Not Noble

Wednesday, November 24, 2004
To Joe Scarborough,
MSNBC News (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6330851/)

I think, sir, that you are 100% wrong about Iraq. You speak as though we went in there with the intent to bring our values into their lives. We did not. We went in search of WMD, according to President Bush who used this line to get support from the US Congress and the UN. Once the lies and discrepancies, as well as the failure to find any such weapons surfaced, we had to change our tone and sing a new song. This was one of freedom, democracy and all its glory. We rained bombs and decimated the landscape. We killed and maimed innocent citizens and mired our forces in a situation for which there seems to be no escape. We have spawned more terrorists than we have eliminated by our actions. We remain there because we are logistically stuck there,

This is a new Vietnam in the making, and there is no nobility whatsoever in the illegal and unsupported invasion of a country which had no partnership in any attack upon us. All the talk of regime change and bringing freedom to Iraq is C.Y.A. nonsense. What we need is an exit strategy using the combined forces of the European community seasoned with the blessings of the UN. They could pledge not to attack the Iraqis and stand by as we get out. Then they themselves, having stood by as protective non-combatants, could exit. Once we have departed that country, a major thorn in their side will be gone. Whatever government rises out of the smoke may well be not much different from any other totalitarian government in the Middle East, many of which are friendly to us. Why scorn a totalitarian government in Iraq when we cooperate with the likes of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Oman? Syria, Jordan, Iran are all basically totalitarian governments. Shall we bomb them into a state of freedom as well?

Robert W.. Hamilton