Posted on 03/27/2005 5:00:37 PM PST by CHARLITE
Veterans for Peace, the banners proclaimed as a minister said on a TV newscast, “After two years in Iraq, what have we gained … only the deaths of US soldiers and Iraqi civilians.”
Most of us who are WWII veterans are all for peace. We don’t know anyone who prefers war over peace; however, we do know that it takes a war to obtain peace rather than to allow slavery or attacks by terrorists. We want a continued peace, not a temporary peace that will be regarded as a cowardly surrender by our terrorist enemies, thus causing more attacks on American soil.
Have these so-called war protestors forgotten the 3,000 innocent American civilians who were murdered on 9/11 or the other Americans who were wounded or killed earlier by the previous attack on the World Trade building or the suicide bombing of our Navy Destroyer, the US Cole docked in Yemen?
Have these Anti-America protestors also forgotten the thousands of Iraqi and Afghanistani civilians who with ink-stained fingers fought possible death to vote in a free election? Some of these protestors in the USA probably have never bothered to vote or have stayed home just because it rained.
“The wrong war at the wrong time,” they shouted as they held up the lying posters claiming “Bush Lied.”
If we had not gone into Iraq, Saddam Hussein would still be manufacturing the same type of poison gas WMDs that he used to kill the civilians in Northern Iraq, still be providing financial aid to the families of Palestine homicide bombers, still be financing the al-Qaeda terrorists, still be bribing the UN officials in the Oil for Food program and still be maintaining the rape and torture cells for Iraqi men and women who did not obey his dictates.
There were many reasons to go into Iraq, of which only one was WMD buildup. Bush did not lie. The New York Times has even admitted this by now. He simply followed intelligence that was repeated over and over again by the UN, Britain and European nations. In addition, WMD had already been used against the Kurds. Had Bush ignored this, he could have been impeached for negligence of duty if one more attack had taken place.
But the main reason to go into Iraq was the need to establish a base in the Middle East for a listening post and to plant the seeds of the most contagious element known to man—freedom. As we have seen, it is already broadcasting its seeds in Libya, Lebenon, and Egypt. The Arabs of the Middle East were not blind to the free elections in Afghanistan and Iraq. And they thirst for freedom of their own.
It is freedom and democracy that gives us peace. History has proven that only dictators and corrupt despots cause wars; no war has ever been created by a democracy. These types of protestors only prolong wars and the terror that kills innocents. Signs of weakness breed terrorism; only our continued strength will stop it.
About the Writer: Lee Ellis is a retired journalist and a former vice president of both CBS and Gannet. He resides in Indio, California, where he write op-eds that appear in several local newspapers. Lee receives e-mail at indiolee@dc.rr.com.
Good article.Thanks for the post.
Of all the human rights ever invented LIBERTY is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.
I would like to point out one abberration...the clintonista Balkan wars: Bosnia-Herzgovenia and Kosovo. I think most rational people would agree with me that clinton WAS a corrupt despot head of a democratic state who with the main stream media successfully conned the nation into allowing him to launch his cowardly war of islamic expansion in eastern europe.
By allowing the election of this insufferable swine as US president, America (a democratic nation) initiated a war that brought suffering, ruin and death to millions of innocent east europeans.
G'night bump.
“The wrong war at the wrong time,”
Same statement used by the Socialist candidate(JF'n). How original.
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