My view on Iraq

I've been looking over the stuff that's been happening recently. I've been so annoyed about it, that I suddenly feel the need to rant. This is, of course, my opinion. You're free to have your own, as long as you respect mine. This is a rant, and a rather strong one. By reading it, you waive your right to yell at me about my invective.

It is quite clear to me that the Bush administration is determined to make war on Iraq. No matter what the inspectors find (or don't), no matter how many nations oppose it, no matter how many innocent Iraqi civilians it might kill, the Bush administration wants to drop the bombs.

Of course, the accusation that Iraq might have WMDs -- and the subsequent demand to prove that it doesn't -- is perfect; you can't prove a negative, so Bush has a clear-cut excuse for war. You have documents? Those are forged. Photographs? Those are faked. We've been to your most restricted areas and found nothing, except for a few empty warheads that could have been a bureaucratic screwup? Well, you moved those things out when you heard we were coming. We've interviewed your scientists in private and they denied our claims? Well, you've obviously threatened them with death or something else horrible and we know we're right, cause we plagiarized -- er, took it out of -- a grad student's report from 1997. You know, we're getting fed up with all these lies! Our proof is irrefutable! WE'RE GONNA BOMB YOU AND YOUR PISS-ANT PEASANTS BACK TO THE STONE AGE!!!

So we'll bomb Iraq, civilians and all. Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll get Saddam Hussein. But, in the process, we'll have bombed more civilians than Saddam Hussein ever gassed in his life. Oh well, it's not like we weren't killing them by the thousands anyway. According to a UNICEF report, the economic sanctions against Iraq have killed an estimated 500,000 men, women, and children. Think about that when Bush says the Iraqi people wants us to invade. Do they really?

But let's say we kill Hussein. What then? Will we let the Iraqis democratically elect their own leader, and let them rebuild their economy? Hell no! Oh sure, we'll let them elect their own leaders...in a few years, after we "get them started" by installing our own puppet president that will help them make the change. We'll also "help" them in rebuilding their economy...our way. This would mean a short trip to the bank...the World Bank, that is, where we will privatize Iraq's basic services, "increase labor flexibility" (ie. slash wages and bust labor unions), and cut taxes (and thus government services). It looks like a sweet deal...to foreign investors and banks, who love places where they can make obscene profits by exploiting the locals. Unfortunately, this kind of system leads to economic collapse sooner or later as profits from local resources leave the country and the buying power of Iraqis drops. Add that with a reduction of government social programs, which allow for tax cuts for the rich, and you have the citizens of a nation who are flat broke because the rich have screwed them over. Take a look at Argentina if you want to see the results of globalization.

And another thing....it's been about 12 years since the Gulf War, and not a peep from Saddam Hussein. And now all of a sudden he's about to deploy WMDs against us? What prompted this new initiative? al-Qaeda, right? That troubles me. Why would Osama bin Laden, arguably one of the most violent fundamentalist Muslims in the world, want to ally himself with a secular dictator? Wouldn't logic dictate -- even the flawed logic of the "all Muslims hate us" crowd -- that Saddam would be an enemy of Osama? What makes Saddam so special that Osama is willing to overlook his secular ideology?

You can imagine, thus, my inability to swallow the complex web of lies that the Bush administration has spun to convince the public of the need to go to war and grab Iraq's 11% of the world's oil before the French or the Russians get it....which isn't very likely, since they can't get the oil without the sanctions being lifted, and with the US having veto power over the Security Council, that isn't going to happen unless the US has Iraq in their pocket. So...where do we go from here? Right now, I'm going to walk out of class when the US invades Iraq. I advise all of you who feel that the war is wrong to do something on that day that shows that you feel the war is wrong. Some of us would want to do more. That's great, as long as the Man can't get his slimy Orwellian claws on you.

Let's hope, however foolish this hope might be, that this all ends in peace.