Good News You Won't Hear About

I think a lot of Republicans, Libertarians and other Americans, who may or not have fully supported the wisdom of Bush's invasion of Iraq and it's execution are repulsed by the simplistically brutal treatment he has received.

At the root of this attack is the rarely disputed claim that the war was a shallow, self interested grab for oil and power.

As a New Yorker, I personally knew several Iraqi refuges in the prewar period, two relatively closely (mostly we got together at a local coffee shop once a week) Iraq, wasn't a favorite subject but it was always in the back round since they all had relatives still there. The two I knew well, also had many missing relatives, who had disappeared under Saddam.

Look, let's be honest here. The United States cannot realistically protect the lives of people around the world. It can only act in ways that are consistent with it's own values interests and power. It's job is to protect it's own people.

Dropping the issue of whether it was wise to Invade Iraq, let's look at whether we had a right to do it. The clear answer is yes.

The founders and I think all rational people should see that nation's in and of themselves have no rights. They exist solely to protect the lives, liberty and property of their citizens. Attacking a peaceful country which respected it's citizen's rights would always be wrong. However, a nation or regime violating it's citizen's lives and liberty is of course open to attack-- most especially by it's own people.

Dropping the issue of whether it was wise to Invade Iraq, let's look at whether we had a right to do it. The clear answer is yes.

There are gray area's I suppose-- but even most of the extreme left concede that Saddam's murderous government was killing thousands of it's people.

Now then, the next question is whether it was our job or obligation to "take him out". Proposing it was our "obligation" means acting on the premise that our own individual rights are to be sacrificed to help others and that we really have no rights. So this leaves us with the two moral conditions for war--- the first is a regime, group or gang intent or actively violating individual rights and second, that this group poses a realistic threat to our national security or that of our allies.

On this score, Saddam fit the bill. Leaving aside, whether Saddam had weapon's of mass destruction, we have to go back to our core fear. Saddam, stood out because, unlike many other dangerous, unstable leaders, he had not only a desire for these weapons and a formally active pursuit of them but had actually used them-- on a country he attacked (OK Iran was pretty wacko too) and on his own people. The fear of country like this, in a position to hold the world's major oil supplies hostage and further use this power to attack us or other countries was pretty realistic.

This then leaves one with the third reasonable requirement for just war which is that we don't use force to replace one bad government, with another, if we can help it. On this score also, our motives and efforts in Iraq were generally moral.

I personally think a good case can be made that Bush and the "Neocon's were if anything far too motivated by an idealistic desire to create an oasis of liberal democracy in Iraq.

Anyway, all of the fruits of our efforts are not bitter. Iraq itself, may be making some progress and other changes are popping up in the region.

"And now, in 2009, another historical milestone has been reached. Last Sunday Kuwait held national elections. Kuwaiti voters elected 4 women to Parliament. According to Arab Times of Kuwait City, May 17:


Maasouma Al-Mubarak, Aseel Al-Awadhi (photo above) and Rola Dashti (photo right), besides independent Salwa Al-Jassar won seats in the new house. All are US-educated and hold doctorate degrees in political science, economics and education.

“Kuwaitis conveyed a strong and clear message of change when they elected four women to the Parliament,” MP-elect Al-Mubarak said.
But it wasn't just the election of the very first females to Parliament that represented a huge change. Kuwaiti voters firmly rejected Islamic extremism. The block of Islamist parties lost a 30% share."

Please pass along the good news. Since we know the media won't.