COLUMN: Criticize the war, get pre-emptively punched
The other day, while watching a basketball game, somebody received a technical foul for throwing a punch. My friend was disgusted. How could the ref make such a bogus call? My friend’s argument was simple, if he didn’t throw the punch just then, surely he would have been punched first. He might have been injured. He had to protect himself.
“It was a preemptive punch,” he said.
OK, so that didn’t really happen. My friend didn’t really say that, and well frankly, I don’t have a lot of friends. But I thought about it at the time – a pre-emptive punch. It probably wouldn’t fly in most leagues. Just ask Ron Artest.
Just over two years ago, we entered into the Iraqi conflict with a preemptive punch of sorts. Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was directly linked to Osama bin Laden and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He was a threat, and so to protect ourselves, we attacked first.
Oh wait, that wasn’t true either, except the “us attacking” part.
It turns out he wasn’t really a threat. There was no link between Saddam and Sept. 11. And he didn’t really have weapons of mass destruction either. Oops.
But rather than admitting a mistake, we simply changed our cause. Now we’re spreading democracy, which apparently was the case all along. Sometimes I get so confused. It’s just a bit Orwellian to me.
All the same, this Tuesday marked the two-year anniversary of the end of Saddam Hussein’s regime, an event which President Bush has compared to the tumbling of the Berlin Wall. Don’t flatter yourself, Mr. President. There’s still a long way left to go.
Only days after the uprooting of Hussein’s regime on May 1, 2003, President Bush declared the “end of major combat operations” in Iraq on an aircraft carrier displaying a large banner with the words “Mission Accomplished.”
Well, nearly two years later, we’re still working to accomplish that mission. Perhaps the banner was also a bit premature.
A culture that thinks it “better to err on the side of life” seems to accept war and its inevitable loss of life rather easily. Or is there a double standard? More than 1,500 American troops have died so far. Of course we don’t often count the Iraqi civilians killed as well, that number being somewhere around 15,000.
For those concerned about the monetary costs of the prolonged war, I would remind you that the estimated $80-100 billion that we’ve spent on the war is still less than the projected $500 billion cost over the next decade for a new Medicare plan coverage which will now include “erectile dysfunction drugs” for senior citizens. If we really want to worry about balancing the budget, let’s first stop supplying free Viagra to grandpa. All the same, $80 billion is a pretty good-sized chunk of change.
Between the lost lives and that, the war has been very costly. And for what? It is easy to criticize the war in Iraq because you can’t see the results just yet. Sure, they had an election, but that hardly guarantees a democracy. Insurgencies still abound and well, lots of people out there don’t really like us imposing our form of government on them. So many of us jump on the bandwagon and criticize the president.
But what if the president is right?
What if spreading democracy to the world really could work? Would it be worth the cost? To be honest, I hope he’s right. I hope the call for freedom catches, and people push for their own liberty. It sounds a bit foolhardy at first, but it just might work.
I guess in the meantime we’ll just wait. Skeptics like me certainly aren’t helping the cause. For those like me, not so gung-ho about the war just yet, remember, it’s OK to be reserved, but just don’t go around flaunting it. You just might get labeled unpatriotic, disloyal or at worst, pre-emptively punched.
Jon Cox is a junior majoring in print journalism. Comments can be sent to jcox@cc.usu.edu.