I thought it might be interesting to compile some quotes on what the Left was saying about the Iraq War 2 - 2.5 years ago. Maybe I should have put this in the humor section. Links provided.
Peace as a Civil Right
by Rep. Dennis Kucinich
Let us abolish such weapons of mass destruction here at home. Let us use hundreds of billions of our tax dollars, which some would cast upon Iraq in bombs and warring troops, instead for the restoration of the American Dream, ... Peace is a civil right, which makes other human rights possible. Peace is the precondition for our existence. Peace permits our continued existence.
The UN is already predicting a war against Iraq will bring about at least 500,000 casualties among the men, women and children of Iraq, who are not foreigners, but are our brothers and sisters.
Why is the Administration targeting Iraq? Oil. America has become increasingly reliant on imported oil. The future of an oil-dominated economy rests in the Gulf region. Instead of a new energy policy, we get a new war of "good" acting against "evil."
When war is already in the hearts of those who lead this nation, because our leaders aspire to dominate oil markets, or expand arms trade or desire world empire, or to distract from failures domestically, what are the American people to do? Do we just sit and watch while the United States moves next to declare war against North Korea, or Iran?
The narrow-minded drive for regime change will have severe consequences. Regime change means war. Regime change means invasion. It means occupation. It means colonization.
Tim Robbins The following is the text of a speech given at an antiwar rally in New York City's Central Park on October 6, 2003.
Let us find a way to resist fundamentalism that leads to violence--fundamentalism of all kinds, in Al Qaeda and within our own government. What is our fundamentalism? Cloaked in patriotism and our doctrine of spreading democracy throughout the world, our fundamentalism is business, the unfettered spread of our economic interests throughout the globe. Our resistance to this war should be our resistance to profit at the cost of human life. Because that is what these drums beating over Iraq are really about. This is about business. The business of distracting American attention from Enron and Halliburton, the financial scandals that directly connect this Administration to the heart of what is now wrong with the American economy. These scandals have disappeared from the front pages of our newspapers as we argue about this war.
In the name of fear and fighting terror we are giving the reins of power to oilmen looking for distraction from their disastrous economic performance, oilmen more interested in a financial bottom line than a moral bottom line, oilmen ready to expand their influence with new contracts on the soil our bombers have plowed, new contracts forged with governments that do not allow democracy on their soil for fear of losing control over the oil that governs their lives, that governs our lives. The majority in America knows this. A dormant majority in America waits with anticipation for the politician who will stand in front of the American people in defiance of the oil companies and advocate alternative energy as a way to extricate ourselves from this culture of violence that threatens our future.
Let us resist this war and our impending oil war in Colombia, and let us resist fundamentalism in all its guises. Let us hate war in all its forms, whether its weapon is a US missile or its weapon is a domestic airplane.
Robert Scheer 2003
Bush's haste to make war on Iraq is understandable only as a ploy to avoid dealing with the struggling US economy, a still-shadowy Al Qaeda leadership that has not been brought to heel yet and the alarming disintegration of the Mideast peace process.
Kennedy Says Iraq War Case a 'Fraud'
The Associated Press Thursday 18 September 2003
BOSTON - The case for going to war against Iraq was a fraud ``made up in Texas" to give Republicans a political boost, Sen. Edward Kennedy said Thursday.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Kennedy also said the Bush administration has failed to account for nearly half of the $4 billion the war is costing each month. He said he believes much of the unaccounted-for money is being used to bribe foreign leaders to send in troops. ...
Kennedy said the focus on Iraq has drawn the nation's attention away from more direct threats, including al-Qaida, instability in Afghanistan or the nuclear ambitions of North Korea.
``I think all of those pose a threat to the security of the people of Massachusetts much more than the threat from Iraq," Kennedy said. ``Terror has been put on the sidelines for the last 12 months."
Division, Danger and Diversion
by Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr.
