Opposition to Iraq war shows selfishness of American citizens

Christopher Binetti Guest Writer

In a recent Democratic Party primary debate, Congressman Dennis Kucinich stated that the common claim that President Bush deceived the American public was not true. When the debate on the Iraq invasion began to intensify in the fall of 2002, the President did not postulate a good enough reason to go to war. The weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein once had were biological and chemical, not nuclear, and it was never certain that he was going to acquire nuclear weapons anytime soon. In addition, the Al-Qaeda-Hussein connection was weak at best. Most importantly, neither of these reasons were the real reason that we should have gone to war. We should have gone to war to stop the suffering of the Iraqi people and make up for abandoning the Shiites and the Kurds after the First Persian-Gulf War. The protection of Israel from one of its enemies, wholeheartedly supported by politicians such as Senator Joseph Lieberman, was also a bonus objective for the Iraq invasion.

However, the American people did not want to involve themselves in an overseas conflict unless national interests were threatened. Such selfish isolationism by Americans, based on a shoddy rationale when Bush wanted to make a moral case for war, is deplorable. Therefore, Bush did not try to sell a humanitarian war. Just think of all the trouble the Republicans gave President Clinton when he proposed helping Muslims peoples in Europe in Bosnia and Kosovo in 1995 and 1999, respectively. Because Bush capitulated into not giving the good reason to go to war, I refused to support him.

Now, this was relatively soon after Sept. 11, so the patriotic hysteria that followed that tragic day was still very much present. The nation was carried into the war by a popular frenzy, not by guile or any misdeeds by Bush. Any intelligent person who was not blinded by panic or a fear of the majority would have been able to see through Bush’s arguments for war. The nation was not lied to or even mislead, it willingly blundered into a war with no exit strategy. When the country was sobered by the realities of war, it turned around and blamed Bush for no other reason than that it did not want to blame the sole perpetrators of the blunder: The nation itself.

Even though we might be against the motive for a war, we must support our soldiers, as that is what patriotic citizens do during war. Take the example of Hillary Clinton, who, although she has frequently criticized the conduct of the war, has been reluctant to criticize our troops because of her patriotism.

As the casualties of the Iraq war mounted past the double digits, a fickle, selfish U.S. citizenry realized that it had duped itself into a war that could only help foreigners and general world security, not direct American national interests. The anti-war movement therefore gained many converts after the first year of the Second Persian Gulf War, simply because a humanitarian war has no support in this country. Congresspersons and senators, so that they could win political victories, began grumbling that the President had misled them when he had not. More recently, as popular discontent with a social interventionist, humanitarian war intensified, politicians have become more militantly anti-war, and in so doing have turned against the military that they sent into harm’s way. For example, Senator John Kerry and former U.S. senator John Edwards, voted for the war and did not oppose it even when they were Democratic Party presidential nominees in 2004, became entirely opposed to it as soon as popular opinion turned against the war.

The Iraq war is no longer popular, so craven politicians in Washington of all political varieties have joined the winning side of the debate, just as they did when the war was accepted. We should support a continued commitment in Iraq to stabilize a situation that Americans allowed to spiral out of control while blithely ignoring reality. If you are going to vote for a war, support it all the way or do not start it at all. We still have a mission to complete in Iraq and we should allow our brave men and women to do it. If present political conditions persist, funding for the war will probably be cut and our military will have to choose between fighting an under-funded war in Iraq or falling back in disgrace, abandoning Iraq to utter chaos, because their ungrateful cowardly nation abandoned them.

Do not call me “pro-war,” because I am not. I can say that with a straight face, because I opposed the war, but always supported our troops.