The Invisible Hand

Is it Patriotic to Oppose the Bush Administration Policy on Iraq?

Actually, no. It's not. Not now.

The debate over Iraqi policy lasted more than a year and was the central issue of the November elections in which every Congressional seat was decided. The result was a historically rare mid-term victory for the party in the White House.

The debate is over and the Bush Administration won it.

It won the debate on the global level a few weeks later with a unanimous vote of the UN Security Council endorsing the Bush policy on the use of force against Iraq.

Further debate now begins to cross the line from loyal opposition to unreasoning extremism. After all, what could possibly be the goal of the “peace activists” who disrupt traffic and take part in violent civil disobedience? Do they seek the immediate halt of our soldiers’ advance? What would be the consequence of that? Certainly not peace.

Would ending the war now increase the security of Americans at home and overseas? Would it resolve the violence and injustice that plagues the Middle East? Would it signal to would-be tyrants around the world that there are consequences if they fail to respect their people and their neighbors? Would it demonstrate the superiority of democracy as a political model to emulate and strive for?

Or would ending the war at this moment to at risk the lives of innocent American soldiers, not just in Iraq but in Korea, and Bosnia? Would it give comfort to our enemies who are so desperate to hold on to power that they force their fellow countrymen into battle at gunpoint? And what about the long-suffering Iraqi people, will they welcome an immediate halt of our military advance?

The “peace activists” are in practice supporters of fascism to the extent that their activities strengthen the resolve of the fascists in the Iraqi Ba’ath Party to resist our troops, to kill them when they surrender and gleefully photograph their punctured bodies.

The Iraqi crisis had a hope of being resolved peacefully as long at the junta in Baghdad sensed that they only alternative to voluntary capitulation was certain military defeat. But instead they saw frivolous people take to the streets of San Francisco, London, Madrid, and Paris and concluded that the threats of certain defeat were hollow.

Now that war has begun, the Iraqi junta has pinned its hopes on growing “anti-war’ sentiment in the democracies. It seeks to encourage that sentiment through propaganda, murder, and in time, genocide. It seeks to demoralize the troops marching against them by spreading the lie that their cause is unjust, immoral, and illegitimate.

The “peace activists” echo and amplify these lies and therefore play an important role in defeating and killing American soldiers. They encourage the junta to resist. They discourage the oppressed from rising up. They give aid and comfort to our enemies.

Let’s be honest. The “peace activists” do not support the troops, they support the enemy seeking to kill our troops. They are promoters not of peace but of a prolonged conflict and they are unreasoning extremists who do not tolerate opposition. They advocate no coherent policy and they evade lucid debate by labeling their challengers as racist or ignorant or immoral.

They are certainly not patriotic in any commonly understood definition of the word.

The time for civil debate has come and gone. Today there are lives on the line and the only way to secure peace is to ensure that the Ba’ath regime in Iraq collapses as soon as possible.