| http://toogoodreports.com/column/general/shelton/081701.htm
The Bombing Of Iraq: Part Of Our New Manifest Destiny By Lee R. Shelton IV [Friday, August 17, 2001; 12:01 a.m. EST] This week, the United States launched more sorties against Iraqi military installations. We can all rest easier knowing that Saddam Hussein's plans to invade the U.S. have been thwarted yet again. In 1991, President George Bush[41] ordered the very first bombing run in our ongoing "war" with Iraq. The president´s approval rating easily cleared the 90 percent mark as Americans rallied together in support of our men and women in uniform. Patriotism was at an all-time high, Lee Greenwood´s G-d Bless the U.S.A. became the new national anthem, and we all learned the meaning of cool military words like sortie. I must admit that I was once among the 90-plus percent of Americans who supported President Bush in his little desert safari. Our vital national interests were at stake. Rush Limbaugh said so. He told us that the Gulf War was necessary to ensure "the free-flow of oil at market prices." It sounded like a good enough reason to me. After all, oil is not only the life-blood of the United States, it is the life-blood of the entire civilized world. The government, knowing they could not simply come out and say that the main objective of Operation Desert Storm was to protect our oil supply, tried to convince the American public that Saddam Hussein was the Adolph Hitler of the Arab world. If we had allowed him to get away with bullying the rich oil moguls of Kuwait, he could very well have gone on to swallow up the entire Arabian Peninsula. Needless to say, with virtually every nation in the free world (even France) against him, Saddam Hussein was thoroughly thrashed in the Gulf War. We could have bragged about how we bombed him back into the Stone Age if it weren´t for the fact that Iraq was already in the Stone Age. That was over a decade ago. Today, our air strikes against this third-world Arab nation continue. Why? Well, that´s a good question. One has reason to wonder if our air strikes are nothing more than mere target practice. Is Iraq to our fighters and bombers what the island of Vieques is, or was, to our ships? We are told by our elected officials in Washington that Saddam Hussein is still a great threat to our national security. Really? Did I happen to miss the news reports of Iraqi fighters infiltrating U.S. airspace? Was there a threat of an Iraqi naval blockade just off the eastern seaboard? We are told that we must prevent Hussein from building up his air defenses. Has anyone stopped to think that the reason he is trying to build up an air defense network is because of all the enemy planes constantly flying overhead? We are told that if we turn our backs Iraq will proceed to develop "weapons of mass destruction," and we cannot allow that. If that were to happen, the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel would no longer be the only nations with that capability. In this post-Cold War era, eight´s company, nine´s a crowd. The "conservatives" who supported the bombing of Iraq under George Bush in 1991, and now the continuing raids under George W. Bush [43] in 2001, believe that we are doing everything we can to protect our national interests. And they may be correct, as long as they continue to alter the meaning of the term "national interests." Clamping down on Iraq is only a small part of our new Manifest Destiny. U.S. foreign policy has been effectively redefined so that everything from the AIDS epidemic in Africa to the erosion of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia is considered to be a vital national interest. Forget about minor problems like illegal immigration. We need to focus our resources on protecting our global borders. We are the most powerful nation in the world and if we don't police it, who will? No matter what reason we may use to justify our bombing, the simple fact remains that our incessant attacks on Iraq are, like the initial conflict in 1991, immoral and unconstitutional. No ultimate objective has been stated for these continuous bombings. No exit strategy has been offered. More importantly, no war has ever been declared by Congress. The lives of our soldiers as well as the lives of those they bomb have been placed solely in the hands of the president. The framers of our Constitution deliberately set out to prevent that kind of concentration of power. They realized that war takes a toll on the American people. Since it involves the expenditure of public funds as well the loss of American lives, they believed that the people's representatives in Congress were the most qualified to handle such decisions. Of course many "conservatives" disagree. They would point to the gridlock over issues like taxes and health care and argue that if we had to wait for Congress to commit U.S. troops abroad, they would seldom, if ever, be deployed. But that is exactly the point. It should never be easy to wage war. It should be one of the most difficult decisions for a government to make. Have we learned nothing from Korea? Vietnam? Somalia? The Clinton administration? Lord Acton once said, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." We may see swift military action by removing constitutional restraints, but all we have really done is place the power of life and death in the hands of just one man. And that, along with the election of men like Bill Clinton to the presidency, shows our complete ignorance of human nature. |
