Foresight and Hindsight
By
Jeanie Warner
Prior
to the Attack on Iraq, there were millions of American citizens
who opposed the attack. One group of citizens, which included myself,
protested in Visalia every Sunday for months, then held prayer vigils
for the soldiers after the attack had begun. The reasons for our
protests were:
1. Based on
international law, a pre-emptive strike against a weak, mostly disarmed
country would not only be morally wrong, but illegal.
2. A military
strike against Iraq would divert American resources and military
strength from the search for the terrorists of 9/11. It would undermine
cooperative international efforts to reduce acts of world terrorism.
3. An American
military conquest of Iraq would lead to the disintegration of that
country and lead to a lengthy and costly occupation of Iraq.
4. An attack
on Iraq would so disturb the dynamics in Iraq and the Middle East
that it would cause more, not less, terrorism.
Many of those
reasons have been borne out to be true when no large amounts of
weapons or chemicals were found. Judging by what we have found there,
it would be fair to say that Iraq was in no position to properly
defend itself much less be a threat to us. Our own weapons inspectors
assurred the government that the weapons had been destroyed, but
that is not what they wanted to hear.
Now Iraqs
government and infrastructure are in chaos. Terrorist strikes, kidnappings
and insurgency attacks are a daily concern, killing Iranian citizens
and our troops.
Our relationships
with our historical allies and the Middle Eastern countries that
we need to be able to effectively fight terrorism are strained more
than they have ever been. Contrary to what the Bush administration
says, we are not safer today. Terrorism in the world has increased
this year.
So far, Congress
appropriated approximately $150 billion for the war in Iraq, but
will be higher as the Bush Administration requests further spending
later this year. Over 1000 of our soldiers have died. The wounded
are estimated to be 7,000 to 10,000 treated for illness, non-combat
injury and combat injury since March of 2002.
In hindsight,
covering its own backside, the Bush administration has changed
its stated reasons for the war, from Iraq is an imminent
threat to the USA to The Iraqis are better off without
Saddam Hussein? We have had a couple of investigating committees
who unanimously decided that the intelligence was in error or skewed.
The Bush administration "cherry-picked" intelligence data
and relied on notoriously unreliable informants like Chalabi it
to get the result they wanted: an excuse for war.
The question
I have of the Bush administration and those legislators who voted
to give him the authority to wage that misbegotten war, is If
the protestors could so accurately foresee the outcome of the attack,
why couldnt they?
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