And so here’s what terrifies me:
I guess it didn’t really strike me as much at the time: Bush’s administration finally announced what many of us had known for quite some time: there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
This seems insignificant– but its implications are quite startling. In admitting that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Bush administration is admitting that there is no justification for the war in Iraq. Again, for many of us, this comes as no surprise. But what of the rest of the country? Of the general populace who meekly accepted that perhaps there was some rational for the war? Where’s the backlash? Where’s the anger that they were deceived? –That tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed, and hundreds of Americans for absolutely no reason. Where’s the care that we’re at war? Where?
Don’t forget that many people will blindly follow the president simply because he is president.
I’m trying to forget that. I’m trying to think that most people would be more influenced by the thought of the senseless destruction tens of thousands of innocent lives…
Well, I typically lean hard left, but the devil’s advocate in me had to speak.
Sure, the president lied to us and *continued* to lie to us for a long, long time. But take into consideration the fact that democracy is now being born in Iraq. Granted, it’s not going well yet, and it may not go well for quite a while. But these people no longer have to worry about being tortured or killed for simply speaking their minds or celebrating a particular religious holiday. The fact that elections even occurred in Iraq and _people showed up_ indicates that there are people there who want democracy to work. These people could have been killed for trying to vote… and they still did it. So they must want democracy.
Yes, Bush is an idiot and it’s tragic that he was elected. (Note absence of prefix “re”.) Yes, starting the war was unreasonably foolish and unjustified. Yes, thousands of lives have been lost and hundreds of thousands of other lives have experienced some hardship/tragedy/etc.
But wouldn’t it be foolish to say that nothing good came of this?