Bush Takes Iraq to the UN

It's an old joke that no matter how cynical one gets, it's impossible to keep up; and, a joke though it may be, the "President" proved its truth when he trekked to the UN Thursday to try to sell the world on making war with Iraq. That--making war--was, as expected, the predetermined conclusion around which the speech was constructed. Though they tried to obscure the point at times, Bush's speechwriters wrote of war with Iraq as an inevitability. A done deal. No other possible outcome even on the table. The remarks were devoted to explaining to the General Assembly why it should go along with the "President"'s warmaking, while making it clear that this warmaking would go on without them, if they chose any other course but to join in. Strangely enough, this open contempt for the world body was voiced in a speech wherein the main thrust of the indictment against Saddam Hussein--making up nearly the entire run of the speech--was that he has shown only "contempt for the United Nations." And while making it clear that the "President" doesn't care what the UN decides unless it decides to go along with the "President," Bush's speechwriters perversely offer this sentiment: "We want the United Nations to be effective, and respectful, and successful." Unless, of course, it doesn't want to make war on Iraq.

Such a spectacle goes a long way towards explaining why so many people in the world really hate the United States. Consider a comment like this:

The United States has no quarrel with the Iraqi people; they've suffered too long in silent captivity. Liberty for the Iraqi people is a great moral cause, and a great strategic goal. The people of Iraq deserve it; the security of all nations requires it. Free societies do not intimidate through cruelty and conquest, and open societies do not threaten the world with mass murder. The United States supports political and economic liberty in a unified Iraq.

Now consider that the source of that comment is the executive of the government that spent a decade supporting the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein while he crushed the Iraqi people into submission. No atrocity was too atrocious to warrant even the slightest punitive action against Hussein in those days, and not only has there never been an apology for this apalling policy, many of those responsible for it--straightforwardly unapologetic for their actions--have been appointed to high positions in the administration of the "President," whose speechwriters now fill his mouth with maudlin sentiment about the suffering of the Iraqi people and the desire of the U.S. government to set them free. Listen to the moral outrage as the "President" tells us what a Biblically evil monster we face in Saddam Hussein:

His [Hussein's] regime once ordered the killing of every person between the ages of 15 and 70 in certain Kurdish villages in northern Iraq. He has gassed many Iranians, and 40 Iraqi villages.

If George Bush, Jr. had any real belief in a just god, he would refuse to read such a line out of fear that he would be sticken down by a bolt of lightning from the heavens. Hussein commited these horrors with the blessing of the United States government, and every delegate listening to Bush's speech knew it. Being a superpower means never having to say you're sorry, though, and the reek of this hypocrisy is appalling. If this cancer isn't remedied, it will one day be the end of the United States. And if it isn't redressed, it should be the end of the United States.

--jriddle

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