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The Liberation Rationale

A common trick of the demagogue is to rearrange a timeline to fit one's rhetorical thesis. Liberal critics have now invented a brand-new trick: create a time line where there was none before. As in, "liberating Iraq was only a rationale that came about after we were already stuck in Iraq."

No, clearly, not.

I ask you Republicans and conservatives readers here to question yourself: was replacing tyranny with liberation and democracy one of the chief rationales for the Iraq war, or not? Before the invasion of Iraq, when Bush spoke of the chance at liberating Iraq, did that possibility thrill you or make you blanch?

Now what my Democrat readers here need to understand if they do not understand it already, is that a lot of Republicans really believe this liberation stuff. It is not a post-hoc justification. A great many of us we were liberationists in the Cold War. There is nothing 'neo' about this article of conservative faith, it is the Reagan foreign policy heritage. The liberation rationale for war in Iraq was in place before the war was even contemplated. And, the administration quite avowedly said that liberation was one of the reasons for war--so you cannot place it further out on the timeline. The fact that liberal demagogues feel the need to place it further out on the timeline is quite a telling trick to play - obviously democracy in Iraq interferes with the naysayers' rhetoric that nothing good has, or will, come from the conflict. Saying that liberation was an afterthought tries to imply that came merely by accident rather than something that was counted on from the beginning.

Truth is, deep in their hearts, the Democrats believe all this liberation stuff also. It was a Democrat who sent troops to the beaches of Normandy. It was a Democrat who sent troops to the beaches of Inchon. Warhawk Kennedy shored up South Vietnam to keep it free from communist tyranny. Johnson followed through by sending armies to Vietnam. Jimmy Carter made human rights the very centerpiece of his administration. Bill Clinton chided George Bush, Sr. for being too friendly with wholesale human rights abuser China.

Bill Clinton also waged a war in order to save lives in Kosovo. He also made profuse apologies for doing nothing about genocide in Rwanda.

These liberation and human rights rationales are your heritage too, Democrats. Do not think for an instant that they did not have considerable influence on George W. Bush when he made the decision to go to Iraq. I am not trying to trap Democrats into complicity with the Iraq War--I am telling them that they should be proud their influence is taken so seriously, not just here but around the world.

Democrats cheered Bill Clinton for liberating Kosovo and ending the ethnic cleansing there. So why the double standard now?

The mindset seems to be that Bush does not deserve credit for anything about this war, nor does he even deserve to win, because the real reason we went to war was [put alternate theory here]. Thus, the war is 'tainted'. We had false, impure motives for going to war in Iraq, Bush LIED about it, and Bush must be punished for this. Then others will see what happened to Bush, and never again will anything but pure altruism taint our rationales for war.

Let us assume Bush lied. More than that, let us assume that every accusation made by Democrats against Republicans in the Iraq War is true. Bush did cook up intelligence to start a war with Iraq. Bush wanted a war in Iraq for his oil buddies. Cheney thought of Halliburton first, and the troops later. Rumsfeld is incompetent, but enjoys cruelty toward detainees, Gonzalez is writing briefs on how to strip Americans of all their rights.

Fact is, this bunch of lying, greedy oil-soaked fascists achieved marvelous things. In spite of themselves, they defeated a genocidal tyrant and replaced it with a democracy. They did it in Afghanistan too. They brought the vote to 50 million men and women. Democracy spilled over into Lebanon. Democracy is no longer a dirty word in the muslim world. Libya surrendered its WMD program ( I guess you could say the liberation of Iraq really did eliminate WMDs after all). What is the lesson to be drawn here? That bad guys sometimes achieve things that would have earned Jimmy Carter an entire mantlepiece of Nobel Prizes?

I just can't help but think that 50 years from now, Iraq will be seen as the avant-garde victory for democracy that made the liberation of the entire region possible. If the Democrats want to take some of the credit, I won't begrudge them that.

I am Ken McCracken, and you're not. I can normally be found just making stuff up at Am I A Pundit Now?

Posted by · 16 July 2005 06:32 PM

Comments

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at July 16, 2005 07:56 PM

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at July 16, 2005 08:41 PM

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at July 16, 2005 08:44 PM

Posted by: Am I A Pundit Now? at July 17, 2005 12:47 AM

Posted by: Huan at July 17, 2005 08:50 AM

Posted by: Cindy T. at July 17, 2005 09:22 AM

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at July 18, 2005 08:37 AM

Posted by: Adam at July 18, 2005 10:22 PM