Saturday, January 31, 2004
A Moral duty
The White House press corps has begun, of late, to meekly inquire of President Bush if he has any comment in regard to his oft-repeated insistence -- in direct contradiction to intelligence -- that Iraq possessed vast quantities of "weapons of mass destruction" with which it could threaten US interests within 45 minutes of being ordered to do so. This insubordination is unavoidable due to the public admission by chief weapons inspector David Kay that the claims were a bunch of hooey, which most people knew anyway.
Mr. Bush's response, now that he has at last given up pretending that the weapons exist, has been a simple, "Who cares?"
Saddam was bad, he says. We should be glad he's gone. Why does it matter what the reasons were for doing it?
Here's why it matters:
Whatever can be said about the disturbed reasoning of the radical Islamic terrorists who hate and have attacked America, this much is certain: they should have had no quarrel with ordinary American citizens.
The great injustice of 9/11 was that the victims had done nothing to the terrorists, or to Islam, or to any Islamic nation. The notion that they were legitimate targets simply by virtue of being American is so deluded, so completely ignorant and inhuman that the sheer, stupid injustice of it nearly overwhelms the horror of the carnage itself.
Whatever offenses the terrorist may, in their minds, hold the United States culpable for, there surely was no one in the World Trade Towers or on any of the planes that had anything to do with them. It is not ordinary American citizens who operate exploitive multinational corporations, or buddy up to corrupt regimes at the expense of the poor, or arm their enemies -- or whatever. But on 9/11 it was ordinary Americans who suffered and died.
The American people had done nothing to deserve it. The victims of 9/11 were innocent souls.
But now we're at a very different moment. We're on the verge of losing our innocence. If we accept Mr. Bush's answer -- "who cares?" -- we the people will have taken responsibility upon ourselves.
Many Americans believed the President when he said Iraq had WMD and ties to the 9/11 terrorists. Believing him, many supported the war.
But now we all know the weapons did not exist. The ties to Al-Qaida did not exist. And that changes everything.
We have killed thousands of Iraqis. We were told they had weapons which were an imminent threat to us, and it was strongly suggested they were in league with those who had viciously and mercilessly attacked us. That gave us the moral authority to strike.
But they weren't an imminent threat, and they didn't have ties to 9/11. To say now that they could have been a threat someday, or that Iraq was "a dangerous place," or that we're all better Saddam is gone is not the same.
If the American people choose to look the other way at being misled into bombing and invading Iraq -- at the cost of hundreds of American and many thousands of Iraqi lives -- then we can no longer claim innocence. We are no longer bystanders.
In our society -- the world's oldest and most successful democracy -- it is not only our right, but our responsibility to hold to the highest standard of American principles those we elect to wield the sword in our name. It is the moral duty of every individual American to insist that our country always acts as the world's greatest force for good, for justice, and for truth. Because the end, quite simply, does not justify the means -- least of all when the means is the first preemptive war in our nation's history.
If we the people fail to do our duty then we the people must accept responsibility for the result. We will be innocent no more.
Mr. Bush's response, now that he has at last given up pretending that the weapons exist, has been a simple, "Who cares?"
Saddam was bad, he says. We should be glad he's gone. Why does it matter what the reasons were for doing it?
Here's why it matters:
Whatever can be said about the disturbed reasoning of the radical Islamic terrorists who hate and have attacked America, this much is certain: they should have had no quarrel with ordinary American citizens.
The great injustice of 9/11 was that the victims had done nothing to the terrorists, or to Islam, or to any Islamic nation. The notion that they were legitimate targets simply by virtue of being American is so deluded, so completely ignorant and inhuman that the sheer, stupid injustice of it nearly overwhelms the horror of the carnage itself.
Whatever offenses the terrorist may, in their minds, hold the United States culpable for, there surely was no one in the World Trade Towers or on any of the planes that had anything to do with them. It is not ordinary American citizens who operate exploitive multinational corporations, or buddy up to corrupt regimes at the expense of the poor, or arm their enemies -- or whatever. But on 9/11 it was ordinary Americans who suffered and died.
The American people had done nothing to deserve it. The victims of 9/11 were innocent souls.
But now we're at a very different moment. We're on the verge of losing our innocence. If we accept Mr. Bush's answer -- "who cares?" -- we the people will have taken responsibility upon ourselves.
Many Americans believed the President when he said Iraq had WMD and ties to the 9/11 terrorists. Believing him, many supported the war.
But now we all know the weapons did not exist. The ties to Al-Qaida did not exist. And that changes everything.
We have killed thousands of Iraqis. We were told they had weapons which were an imminent threat to us, and it was strongly suggested they were in league with those who had viciously and mercilessly attacked us. That gave us the moral authority to strike.
But they weren't an imminent threat, and they didn't have ties to 9/11. To say now that they could have been a threat someday, or that Iraq was "a dangerous place," or that we're all better Saddam is gone is not the same.
If the American people choose to look the other way at being misled into bombing and invading Iraq -- at the cost of hundreds of American and many thousands of Iraqi lives -- then we can no longer claim innocence. We are no longer bystanders.
In our society -- the world's oldest and most successful democracy -- it is not only our right, but our responsibility to hold to the highest standard of American principles those we elect to wield the sword in our name. It is the moral duty of every individual American to insist that our country always acts as the world's greatest force for good, for justice, and for truth. Because the end, quite simply, does not justify the means -- least of all when the means is the first preemptive war in our nation's history.
If we the people fail to do our duty then we the people must accept responsibility for the result. We will be innocent no more.