October 27, 2002
Since July 4, 1776, thanks to the victories and struggles of our forefathers and foremothers, America has flourished as an expanding democracy. We will fail as an empire. Rome and Britain have already tested that proposition.
Solely on political grounds, if I were George W. Bush, I guess I would want to change the subject, too. Certainly he does not benefit from public attention to the declining economy, or to unmet domestic needs. With ten days left until the elections, the Bush Administration really wants to divert our attention from Enron and Halliburton and Harken, to Iraq. We must keep our eyes on the prize. The Bush Administration would divert us from ...
The Bush Administration mistrusts democracy so much that they even double-crossed the 9/11 families. Bush promised them a commission, to find out what went on prior to 9/11. Then, when the press wasn't looking, he betrayed those families.
We need to change his mind. We need a 9/11 commission, and we need some regular citizens on it, not just Congressmen and other elites. We need some of the 9/11 family members on that commission.
There is still time. We can still stop this war. And you, especially the young people among you, could lead the way.
If we trust in democracy, we will build a new peace movement based on nonviolence, and reaching out directly to regular Americans, to soldiers.
The Iraq War and Contempt for Democracy
By Noam Chomsky October 31, 2003
They scarcely made reference to liberation, democratization of the Middle East, and other matters that would render irrelevant the weapons inspections and indeed everything that took place at the Security Council or within governmental domains.
The reason, perhaps, is that they recognized that lofty rhetoric is the obligatory accompaniment of virtually any resort to force and therefore carries no information. The rhetoric is doubly hard to take seriously in the light of the display of contempt for democracy that accompanied it, not to speak of the past record and current practices.
The Case Against War
by Stephen Zunes in The Nation
A US invasion of Iraq would likely lead to an outbreak of widespread anti-American protests throughout the Middle East, perhaps even attacks against American interests. Some pro-Western regimes could become vulnerable to internal radical forces. Passions are particularly high in light of strong US support for the policies of Israel's rightist government and its ongoing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The anger over US double standards regarding Israeli and Iraqi violations of UN Security Council resolutions and possession of weapons of mass destruction could reach a boiling point. Recognizing that the United States cannot be defeated on the battlefield, more and more Arabs and Muslims resentful of American hegemony in their heartland may be prone to attack by unconventional means, as was so tragically demonstrated last September 11. The Arab foreign ministers, aware of such possibilities, warned at their meeting in Cairo that a US invasion of Iraq would "open the gates of hell."
Resist War and Empire
With up to 200,000 American and British combat troops already stationed in or on their way to the Persian Gulf area, war with Iraq looks increasingly imminent. This war can still be stopped, but the antiwar movement should begin planning for what it must do if it is not. The next step is to expand the movement into a permanent opposition to the Administration's imperial design.
The Bush Administration sees the coming conflict as the first step in a much larger campaign aimed at the political and economic transformation of Iraq and the surrounding region under US supervision. US troops are likely to remain in Iraq for a very long time--first to insure the installation and survival of a friendly regime and then to coerce other states in the region into obeying Washington's dictates. They will, in other words, serve as imperial occupiers. This means that the American peace movement must assume a historic role of unprecedented scale and character: It must build the foundation for a long-term campaign against a permanent imperial US presence in the Middle East and the permanent militarization of American society.
Robert Scheer in The Nation-September 9, 2003
How can the President tell us with a straight face that we taxpayers have a patriotic duty to cough up $87 billion more to enable him to sink us deeper into the Iraq quagmire of his making? ... Shouldn't those who warned against Bush's folly at least qualify for another one of his signature tax rebates?
Perhaps the most galling aspect of Bush's consistently defensive speech, however, was his naked attempt to turn what has become a security disaster for US troops, United Nations workers and the Iraqi people into a positive situation. He makes it seem like it is almost a good thing that terrorism is on the rise in Iraq because we've got our enemies where we want them. In claiming that "Iraq is now the central front" in the "war on terror," Bush is heralding a self-fulfilling prophecy: He claimed Iraq was a hotbed of terrorism, and he turned it into one.
