Setting the Record Straight

Today, I came across the blog of one of my long-time friends. I wasn't terribly surprised by the content of his posts, but nonetheless, as I read his thoughts, I found myself "correcting" most of his political points in my head. His political views were the easiest to break apart, but his thoughts on religion and the examples he used were harder to negate. From the context, I couldn't tell if his indictment of the Church is aimed at the doctrine of the Gospel, or at the way church members interact with one another, and with outsiders. If his beef is with the people, I completely understand where he is coming from, but I also find that his generalizations about the judgmental nature of church members is also fairly judgmental.

The difficulty in arguing about religion is that religion is personal. Sure, as members of a common church attend meetings, they do it as a group. But a church meeting is only going to be sacred for individuals who are prepared for it to be sacred. My friend's views on how things are at one church versus another are his views... opinions and personal exchanges are not empirical. All I can say is that my personal experiences are different.

But the one place where I can correct him, and without much difficulty, is on his analysis of the Iraq war and the period of time leading up to it. His view is a commonly held view among left-wingers, the historically ignorant and children who were not old enough to be aware of the political scene prior to '01. He posits the hype of "Bush lied, people died" as fact. One thing common sense tells us is that basing our political stances on the picket signs and chants of protesters is seldom a sound practice. There is no factual evidence that President George W. Bush lied to get us into Iraq. None. A lie, by definition, is to propagate a false statement with intent to deceive. I will now show why the statement "Bush lied, people died" is dangerously incorrect.

Even in the 1960's, different groups of Islamic militants began surfacing in various parts of the world. One of the first, which is still operating today in Egypt, is known as the Muslim Brotherhood. This group was a political party in Egypt that was outlawed because of its violent responses to people, places and entities with which the group had disagreements. Disagreements used to justify attacks by the Brotherhood, were often unknown to the victims of such attacks. This was the start of modern-day Islamic terrorism. Random attacks on groups of people continued on through the next several decades with little retaliation or deterrence. Groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah, al-Qaeda and others are now ubiquitous--and this is not a result of U.S. foreign policy.

Although I remember mention of Libyans attacking a nightclub in Germany and killing a significant number of Americans, the first attack I actually remember was in 1993--the first attack on the World Trade Center. Then from that point on, two American embassies were hit in Africa and one of our Navy ships, the USS Cole, was attacked by militants in a Yemeni port as it attempted a routine fuel stop. All of these things happened before most Americans even knew George W. Bush existed.

Mixed in with all of this generic Islamic militant radicalism, various states exhibited evidence of terrorism. Iraq was one of those. By visiting http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/iraq/timeline.htm, it is surprising to see how many documented incidents there were regarding Iraq, the UN and Coalition countries. Iraq violated UN Security Council resolutions one right after another. An on-again-off-again war had been taking place between Coalition forces and Iraq since Desert Storm in the early 90's. Throughout the entire decade, U.S., British, French, German, Israeli and UN intelligence had determined beyond a reasonable doubt that Saddam Hussein sought, obtained and utilized weapons of mass destruction and biological chemicals for use in warfare. Politicians and diplomats across the globe condemned Iraq for this behavior (just as they are regarding Iran and its nuclear program).

The thought that George Bush lied by simply repeating the facts that existed through years of intelligence reports, both public and classified, is absolutely ludicrous. To believe such a notion, one must either have no grasp of recent history, or no grasp on reality. Similarly, to blame George W. Bush for a war in Afghanistan, Iraq or anywhere else in the world because he happened to be the United States president at the time the Islamic fundamentalists' most severely escalated their war on the infidels and the West is also mind-boggling. This is the very point I made last night about blind faith. Why would someone blindly believe and repeat the psycho-babble of the 1960's anti-war throwbacks? Merely saying "Bush lied, people died" in any serious manner shows a complete inability to think logically.