know that the American people are behind them. But in matters of war, only Congress -- not the president -- can speak on behalf of the American people. Congress cravenly avoided acting on that responsibility last October, choosing instead to enact an anodyne resolution of "support" for the president in any decision he would make to take our nation to war.
Our troops also deserve to fight under the Stars and Stripes. Yes, our troops have flown our flag to demoralize our enemies and to hearten our allies. But it is displayed primarily for the benefit of those who have shouldered the burden of fighting and winning our nation's wars.
Sending our men into battle without our nation's flag proves decisively that this is not our nation's war.
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