Meanwhile, as Bush boasts of how many irrelevant ammunition dumps we have seized in Iraq, the region is spiraling out of control. Afghanistan is once again falling into anarchy, with the Taliban on the rebound. The Israeli-Palestinian situation is worse after the fall of Hussein, not better as the Administration promised. And the mysterious kingdom of Saudi Arabia remains a very suspicious kind of "friend." Let's remember, fifteen of the nineteen September 11 hijackers, as well as Osama bin Laden himself, were Saudis.
By Jessica Mathews
Reprinted from The Washington Post, Monday, March 4, 2002
The writer is president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
... Saddam Hussein ... is dangerous and despicable but not a threat remotely worthy of American intervention. ... The Bush administration seems prepared to make a choice—but the wrong one.
... only (containing Saddam) carries any degree of legitimacy and at least the potential for wide international support. Only (containing Saddam) might therefore strengthen, rather than undermine, the cooperation necessary for long-term success in the war against terrorism. Only (containing Saddam) might help resolve, rather than exacerbate, the closely related threat posed by Iran. ... only (containing Saddam) serves the long-term U.S. interest in a world governed by the rule of law.
...
(Containment) is the clear choice over a course that ignores the Iranian half of the problem and that risks political chaos in Iraq and the region, the need for peacekeeping forces the world has no appetite to supply and long-term damage to the kind of world order the United States wants to live in.
as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman puts it,“Our leaders,who seem determined to have themselves a conventional war,are playing right into the terrorists hands.
News Correspondent Andy Rooney
I've lived a long while now and I don't remember any more unpleasant times than these. I'm not even interested in reading the sports pages. I hate everything about this war except that we're winning it.
You can't even be critical, either, without sounding unpatriotic. It's why Peter Arnett got fired by NBC for speaking on Iraqi television.
The fact is, though, we're in this thing with the British, who have 45,000 soldiers there, and the Australians, who have 2,000. That's it. The other 46 wish us well or let us fly bombers over their country. Big deal.
We've practically bribed some of them. We offered Turkey $15 billion to let our troops go through there but they refused. President Bush won't be sending the president of Turkey anything for his birthday this year.
There aren't any good wars, but this one is especially bad. We want to win it quickly without more death but we're grown-up people, too. The President, Rumsfeld and the generals ought to stop treating us like children. Tell us the truth. We can take it even when it's bad.
And the only real good news will be when this terrible time in American history is over.
Zuhair Kseibaty
Al-Hayat 2003/06/17
The reality of Iraq today is a long shot from being entertaining or exciting, especially since the administrator Paul Bremer, reflecting his administration's loss in Washington, does not know what he wants of and for the country, except to tighten the coalition's control over the land and oil. The only new thing that Haass said was that he admitted that several years would be needed to establish democracy in Iraq. By saying this, he unveiled the reality of the promises that President Bush made to his people to win their support in his decision of waging war against Iraq, and to the Iraqi people so that they wouldn't defend Saddam Hussein during the war.
Today, after several weeks of occupation, the situation of the coalition does not fare any better from that of the Iraqis who are suffering humiliation at the hands of those who came to liberate them from the oppressive regime of Saddam. It is obvious that there is no question of a new liberation battle now, even if the daily attacks on the American troops represent a problem for the coalition, which even thought it could reduce the number of troops only one month after toppling Saddam.
This is the new vicious circle that the invader troops have locked themselves in, and which was heightened by Bremer's failing to address the political forces in the country since he sought to minimize the opposition and reinforce the tribes' power, as if they were a school for democracy. He supposed that a decision to dissolve the Iraqi army and raise the banner of uprooting the Baathists would be enough to pave the way for his ambitions and push everyone - politicians, clergy and tribe leaders - to be reassured about the post-invasion project.
This post also available at the Blogger News Network.
Comments