This article in The Onion was printed January 2001. This was pre-9/11, and yet strangely prophetic. And funny in that “doesn’t it suck to be right” kind of way.
My opinion? Terrorism sucks, but it’s not clear this has anything to do with Saddam or Iraq. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: the misdirection and sleight-of-hand that Bush has used to associate Iraq with terrorism is impressive. Not because it shows how clever he (or his aides) actually are, but more because it shows that a large number of Americans are cattle.
Still, it didn’t completely work, there is a large chunk of population that doesn’t agree with his policy, and still more who believe that we (the US) do ourselves a disservice by going against the will of much of Europe.
My questions: How do we know inspections are not working? The inspectors say they are working. Do we think Saddam will be more of a danger to us (or our interests, whatever those are :) 30 days from now, while inspectors continue to work with a highly-motivated Bhagdad, or less of a danger? 150+ weapons inspectors could get a lot done in 30 days, but we’ve gone and forced the issue so now they are leaving.
Why did Bush say “We will force the issue to a vote” and then decide not to do so, when it was clear that France and several others were against him? Is it at all notable that more UN security council members said they would be against such a resolution than those who favored it? So when it is clear that another vote would not go quite our way, at least not at this point in time, how sporting is it to suddenly decide “Well we don’t really need that second resolution, because international consensus is overrated anyway?”
And where is the North Korea issue in all of this? Bush’s double standard is showing. We should not be afraid of a country that is 1. closer to the us, 2. has an actual nuclear program (and not just aluminum tubes that turned out to be unsuitable for enriching uranium) and 3. might actually have an inter-continental missile or two? OK, I can think of two BIG reasons why we are going to war with Iraq and pretty much ignoring North Korea. 1. Americans empathize with Asian people more than with Arabs, and 2. North Korea has no oil.
OK enough rambling. Let me just say that the next time we have elections here in the US we should take Chile up on the offer of sending election monitors.