I don’t know about you, but my mother always taught me that when I grow up and invade a country and knock their government out of power, I ought to be sure to stick around long enough to put a better government back in its place. Pulling our troops out of Iraq without this happening is, at the very least, very bad manners.
The vast majority of the 27 million people living in Iraq are probably not much different than us: good, decent, hardworking, family loving folks. They kiss their children goodnight; they feed their pets; they clean their homes and do laundry. It’s not their fault they’re politically unstable right now. It’s our fault. It would be devastatingly irresponsible of us to go in there, take out their government and abandon them.
There is no way for anyone to know what lies down the road not taken. There is no way of knowing what would have happened had we not invaded Iraq. Would nothing have happened? Would Saddam Hussein have turned into the world’s biggest nightmare: Adolf Hitler? This we cannot know, but I guarantee that, hindsight being 20/20, no moral American in their right mind wouldn’t opt to travel back in time to 1889 to smother Hitler in his crib.
Fifty years down the line, as strange as it may sound now, Iraq could be one of our strongest allies, just as Europe is today.
Some Americans may not feel responsible for the war in Iraq. They may feel that it is another man’s war, a man, perhaps, they did not vote for. But even though they may feel this man is someone else’s president, the truth remains that WE invaded Iraq. WE took out their government. WE are responsible for putting it back together. Just because you’re a Bush-hating American, it doesn’t release you from the responsibility of the actions of our government.
The fact is we are there. We did this. No matter how much I, or you, or anyone dislikes it, we are there. We removed a government from power. We destabilized a country. We are the caretakers of 27 million Iraqi people.
The good news is that we have an opportunity to bring liberty, democracy and freedom to people who could desperately use it: people who may have forgotten what they’re like, or worse, who have never known them at all. We could bring to them lives free from tyranny and oppression, replacing these with justice and equality. We could teach them religious freedom, better economics, votes that count.
We could stabilize Iraq.
