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 Tuesday April 01, 2003 02:18 by Max - Pro Liberation Society
 We export liberty. They export terror. By Doug Patton March 31, 2003 This week, I had my fill of the intellectually smug, America-hating, self-proclaimed moralists among us who keep repeating the mantra that the United States of America is in any way comparable to the bloody tyrants we are trying to eradicate from the face of Iraq. The brutal regime of Saddam Hussein, a sadist dictator who for a quarter century has systematically raped, tortured and murdered his own people while plundering their resources, is about to come to an end. The only questions that remain - and they are big ones - is how long it will take and how costly it will be. Along the way, America must endure the wails of dissent protected by our First Amendment. It would be refreshing if those doing the wailing would at least read history. When the Nazi regime was defeated in 1945, the United States could have left the country in ruins or enslaved its people as the Soviets did. Instead, we helped the German people rebuild, retool and learn how to rule themselves. We also helped them to become an economic powerhouse. Likewise, Japan was utterly defeated and under our complete domination. They had viciously attacked us. They had killed thousands of our greatest generation. Yet, we gave them the authority to determine their own destiny, to choose their own leaders, to become a free country. These two powers had made war on us, and with the fate of the world hanging in the balance, we defeated them and then chose to give them their own self-determination. On September 11, 2001, America was attacked without mercy. Our leaders have tried to tell us that a link existed between that attack and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, but the know-it-alls of Hollywood and the media knew better. Now, with terrorists from al-Qaeda to Hesbala to Islamic Jihad showing up to fight alongside Saddam's Republican Guard, the truth is beginning to unfold. Evidence of chemical and biological weapons turn up daily along the route to Baghdad, and each mile brings our troops closer to finding the cache of banned armaments we know this regime has. So, don't even try to equate what we are doing or how we are doing it with the people we are facing on this battlefield. Bravery and cowardice have rarely been more strikingly evident than they are in Iraq. There we are, in military uniforms, fighting a war by the rules. Meanwhile, Saddam's loyal fanatics dress in civilian clothes and ambush our troops. Out of all the terrible weapons in our arsenal, we take great pains to use only those that perform pinpoint surgical strikes on strategic military targets. They hide in Mosques, schools, hospitals and confiscated homes, using helpless women and children as human shields. Our forces are made up of volunteers. They coerce conscripts at the point of a gun. We reach out to their people with food, water and candy for the children. They reach out to us with suicide bombers. We treat prisoners with the respect demanded of civilized nations on the battlefield. They shoot them in the back of the head, display their bodies on television and then throw them into shallow graves. We seek to seize control of the massive Iraq oil reserves in order to turn those resources over to the Iraqi people. Saddam Hussein, who has squandered that wealth for his own crazed self-aggrandizement, torches the precious oil fields when it becomes apparent that he is no longer in control. We seek to live in peace and see freedom flourish throughout the world. They seek to kill us, on the battlefield and off, and to go on brutalizing their own people. We fight for our security and for Iraqi independence, and go to war as a last resort. They fight simply to dominate and to enslave. We export liberty. They export terror. -------------------- Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and public policy advisor at the federal, state and local levels. |
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Comments (17 of 17)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17I must appolgize to the Irish people for the drivile spouted by the intellectually challenged author of this piece. The only ones who truely believe this drivile here in the states are in the minority and have not developed simple critical thinking skills.
The U.S. has allways favored blood thirsty dictators as allies, Peru, Chile, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Turkey, Pakistan, El Salvador, Nicaraugua (Samoza) Paraguay, South Africa (apartheid), ...
Money and Power allways has been and remains my countries concern, trumping democricy, liberty and all other considerations.
The authors that are now spouting this freedom/liberty stuff never worried about human rights till the thief/liar in the white house designated it as the reason to use as a justification for slaughter during week 12, after all the other reasons were exposed as lies, Weapons of Mass Destruction, etc.
This minority are also the people that are trying to do away with our constitution and bill of rights. They basically want to institute a dictatorship here in the U.S. They are such freedom lovers they call those that disagree with them (those taht think for themselves) anti american or unpatriotic. They also hold pro war ralleys, yes they favor war in general and really advocate war as a way to solve problems. Like a 12 year old spoiled child they think it an acceptable way to solve disagreements!
I hope this makes the situation clear. We are very embarrassed by these people and find what they do reprehensible but tolerate them because we believe in the bill of rights and the constitution.
I thought the original post was a joke. It is so preposterous it made me laugh out loud.
Another Amurrkun Lover? Come on over Max!
I am sure we can find you a nice mission dusting a one of those suspicious looking Arab families.
It's an Amurrkun truh-deeshun: Nits breed Lice.
Have some guts you cowards and send the Statue of Liberty back to the country that gave it to you free, you ingrates.
Liberty is a joke in America. The dollar is mighty and the more you have of the green the more you have of "Liberty".
I hate to tell you but that is not liberty.
Liberty is just the way Americans spell Imperialism, a simple mistake, they both got an 'er' in d the middle, so they're kinda the same......
Amerika lurches towards its self destruction and
tries to justify it. Maybe God is really whispering in Bush Two's ear. Maybe God is sick of the greed, filth and self righteous cant as this military machine sucks the life and blood from every race it turns its beady eye on.
Strange kind of liberty really - I force you by gun point to be free.. If you refuse to be free I will kill you, you terrorist...
Pro Liberation . . .
