WHY THE WAR IN IRAQ IS NOT JUST THE RIGHT WAR
WHY THE WAR IN IRAQ IS NOT JUST THE
RIGHT WAR, BUT A CONFRONTATION
THAT WAS LONG OVERDUE
by
Ken Eliasberg
Setting aside 9/11 as the occasion (or excuse, depending on one’s perspective), for our involvement in Iraq, let’s just take a look at our last 25 or 30 years in the Middle East. Also, let’s set aside, at least for the moment, the Israeli-Arab dispute (which, by and large, has been a smokescreen for the anti-American sentiment that prevails in the region). What have we? An area that, but for the discovery of oil, would have (and, for the most part, has) remained in the dark ages. Nothing creative has emerged from the area in hundreds of years; with the exception of Israel, the region’s inhabitants seem better suited to destructive measures. Thus, over the past decades, the region has been a seething cauldron of savagery and discontent, governed by various forms of dictatorship, theocratic or secular. In fact, until our very appropriate invasion of Iraq, precipitating elections in that country, Afghanistan, Egypt, and Lebanon, the only Middle Eastern country in which Arabs could vote was Israel (it was also probably the only country in the region in which Arabs could work for something approaching a decent wage). Indeed, prior to our doing the right thing in Iraq, the only Muslim countries that afforded its citizens an opportunity to vote were Turkey and Bangladesh (which, it now appears, may have become a new safe haven for Al Qeada). How’s that for modernizing progress?
So much for Arab evolution; how about what has transpired in the region vis a vis the U.S.? Starting with the