My fellow countrymen and women, we are not overseas for our country alone but also another. We are here to spread democracy and freedom to those who KNOW the true taste of it because they fight for it everyday. You can see the desire in their eyes and I am honored to fight alongside them as an Infantryman in the 101st Airborne.
I was one of the ones who thought the war should go ahead in 2003. I also predicted that the allied troops would be welcomed as liberators. And so it was - the scene that stands out in my mind is the one where the American tank is pulling down the Saddam statue, and the crew of the tank have allowed the Iraqi children to climb aboard the tank as they did it!
But people are forgetting WHY we went to war. It had nothing to do with "spreading democracy", and certainly not America's or Britain's version of democracy. If that was the reason, why was the decision to invade Iraq taken on 12th September, 2001 and not some earlier date? Why did GWB's father halt the first war when he did?
No, the reason for going to war was
not to spread democracy, though that might have been a useful by-product of the process. We went to war because, in the stated views of our security services, Saddam and his WMD posed a threat to the west. It was believed he had WMD and that these ultimately would be used against western interests or be sold to other parties who had an axe to grind with western interests.
Now I know some of you are going to groan and say "oh puhleeze, not that again" - indeed, more than one poster on this board has dismissed the issue as the "WMD thingy". It was more than a "thingy". That "thingy" was
the whole case for going to war in the first place.
The word "freedom" crops up in GS's quoted text NINE times - is this what the servicemen are being told is the reason for their going to Iraq? To make it so that Iraqis would be able to have flush toilets just like those of us in America, Britain, Ireland? Do they believe that after they've gone, their efforts will be rewarded by Iraqis being able to put shoes on their children's feet? If so, they've been duped. No wonder they're so despondent.
Spreading "freedom" may sound like a laudable cause, but two things: 1) That was NOT the declared purpose of the war; 2) The "freedoms" we might appreciate in the west will not necessarily accord with the people of an entirely different culture, and it's madness to think that the peoples of Arab countries will have the same system of values as countries like the USA.