I am pro-liberation of all people. If you truly believe this war is for the freedom of Iraqi people then you must also believe that freedom is something that must be forced on people. The US/K armies have not yet begun to fight the hardcore Sadman supporters, yet they are facing resistance on a scale unforseen and unimaginable to them, who then does this resistance come from? It is those who are conscripted in, who see devastation coming without possibility of peaceful resolution, who though they may not support Saddam (Sadman) will fight to the bitter end simply because the freedom being offered cannot be trusted, they were ignored last time. What will happen to them this time if the invading freedom fighters turn yellow and run again (that is if you agree with the argument that this is a courageous fight to liberate a people), or maybe see a campaign develop into something beyond profit into cost or, God help us, humanitarian principle, and turn and run again? From what ever angle you approach it a simple fact remains: In order for this war to be justified, above and beyond anything else, it needs the support of the Iraqi people - if the armies have not yet started fighting Sadmans true loyal supporters then who have they been killing? A: Scared young men (about my age, 22, who recieved a letter from their dictator that convicted them to death, death or Guantanamo Bay - that's what all the evidence says. One option is left for our peers in Iraq, resistance - but just look at what happened last time. Untill the west can win back the trust of a decieved, ill-treated and abused people we have no right to speak in their name.
All that leave out corruption, imperialism, death of democracy, hypocracy, international law, cowardice, national laws, human decency, snactions, depleted uranium, genocide, wanton destruction, UN violations, human rights, arms trade, selective principle . . . not to metion oil or reconstruction . . .
Good point Max, isn't it great how America brought democracy to Germany, Japan, East Timor...oh wait I forgot it wasn't freedom democracy they brought to East Timor, it was genocide. As a suporter of US foreign policy you either haven't a clue what goes on in the world or you support terrorism. Maybe you could explain to me how someone can support genocide and democracy at the same time
The USA were behind the scenes in helping the Baath party come to power. They supported
Saddam's regime for years, during the worst excesses of his killings. They encouraged the
allies to support him too. They also happened to support him during the Iran-Iraq war, a war
which right-wing think tanks in the USA lobbied hard on the Iraqi regime to start.
Throughout the world from the genocide in East Timor, the killing of 2 million people in Vietnam
and numerous other spots (i.e Central American, South American), the USA has consistently rowed
in behind brutal dictators and trained counter-revolutionary armies and the armies of
dictators in the techniques of terrorism, torture and kidnap.
However they do have one thing and that is near dominant control of the 'Western' media and so
have very successfully managed to perpetuate a whole pile of myths about themselves.
Max lets start with the way you are using America to refer to the US alone. Maybe because this avoids the reality of what the US exported to Chile, Argentina, El Salvador and Guatelmala in the 1970's and 1980's which was not what you would call liberty. It was the death squad and the torture chamber, it was ethnic cleaning in the north of Guatemala in which 100,000 died. It was something in other words which looked a lot like the sort of stuff Saddam got up to in the same period (also of course with US backing).
Then let us admit that the US did export liberty (at the same time as retaining slavery at home) back in the 1780's. But today - the US is the biggest exporter of terror and mass murder in the world. That is not liberty unless you mean the liberty of the graveyard.
hes on the wind up
-again
as hed say himself- hes only a "knacker"
Actually, there is a link between Al Quida and Saddam Hussein.
They tried to assassinate him twice.
Sadly, people like Max see Muslim as Muslim as Muslim. They equate all Islamic fundamentalists as one and the same.
It would be important to note that Bin Laden and Hussein lie on absoutely opposite sides in regard to their religions. Bin Laden has constantly stated his hatred for Hussein.
Sadly, the Islamaphobia that has been induced in the wake of this war and 9/11 has given us this ridiculous idea that all Muslims are one and the same. That Islam is an all-embracing one track belief.
Many people cannot understand the political situation in Northern Ireland. Many Middle-Easterners see Christianity as one and the same. We are all victims of our own borders, in that respect.
Bin Laden and Hussein are both scum. However, it's important to remember that they are different kinds of scum: it takes away from the argument and the intellegence of it to state anything else.
and Max you should have more sense, stop waving the US flag and THINK for yourself man! Please answer this: Do you REALLY believe that this war is going to increase the security of the globe, stabilise the world economy and *free* the Iraqi people? Really do you? Does it seem to you that that is what they want?
C'mon, how many right wing op-eds cut and pasted from the internet do we have to endure on indymedia. There are enough servile intellects in the world, kissing the hands that feed them, to fill up the newswire for ever.
...keep their petty arguments, their arrogant appraisals. Keep files on these right wing people. In the future, we wil all remember who they are, and, all going well, they will meet not justice, just us, and will end up dangling at the end of a rope...Especially the Zionazis.
First of all, I'm not an America-hater... I know quite a few Americans I like, and quite a few I don't like so much, but in neither case is it due to them being American, so much as the individual themselves.
But a few points regarding your post:
"There we are, in military uniforms, fighting a war by the rules. Meanwhile, Saddam's loyal fanatics dress in civilian clothes and ambush our troops."
1) Saddam's loyal fanatics? As opposed to Bush's loyal fanatics? How did you decide who is a loyal fanatic and who is a patriotic hero? Try and remember who the invader is here, for example.
2) War by the rules? It's very easy to go on about rules when you have the upper hand... superior armour and weapons, superior computers on your weapons, cruise missiles that can be fired from beyond the horizon, airplanes that can fly so high or fast or stealthily they are hardly ever in danger, more troops.
But dodgy tactics like ambushes and suicide bombings are just the Iraqi army's way of "making up" for America's ability to whack a building from hundreds of miles away without even getting out of your pyjamas. And they don't really come close to making up for it. If the roles were reversed America would be doing it too. Just look at their War of Independence.
By the way, "the rules" also state that you are not allowed to kill the leader of another country (which America attempted to do) or invade another country without U.N. backing (which they did).
Don't get me wrong, I hate Saddam as much as the next guy, but I just think it's ignorant when America try look morally superior the whole time.