The flaw in President Bush's whole premise for warring in Iraq is now, once again, made obvious. To repeat, his whole rationale for destroying Iraq and its peoples (his STATED rationale), was "to fight the terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them here at home."
The concept was to control Iraq, install democracy and so remove the roots of terrorism. Since the war was to make us safer at home the presumption is that our welfare is all important, that our health, our life, our liberty, our "pursuit of happiness" is so essential that it trumps the welfare of innocents in the lands we destroy in order to preserve that essence. Just last week, in fact, did Bush repeat this justification for the war.
Now, just today, news reports tell of an impending Bush veto of a bi-partisan plan to increase health care insurance for children, adding $35 billion over 5 years to the Child Health Insurance Program so as to cover more of the nation's 8 million uninsured children.
So half a trillion dollars to kill nearly a million Iraqis, displace 4 million more for the illusory fairy tale that it will make us safer is acceptable, but a relatively paltry 35 billion dollars to insure more, not all, just more, of our children is unacceptable.
Further, the war was to preserve our welfare, including that of the uninsured children. But without this eminently affordable health insurance, their welfare--allegedly preserved by a huge expenditure on violence--is endangered by a failure to make a relatively small expenditure on compassion.
No, the war in Iraq has nothing to do with making us safer, as indeed no such act of illegal immorality can ever do. President Bush has always known this.
Worse, it is obvious that his disregard for innocent lives half a world away is matched only by that for those here at home.
2 comments:
This is brilliant. So right on. So well said.
Thank you, Richard.
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