The Flawed Assumptions of the Anti-War Left

While other journals take on the issues directly related to the prosecution of the war, we thought we would take a moment to take a look at the assumptions driving the anti-war protesters at home.

America is the root of all evil in the world. This the assumption underlying much of the extreme Left's vision of the United States. Its chief proponent has been Noam Chomsky, a linguistics professor at MIT, who has given this assumption a patina of respectability through copious footnoting while providing no actual evidence to support his position. However like any conspiracy theory, the evidence to the contrary is marginalized as being part of the conspiracy itself. For example, Chomsky has argued that the US military killed thousands of civilians in massacres during its invasion of Panama in 1989. The journalists who were with the troops and in the neighborhoods where the massacres supposedly occurred and call his accusations complete fantasy are said by Chomsky to be part of the conspiracy. Expect new accusations along these lines to surface over the coming weeks.

Peace/protest is patriotic. This is the assumption that has been used by anti-war protesters to justify their protests at the same time American soldiers are engaged in battle. In the current war, part of the American strategy to limit casualties on both sides has been to encourage surrender of enemy combatants. Saddam Hussein's strategy over the last few months of his regime was the long-shot that anti-war opinion at home and abroad would prevent this war. Video taken at the protests were broadcast within Iraq and used by the regime to prop it up. Protest then becomes a weapon that discourages abandonment of the regime and making casualties on both sides more likely. Do the protesters accept this responsibility?

Another assumption along peace=no suffering, war=suffering. If this were true, why have there been no signs demanding Saddam's exile or decrying his regime? Why is there no recognition at these protests of the violence he has perpetrated on his people through his arbitrary arrests, torture and executions? As one Iraqi exile (one of the 17% of the Iraqi population living in exile) has stated, "There can be no peace without justice."

Yet are these protesters promising the Iraqi people this? To a completely objective bystander it would appear that Bush was the aggressor in this conflict and that Saddam's regime was more legitimate than his. It completely flies in the face of the intolerance for dissent shown by his regime, and the brutal methods it has employed to insure the "support" of his people.

To better underscore this lie, imagine that the roles of the US and Russia were reversed. What if the US had continued supplying arms to Iraq in blatant disregard for UN resolutions - and Russia took it upon itself to oust Saddam by forming its own "coalition of the willing."? Would the protesters side with the US or Russia?

Vietnam. While the US military moves into the future with executing and managing conflicts, anti-war protesters continue to be stuck in the past. While the military has learned from the mistakes made in that war, the protesters haven't learned from theirs.

The current armaments employed by the military may look similar or the same as those used thirty-seven years ago, but they are actually about as similar to those weapons as they are to the catapult and bow and arrow. Weapons are designed to kill or injure combatants, and the current generation of weapons can achieve levels of accuracy only dreamed of by the generals who fought in Vietnam. The military does not want to kill civilians. Many in the professional military have families of their own and as a result know the value of human life better than those who protest. On a more practical level, the military also recognizes that what they blow up today they will have to rebuild next month. Notice how the lights of Baghdad have remained on during all of the bombing, while any strong spring storms leave my neighborhood in the dark.

The war is illegal. This rests upon the assumption that international law is as comprehensive as that in our society. For example, it would be illegal for me to attack my neighbor should I feel threatened by him. I would have to wait for him to attack first then call the police. International law is not codified the way civil law is. Instead international law is a loose set of "gentlemen's agreements" without any overarching authority that can police or enforce these agreements. The United Nations may have sanctioned the previous Gulf War, but it has not sanctioned the interventions in Somalia, Bosnia or Afghanistan. The UN was not designed to be a world government.

"No blood for oil." First, twelve years ago the American military had the opportunity to control both the oil fields in Kuwait and those in Iraq. They passed it up. Second, the US uses very little oil from the Middle East. Most of our oil comes from our immediate neighbors Canada and Mexico, as well as the South American nation of Venezuela. France, Germany and Japan consume most of the oil from the Middle East.

"The war increases instability in the region". This is like striking a match in a burning building. The Middle East cannot be any more unstable than it all ready is today. Besides, since when have anti-war protesters stood for the status quo? The Middle East has been a swamp of terrorism for centuries, and the United States now finds itself forced to "drain the swamp" in order to prevent the events of September 11, 2001 from recurring.

The break-up of Iraq threatens its neighbors. Iraq is a completely artificial state designed after the break-up of the Ottoman Empire by Winston Churchill and British politicians more concerned with playing the "Grand Game" with France than with the creation of viable states. It is made up of three groups of people: the Kurds in the north, Sunni in the middle and Shi'a in the south. During the 1990s we witnessed the completely artificial state of Yugoslavia that had been held together by a strongman (Josef Tito) break up violently after his death. Most of the violence that occurred as a result of the break up had been done in the name of preserving Yugoslavia. Nevertheless the state disappeared in the end anyway.

Do we really want to make the same mistake in Iraq? It is true that a successful and independent Kurdistan will destabilize its neighbors - but look at them: Syria, Iran and Turkey. These aren't exactly Canada and Mexico.

The Left's behavior has been disgraceful in its defense of one of the most odious regimes to ever exist on this planet. By going all-out to defend Saddam Hussein they have surrendered the moral high ground to those on the Right who view war as a legitimate way to free people from oppression when no other way is available. As John Stuart Mill said about war in "On Liberty," "…the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice -- is often means of their regeneration."

The Iraqi people are discovering the means of their regeneration. I hope that the Left does the same.