Both sides of the same mouth

There has been much ado lately about Iran’s nuclear program and the possibility of the little dictator, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, developing nuclear weapons.
The trouble is there has been no secret about Iran’s nuclear ambitions to either the international community or, in particular, to the United States. But now, all of a sudden, it has become a problem that must be dealt with.
Funny, Iran wasn’t a priority for neither the mainstream news media nor the liberal progressives in Washington, D.C., during the Bush Administration.
If memory serves me correctly, former President Bush wanted to deal with Iran by imposing sanctions on its nuclear program. But his political opponents opposed this idea, arguing that we had no proof that Iran was using its nuclear program to develop weapons.
However, now that a liberal progressive is in the White House, a nuclear Iran poses a threat.
Excuse me? Where was all of this concern and attention over Iran when Bush was in office and appealing for action against the Hitler of the Middle East?
The answer is that Iran was considered an inconvenient nuisance during the Bush years that the left hoped it could ignore until it got one of its own in the White House. Now that the left again resides at 1600 Pennsylvania, Iran can be addressed as the threat to national security that it has been for several years.
As far as the left-wing progressives were concerned, they didn’t want to give Bush any more war legacies by allowing Iran to grow into an international issue. Bush already had 9/11/01 and America’s response under his watch. The left certainly didn’t want to give him any more chances at being mentioned in the history books—other than as a miserable, failed President.
With its willing accomplices in the press, the left-wing succeeded in sweeping the importance of Iran under the rug until the right time.
Evidently, now that President Obama is in office, and one of their own, there is no time like the present to make Iran the issue that it should have been in the first place. Only this time, whatever happens will be under the liberals’ watch, and they are going to do everything they can now to vilify Ahmedinejad and Iran in order to create the illusion that President Obama is tough on terrorism.
But Iran notwithstanding, this isn’t the first time that international affairs have been manipulated by the left to serve its purposes.
The mainstream news media—dominated and controlled by left-wing, liberal progressives—does not report the Wars On Terror with the same fervor it did under Bush’s watch.
The tone is very different these days; more positive, less negative.
Just the other day, the media reported the deaths of eight servicemen in Afghanistan, but their deaths were swiftly tied to their acts of heroism.
When Bush was in office, there was a death toll count added to every day, and the total emphasized regularly during broadcasts. Very little was mentioned of the heroism of the soldiers who lost their lives; simply that their convoys had been the victims of an RPG attack or roadside bomb.
In fact, the news media went out of its way to dig up whatever dirt it could find and connect the U.S. military to something negative. Whether it was Abu Graib Prison or a U.S. Marine court-martialed for firing on an unarmed civilian, we could count on two negative stories about the U.S. military for every positive one.
But now, after the success of the 2008 troop surge and an improved Iraqi security force—both of which it is never mentioned occurred under Bush’s watch—the new administration is able to enjoy some military successes that it has also been able to claim as its own.
Today, negative military stories may still get reported, but not with the same urgency or frequency they had been under Bush. Instead, positive stories of military success are the focus; especially since Barack Obama is now the Commander-In-Chief. When troop losses are mentioned, their mission and acts of heroism are added to emphasize that they died bravely and for a good cause.
Where was this same spirit during the Bush Administration? A troop death was reported as another senseless loss of life; rarely, if ever, connected with what he or she may have died for and doing his or her duty.
President Obama pledged during the 2008 election that U.S. forces would be withdrawn from Iraq by 2010. By my watch, he has 14 months to achieve this objective before it can be counted as another election year broken promise.
And near as I can tell, troop reductions thus far have been subtle.
It will be interesting to note when the ball drops on Times Square at the end of next year whether or not the Iraq War so loathed by liberals will be a recent memory, or a continuing saga.
My experience following politics, and my instincts, endorse the latter.
It takes more than election-year rhetoric to end a war the right way. It takes victories.
The big question in my mind, though, is whether or not the American people are awake enough to realize that they have been hoodwinked and manipulated by a political machine these past eight years.
Some say ignorance is bliss, and I imagine for most Obama voters, that is more or less the truth.

Parallels to Iraq

Critics and opponents of the Iraq War will either claim that America (1) went to war over there under false pretenses, or (2) had no valid purpose for being there in the first place. They argue that because no link was found between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda—the principal architect of the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks—and no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) recovered, we should never have been there to begin with.
I beg to differ.
First of all, to say that American forces were committed to a war under false pretenses is, in and of itself, a falsehood. The President of the United States and the Congress each reviewed the same intelligence that strongly suggested Saddam Hussein was an indirect supporter of al-Qaeda’s terrorist efforts, and the former Iraqi dictator was hiding WMDs. Both the executive and legislative branches voted for a resolution to invade Iraq and oust Hussein’s tyrannical Baath Party government from power.
Unfortunately, neither an al-Qaeda link nor WMDs could be established. But it would be a gross misstatement to say America went to war under false pretenses. There was nothing pretentious about the intelligence that both the White House and Capitol Hill relied upon to make the decision to go to war. It may have proved incorrect, but that doesn’t mean a war against a brutal dictator was somehow made invalid.
Under what pretenses, pray tell, did the United States, under the protection of NATO, invade Serbia, other than to oust another brutal dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, from power? That was all the reason America required then, and should have been all it needed to invade Iraq.
Nobody on the left criticized former President Bill Clinton for the decision to take the lead of NATO forces and drive the butcher Milosevic from power. But when George W. Bush led the effort to invade Iraq, the cries against the action were loud and numerous.
Why?
Was Saddam Hussein any better than Milosevic? Was the latter somehow more deserving of military justice than the former?
Let’s look at what the two dictators had in common: Both were butchers, who murdered people en masse, by the thousands. Both were greedy, power-hungry narcissists and blood-thirsty sadists who could never kill or torture enough to quench their violent appetites. Both were enemies of democracy and the virtues of liberty, equality and justice that go along with it. And both hated the United States of America.
The war in Serbia wasn’t any more or less virtuous than the Iraq War. But because a liberal democrat presided over the former, and a neo-conservative republican over the latter, somehow we are supposed to believe that one was good and the other bad?
Sorry, I don’t buy it.
Furthermore, where are all the protests against Iraq now that Bush is out of office and the liberals once again have one of their own in the White House? I’ve heard nothing but crickets singing on the issue of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since January 20, 2009.
I wonder why that is?