Folly and Failure, Bush's Speech Undressed

By: C.L. Halverson

According to Mr. Bush's speech tonight his administration has 3 overall goals in Iraq:

1. Destroy the terrorists in Iraq
2. Receive help from other countries/the U.N.
3. Bestow democracy upon the Iraqi people

This sounds great, but let's look at the Bush government's record thus far at:

1. Destroying terror in Iraq:
   
   The only evidence that Iraq harbored terrorists was that a single Al-Qaeda member had sought medical attention in Iraq after fleeing Afghanistan. Since our attack on Iraq, resentment against America has skyrocketed throughout the world; Islamic anger against our action has boiled to the point that terrorists have flooded into Iraq. They do this not because Saddam was their ally (In fact Bin Laden declared a holy war to free Kuwait from Saddam during Bush the First's Gulf War), but because the power vacuum created by his removal has become a harbinger of extremism and violence. Iraq has changed from a land controlled by a dictator, to a battleground, a "central front" in the war against terror, thus diverting our resources from our battle against the criminals who caused the attacks of September 11^th. Instead of curbing terrorism, we have in fact allowed it to spill over into Iraq.
   
   
2. Receiving help from other countries/the U.N.:
   
   "Freedom Fries", "Old Europe", and "The U.N. is Irrelevant"... Need I say more? Okay, I will. According to Bush it is the U.N.'s "duty" and "responsibility" to help him out in Iraq, but as you will remember Bush was more than happy to snub our traditional allies and attempt to delegitimize the U.N. This is why so many of us wanted Bush to deal with the world in a multilateral way. We shunned unilateralism not because we didn't think America is a strong, proud nation able to act militarily on its own, but because we didn't want to eat crow when we realized we needed allies to rebuild Iraq into the prosperous nation Bush promised. Bush has disgraced America by failing to think through America's entire mission in Iraq; by being forced to slink back to the U.N., after claiming America is strong enough to go it alone, we are showing incredible weakness, which tonight Bush himself claimed is the cause of Terrorism.
   
   
3. Bestowing democracy upon the Iraqi people:
   
   If Bush really wanted the Iraqi people to vote, he would not have had Paul Bremmer cancel the June mayoral elections in Najof, Iraq.