Iraq
needs more time
Jason
Garthoffner
It
has been almost five months since President
Bush declared an end to major combat operations
in Iraq. It was also around this time that
the political left decided to move on from
throwing temper tantrums in the middle of
Wilshire Boulevard. Proud of themselves
for taking the word "progressive"
as their own, and destroying its meaning
in the process, they have adopted a new
buzz-word as they have dubbed the Iraq war
a Vietnam-like "quagmire." All
because troops are still dying from attacks,
and we have not established a stable government
yet.
Apparently,
five months is way too long to overthrow
a murderous dictator, and create a democratic
mindset for a people that have been brutally
oppressed for more than a generation. Of
course, terrorists sneaking into the country,
killing our soldiers, and bombing all attempts
to build an infrastructure is by no means
a valid excuse.
If
I had the perspective of a "progressive"
maybe I would be upset about all this too.
Thankfully there is a little thing called
history.
This
country existed under the failed Articles
of Confederation for a decade before even
coming up with our Constitution. Once that
was created we had a lot of details to work
out. We still have problems that get worked
out every day. By progressive logic our
country must be in a quagmire.
The
United States occupied Japan for five years
after the end of World War II. During that
time there was still a little resistance
and troops were still dying. However,
in the end a democracy with a bicameral
legislature and bill of rights was established.
This took half the time the United States
took 175 years earlier, but to the anti-war
crowd it's still four years and seven months
too long.
Loss
of life should never be taken lightly, but
the loss of troops in Iraq is microscopic
compared to Vietnam. In the little more
than a decade we had troops in Vietnam about
58,000 of them died. That comes to about
5,300 deaths per year, 14 deaths per day.
Our troops have been in Iraq for less than
six months and 374 have died at a rate of
1.8 per day. At this rate it will be almost
eight years before our troops reach the
level of casualties the U.S. experienced
in one year of Vietnam.
It
should be noted we lost Vietnam, but in
Iraq we unseated an evil dictator in less
than two months, and it was done with at
this point less than 1 percent the total
loss of life. That is including the casualties
from the Iraqi side, compared to the more
than one million casualties from the Vietnamese
side.
Democrats
are feeding the quagmire nonsense by demanding
we pull out and let the United Nations take
over. This is a brilliant strategy considering
the United Nations never wanted Saddam Hussein
overthrown in the first place. Understandably
many of its member nations like North Korea,
China, Cuba, Libya and Syria, were upset
when the war happened because they lost
one of their totalitarian comrades. Now
Democrats want to give the job of rebuilding
the country to people like them.
That
is not too surprising, Democrats are particularly
good at creating real quagmires. The war
on poverty started by Democratic president
Lyndon Johnson has been raging for forty
years and literally no progress has been
made. Poverty was at about 13 percent when
the war to end it began, and has fluctuated
between 11 and 15 percent ever since. Before
this war poverty was on a constant and steady
decline from the 40 to 50 percent levels
of the Great Depression, but for some reason
Johnson felt the need to enact programs
that have cost trillions of dollars with
virtually no results.
Maybe
the Democrats would have agreed to the war
if Saddam Hussein needed food stamps instead
of seeking illegal weapons.
Jason
Garthoffner is an art major at Cal State
Long Beach.
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