| GREG-STRANGE.COM |
"If you haven't found something strange during the
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
PROVIDING SUBSTANTIVE COMMENTARY ON THE
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
Two Thousand!
With the same spirit of boisterous revelry that accompanied
the arrival of the year 2000, the mainstream media, along with
the radical antiwar crowd, has marked the arrival of the 2,000
th American death in the war in Iraq. It’s as if the roundness of
this four-digit number imbues it with some sort of
numerological significance which can be used as ammunition
in the rhetorical war against the war.
But is there really any significance of the 2,000th death
when it comes to the morality, legality or practicality of this
war? Nope -- none, nada, zip, zilch, squat, forget about it. The
number “2,000” is simply an excuse for the media and the
antiwar crowd (if that’s not redundant) to make noise like it
was the last night of 1999.
Let’s try and put the 2,000 very regrettable deaths into some
kind of reasonable perspective. At the current rate of
American deaths in Iraq, it would take about 70 more years to
equal our total Vietnam War dead. If this is a Vietnam-like
quagmire as we are constantly told, it is one with an amazingly
low rate of lethality.
To gain even more perspective, each year on average in the
United States 42,000 people are killed in automobile
accidents. That’s nearly three quarters of our Vietnam War
dead every single year. By the time our dead in Iraq equals our
Vietnam War dead, as noted above, roughly 2.9 million people
will have died in car wrecks.
But all of those deaths will have accomplished absolutely
nothing, whereas the American deaths in Iraq may very well
make it possible for the Middle East to be transformed into a
decent place that is finally able to adapt to modernity without
the perverse side effect of being a spawning ground for
apocalyptic Islamic terrorism. There are no guarantees, but if
we do nothing, it’s a lead pipe cinch that the Middle East goes
on like it is indefinitely and everyone loses.
For the antiwar Left, harping about the 2,000th death is all
about trying to convince the American public that it is the
absolute ultimate proof that the war in Iraq is a hopeless
quagmire, that it was illegal and immoral to begin with, that
the men and women who are over there fighting are simple-
minded children who were duped by lies, that Bush & Co. are
the world’s real terrorists, that Zarqawi and his band of
butchers, bombers and beheaders are really noble freedom
fighters, and that war never solved anything anyway.
And, oh yeah, it’s about showing that they’re patriotic
Americans, too, but that their way of supporting the troops is
by demanding that they be brought home from their dishonest
and failed mission before one more dies needlessly.
With supporters like those, who needs enemies? It seems
absurd to have to point this out, but supporters don’t usually
go out in a celebratory fashion and do everything they can to
undermine the soldiers’ mission -- that’s what enemies do.
Judging from pictures of some of the 2,000th death antiwar
gatherings, one could find more somber-looking people at your
average hootenanny. As for their concern for the Iraqi people,
if their demands were to be followed, Iraq would go straight
back to tyranny with its concomitant rape, torture, murder and
mass graves.
Here’s the fundamental problem with the collective mind of
antiwar liberals. They are congenitally incapable of
comprehending that a war can accomplish anything good
because that would violate one of their most cherished beliefs:
that war -- all war, any war -- is . . . primitive. That’s right,
primitive.
Here’s a prime illustration of what I mean. I had a
conversation with a liberal antiwar friend right before the war
in Iraq began. He wanted to know why there needed to be a
war, so I explained all the many reasons. He listened patiently
and then responded: “Okay, I see your point about how
Saddam is a very bad guy and how the world would be better off
if he was out of power. But isn’t there some other way to
achieve that? I mean, isn’t war just so primitive?”
It was in the moments immediately following that utterly
sincere, though astonishingly naïve, statement that I was
suddenly able to see something very clearly for the first time.
“Isn’t war just so primitive?” For antiwar liberals this is the
crux of the matter. They see themselves as being progressive
above all else and the progressive way to settle differences is
through nonviolent means. But war is the ultimate antithesis
of that. Therefore, war can’t possibly be good for anything. It’s
just as simple and cut and dried as that.
Never mind that war is the only reason any part of the world
is free from tyranny. Antiwar liberals simply cannot bring
themselves to alter their belief that there has to be some other
way for civilized societies to deal with the problems created by
mass-murdering, destabilizing tyrants who recognize no moral
bounds.
Here’s a clue for the antiwar Left. It’s not war per se that is
primitive. It’s the tyrannical and uncivilized societies which
sometimes cause wars to be necessary that are primitive.
If antiwar liberals are truly interested in ridding the world
of war, they need to forget any childish notion about ending it
now or in the foreseeable future and concentrate instead on a
more distant future. The best way to one day end war, or at
least to make it rare, would be to ultimately democratize every
country in the world. Since modern, mature democracies
usually generate a reasonable level of prosperity, maintain the
rule of law and are set up with a decentralization of power
which prevents the rise of power-mad tyrants like Saddam
Hussein, they generally have no reason to wage war against one
another.
What antiwar liberals don’t understand is that the war in
Iraq is an attempt to move the world in that direction by
beginning the democratization of a region that has been so
profoundly resistant to it and as a result has been so unable to
get along peacefully either with itself or with the surrounding
world.
If you have any interest in the Middle East becoming a more
civilized and less primitive place, there’s no reason to listen to
the advice of antiwar liberals since their track record for
opposing totalitarianism isn’t exactly sparkling. For instance,
they basically had zero interest in opposing communism, an
ideology which they saw as little more than an alternative
lifestyle, but which in reality was an evil totalitarian force that
killed over 100 million people during the 20th century.
So forget about their pathetic tantrums and protestations
over the 2,000th death in Iraq. When it comes to the business
of opposing evil in the world, it’s fair to say that the antiwar
Left’s slogan should be: We just sighed and millions died.
