From time to time, my university’s student newspaper, The Spectrum, publishes some of the most right wing propagada filled opinion pieces. Today they did so again and prompted me to send in the following response:
Globalization and Hypocrisy
To the editor:
This letter in response to the neoliberal propaganda printed in the 4/19 issue of the Spectrum under the title of “The War in Iraq, WMD?s and DMB”.
What Mr. Haag wrote was not an opinion but a mere regurgitation of extreme right wing propaganda aimed at silencing criticism of the occupation of Iraq.
It is therefore not surprising that his article is a prime example of the hipocrisy which is abound in the executive branch of the federal government and the conservatively biased media.
Although President Bush claims to be a devout Christian, he only follows the teachings of the Bible when it is convenient to him. Not only would he deny the LGBT community their deserved freedoms any day while supporting right wing family values orgainzations, but he also chooses to ignore the gospel of Luke, where the hypocrite is clearly defined, when it comes to foreign policy, as professor and historian Noam Chomsky pointed out in recent speeches.
While many would probably not deny that removing Saddam was good in and by itself, focusing on that aspect of the war in Iraq alone ignores the larger issues involved here.
One of those is that of the element of hypocrisy in the actions of the White House.
Saddam’s regime was only one of at least half a dozen regimes in that region that are known for mistreating the people they are meant to govern. While President Bush ordered the removal of Saddam, he considered the government of Uzbekistan, which has also committed atrocities against its own people, an ally and friend.
Then there is also the fact that all the way to the end of the 1980s, the US government actively supported Saddam Hussein and condoned actions such as his gassing of the Kurds. Claiming that he was the greatest danger to the Israel and the US is therefore a baseless accusation, especially when one considers that Saddam could have not launched a large scale attack if he had wanted to as he had been disarmed ever since the early 1990s.
Further into his opinion piece, Mr. Haag accuses supporters of peace of supporting terrorism. If anyone encourages the activities of terrorists in Iraq it’s the Bush administration, whose actions in Iraq and Afghanistan have infuriated terrorists who had previously never had any relationship with Iraq. Saddam Hussein never directly supported terrorism as he was in favor of a secular form of government and not the religious extremist form that the likes of Osama Bin Laden advocate.
Mr. Haag also mentions the ludicrous idea that the war in Iraq somehow preserves our freedoms here at home. In reality we have however seen that it is the lackluster way in which our government has fought the so-called war on terrorism (yes, President Clinton too was guilty of this) that has reduced our freedoms through Patriot Acts 1 and 2, and not the wars in the middle east.
I would like to encourage Mr. Haag to look at the big picture by analyzing US foreign policy over the last 40 years by using information from a variety of sources as there is a larger pattern that the war in Iraq fits into. And unfortunately that pattern is not the rosy fantasy many noeliberals would like us to believe to be reality.
