Ammon Brown

Hello, All! I had an interesting discussion about the war last night. While watching the Oscars, we watched Michael Moore go on a rant, which I of course saw coming. But I was asked my opinion on this war by a friend, and I thought about it for a minute. I guess I have been pro war for about a year or so, simply because it is the only path that will get us out of the mess that Dubya got us into with his axis of evil tirade. All of his self righteous zeal gained us the ire of the rest of the world, and if we back down we lose every shred of credibility we ever had in the Arab world. This is not to say that I think it is the right thing to do. If Dubya had asked me before he set his sights on Iraq, I’d have advised him to let it go, Saddam learned his lesson despite his bombastic macho bluster. But when Bush started his own macho bluster, we had to back it up. The alternative would be to allow Saddam to claim victory, as he did in 1991. I am somewhat ambivalent about Bush getting macho in the first place. I do think we need to make an example of someone in the Arab world who has a real army (i.e. not Afghanistan) in order to send a message that we are not to be messed with. However, I don’t think that a Texas Oilman who’s father was in a fight with the same country and is spewing as much good versus evil rhetoric as most islamic extremists is the man to be doing this. Sure we should be in this war. But only to cover for the diplomatic, rhetorical, and idealogical blunders of our President. If he had begun building up troops AFTER the diplomatic effort failed, if he had not completely dismissed all of the reports by the weapons inspectors, and if he had not singled out Iraq as a threat in the first place, we would not need to be at war now. However, Saddam is a threat to his neighbors and some of his people. He has demonstrated this before. But rushing to war to catch the nice springtime weather is not the way to deal with him. I would prefer to pursue a diplomatic resolution under a different president and, failing that, to heavily finance the Kurds and other groups to fight a proxy war. That way we are standing up for our democratic ideals without being viewed as aggressive invaders. But since we are already in this thing, and have been since Bush first publicly denounced Saddam, I support this war as the necessary course of action, necessitated by misguided rhetoric and machismo.

And by the way, I found a few places to go for news beyond what you get from CNN and their ilk. For a bias the other way, check out Jihad UnSpun or Yellow Times. I don’t always agree with them, but we all benefit from a different perspective. Stay tuned for my media rant tomorrow. How exciting!