With the same spirit of boisterous revelry that accompanied
the arrival of the year 2000, the mainstream media, along with
the radical antiwar crowd, has marked the arrival of the 2,000
th American death in the war in Iraq. It’s as if the roundness of
this four-digit number imbues it with some sort of
numerological significance which can be used as ammunition
in the rhetorical war against the war.
But is there really any significance of the 2,000th death
when it comes to the morality, legality or practicality of this
war? Nope -- none, nada, zip, zilch, squat, forget about it. The
number “2,000” is simply an excuse for the media and the
antiwar crowd (if that’s not redundant) to make noise like it
was the last night of 1999.
Let’s try and put the 2,000 very regrettable deaths into some
kind of reasonable perspective. At the current rate of
American deaths in Iraq, it would take about 70 more years to
equal our total Vietnam War dead. If this is a Vietnam-like
quagmire as we are constantly told, it is one with an amazingly
low rate of lethality.
To gain even more perspective, each year on average in the
United States 42,000 people are killed in automobile
accidents. That’s nearly three quarters of our Vietnam War
dead every single year. By the time our dead in Iraq equals our
Vietnam War dead, as noted above, roughly 2.9 million people
will have died in car wrecks.
But all of those deaths will have accomplished absolutely
nothing, whereas the American deaths in Iraq may very well
make it possible for the Middle East to be transformed into a
decent place that is finally able to adapt to modernity without
the perverse side effect of being a spawning ground for
apocalyptic Islamic terrorism. There are no guarantees, but if
we do nothing, it’s a lead pipe cinch that the Middle East goes
on like it is indefinitely and everyone loses.
For the antiwar Left, harping about the 2,000th death is all
about trying to convince the American public that it is the
absolute ultimate proof that the war in Iraq is a hopeless
quagmire, that it was illegal and immoral to begin with, that
the men and women who are over there fighting are simple-
minded children who were duped by lies, that Bush & Co. are
the world’s real terrorists, that Zarqawi and his band of
butchers, bombers and beheaders are really noble freedom
fighters, and that war never solved anything anyway.
And, oh yeah, it’s about showing that they’re patriotic
Americans, too, but that their way of supporting the troops is
by demanding that they be brought home from their dishonest
and failed mission before one more dies needlessly.
With supporters like those, who needs enemies? It seems
absurd to have to point this out, but supporters don’t usually
go out in a celebratory fashion and do everything they can to
undermine the soldiers’ mission -- that’s what enemies do.
Judging from pictures of some of the 2,000th death antiwar
gatherings, one could find more somber-looking people at your
average hootenanny. As for their concern for the Iraqi people,
if their demands were to be followed, Iraq would go straight
back to tyranny with its concomitant rape, torture, murder and
mass graves.
Here’s the fundamental problem with the collective mind of
antiwar liberals. They are congenitally incapable of
comprehending that a war can accomplish anything good
because that would violate one of their most cherished beliefs:
that war -- all war, any war -- is . . . primitive. That’s right,
primitive.
Here’s a prime illustration of what I mean. I had a
conversation with a liberal antiwar friend right before the war
in Iraq began. He wanted to know why there needed to be a
war, so I explained all the many reasons. He listened patiently
and then responded: “Okay, I see your point about how
Saddam is a very bad guy and how the world would be better off
if he was out of power. But isn’t there some other way to
achieve that? I mean, isn’t war just so primitive?”
It was in the moments immediately following that utterly
sincere, though astonishingly naïve, statement that I was
suddenly able to see something very clearly for the first time.
“Isn’t war just so primitive?” For antiwar liberals this is the
crux of the matter. They see themselves as being progressive
above all else and the progressive way to settle differences is
through nonviolent means. But war is the ultimate antithesis
of that. Therefore, war can’t possibly be good for anything. It’s
just as simple and cut and dried as that.
Never mind that war is the only reason any part of the world
is free from tyranny. Antiwar liberals simply cannot bring
themselves to alter their belief that there has to be some other
way for civilized societies to deal with the problems created by
mass-murdering, destabilizing tyrants who recognize no moral
bounds.
Here’s a clue for the antiwar Left. It’s not war per se that is
primitive. It’s the tyrannical and uncivilized societies which
sometimes cause wars to be necessary that are primitive.
If antiwar liberals are truly interested in ridding the world
of war, they need to forget any childish notion about ending it
now or in the foreseeable future and concentrate instead on a
more distant future. The best way to one day end war, or at
least to make it rare, would be to ultimately democratize every
country in the world. Since modern, mature democracies
usually generate a reasonable level of prosperity, maintain the
rule of law and are set up with a decentralization of power
which prevents the rise of power-mad tyrants like Saddam
Hussein, they generally have no reason to wage war against one
another.
What antiwar liberals don’t understand is that the war in
Iraq is an attempt to move the world in that direction by
beginning the democratization of a region that has been so
profoundly resistant to it and as a result has been so unable to
get along peacefully either with itself or with the surrounding
world.
If you have any interest in the Middle East becoming a more
civilized and less primitive place, there’s no reason to listen to
the advice of antiwar liberals since their track record for
opposing totalitarianism isn’t exactly sparkling. For instance,
they basically had zero interest in opposing communism, an
ideology which they saw as little more than an alternative
lifestyle, but which in reality was an evil totalitarian force that
killed over 100 million people during the 20th century.
So forget about their pathetic tantrums and protestations
over the 2,000th death in Iraq. When it comes to the business
of opposing evil in the world, it’s fair to say that the antiwar
Left’s slogan should be: We just sighed and millions died.