Rant-Man's Notebook

By Jim "Rant-Man" MacQuarrie

Ding Dong, Saddam is Dead...

So now the people of Iraq are dancing in the streets. They're joyfully tearing down statues of Saddam Hussein and smashing them with rocks. One guy climbed up onto the shoulders of a statue and beat its head in with a chunk of marble. There is rejoicing in Iraq today. It reminds me of the munchkins dancing through Oz singing "Ding Dong, the witch is dead!" I hope the anti-war protestors are hanging their heads in shame about now, realizing that this scene is one they tried to prevent.

When all this started, I was as ambivalent as most people; I didn't see a connection between Osama bin Laden and Iraq. The president did a pretty good job of explaining why Saddam is evil, but wasn't real good at explaining why we had to do something about him. It seemed that the critics were right. The push toward war was about politics and oil and avenging Bush's daddy and a lot of other stuff that appeared to be a distraction from the more pressing business of catching the SOBs that knocked down our buildings.

But as the saying goes, those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. So I listened to the rhetoric and propaganda from both sides, and asked myself where I'd heard it before. The answer was "lots of times." There are those who will tell you at length and in tedious detail about how World War II was really an eleborate conspiracy to fill the pockets of the Rosthschilds and the Rockefellers and lay the groundwork for taking over the world. They sound an awful lot like the people saying that the Iraq war was "blood for oil," so I tend to dismiss them as cranks.

On the other hand, after reading about Saddam Hussein's history of torture and brutality, I saw that he really was one of those few men who could be justly compared to Hitler without engaging in hyperbole. He was (I say "was" in the fervent hope that he's dead) a BAD guy.

Now, back in 1941, the U.S. entered the war after we were attacked by Japan. Later that year when we went into Europe, there was a vocal contingent here that declared that a mistake, a political move, imperialism, colonialism, nation-building, and all the other noises we've heard again lately. Our war was in the Pacific, against the people that had attacked Pearl Harbor, not against the guy who was slaughtering his own people and attacking his neighbors in Europe. Sound familiar?

But we went to war. After it was done, and we learned the truth about the camps and the ovens and Dr. Mengele and all the rest of it, the people that had opposed entering the war fell strangely silent. When it came out that Germany and Japan were cooperating in the war, the anti-war folks never admitted they were wrong, but they joined the chorus of those declaring how great it was that the monster Hitler was gone and Germany was liberated.

So I finally came to a position. As uncomfortable as I am with all the talk of Homeland Security and the many potential abuses of individual rights, and as much as I recognize that there is some truth to the arguments that we entered the war for a lot of bad and/or irrelevant reasons, the fact remained that Saddam Hussein was a monster and needed to be removed, and that it was only going to happen if the U.S. made it happen. England and the other 39 countries that got on board could have done it without us, but they probably wouldn't have. They would have followed our lead, since we're the last superpower. Well, what's the point of being a superpower if you don't right wrongs and rescue the helpless?

Whether this war was about oil, or about finishing what Bush Senior started, or about stabilizing the region, or whatever, that didn't matter to me. As long as it ended up with Saddam Hussein either dead or living in exile in France, I would support the war. The people of Iraq needed someone to fight for them.

So now Hussein is gone. The Iraqi people will begin to rebuild, and soon the facts will begin to emerge about what went on under Saddam, and there may yet even turn out to be a link to Al-Qaida. It doesn't matter, because the people who opposed the war will move on to some other reason to hate Bush. They will also find some way to take credit for liberating the people of Iraq, never admitting that they had actually tried to prevent it.

That's your lesson in irony for the day.

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