July 13, 2004
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Fahrenheit 9/11 is a biased but informative movie. Wading through the propaganda, I think the central point was: Bush started the War in Iraq more for self-interest than for morality and justice.
Self-interest:
- Raise popularity through igniting patriotism. (This worked for a while. I was as happy as anyone when they caught Saddam. We smoked out that wily bastard! Woohoo!)
- Extend the government’s power through the Patriot Act. (Ironically, the Republican party traditionally lobbies for a weaker U.S. government through smaller programs.)
- Increase personal wealth through oil connections (partly funded by the Saudis) and corporate connections (such as Halliburton).
Morality and justice:
- Extract revenge on terrorists. (But Osama Bin Laden has direct relatives in our ally Saudi Arabia and no connections in Iraq.)
- Remove an evil dictator to bring justice to an oppressed people. (But though Saddam and his sons perpetrated some sickening evil against individual members of Iraq, the general populace was not nearly as oppressed as, say, the regimes in North Korea or Serbia / Bosnia. If we were going to war on the basis of world justice alone, surely those other countries would be a higher priority.)
- Make the world safer by removing WMD’s (Weapons of Mass Destruction) from the hands of Saddam. (But current evidence shows there never were any WMD’s. For more info, see the NYTimes article posted by Choemomma.)
From being on the receiving end, I’m sensitive to unjust criticism that’s often leveled at leadership. So I don’t assign much value to the emotional appeals made by the movie against the Bush administration. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, meaning that even with a good course of action things will go wrong. Had we gone into the war for justice alone, we would still have casualties and crying mothers. But the evidence points to egg on our face rather than in the pan. Sorry, world.
- Raise popularity through igniting patriotism. (This worked for a while. I was as happy as anyone when they caught Saddam. We smoked out that wily bastard! Woohoo!)
Comments (6)
one problem with going into n korea is that there is no basis to really do so. in iraq, they were pretty unco-operative with the oversight and were playing some stupid games. saddam did violate the agreement with the UN, even if the UN refused to do anything about it.
I agree about Fahrenheit 9/11 being an informative and biased movie. But about the war, I still don’t understand why on earth we went to Iraq instead of Afganistan. I may be just uninformed and ignorant, but it makes no sense to me. As for the egg analogy, yes, we’d still have crying mothers no matter what the reasons were for the war, but it still sucks all the same.
Side note and random change of subject: I like your site. I’ve been reading it for about a week thinking of a comment that wouldn’t be too dumb or irrelevant. By the way, I tend to ramble, so sorry.
THANK YOU!!!
My impression of the Bush/Cheny Administration is that they are arrogant, self-enriching and sneaky. The movie just added to these sentiments.
speaking of going into afghanistan, it’s also worth noting that the way in which we went into afghanistan was quite flawed and that there is much we could have done to go after bin laden immediately after 9-11. read Richard Clarke’s “Against All Enemies”; he worked in national security and counterterrorism in several presidential administrations, so i think he’s a relatively qualified source.
i hope all of you who are fed up and angry with the Bush Adminstration express your sentiments on election day!
regarding WMDs and that NyTimes article, go check out the actual site of the Senate Committee and read the actual summary,(the full report is 500+, the summary only 30 pgs)
i’m not sure what to think right now.. it looks like the CIA goofed big time, but what does that mean about Bush? yes, it does look like there were no WMDs, but AT THE TIME, the CIA was telling the government that it believed there were.. if the “intelligence community” gives the leaders wrong data, who’s at fault?
i haven’t decided yet.