the 9/11 commission report: chapter 2 (part 2)

doesn't it delight you to know that because of the fall-out from 9/11, our sweet government is monitoring this post because of the key words i'll be using this evening:

terrorists
bin ladin
saddam hussein
iraq
etc.

hello, sweet government. you're not going to lock me up like bradley manning, are you?

whoops, there was another key word.

i started reading this book as part of a general quest to understand why this country went to war in iraq.

at the time the war started, i was a silly college student who didn’t pay attention to such things. it just wasn’t on my radar. it is now, and i don’t understand. so i’m trying to figure it out.

what i remember hearing back then, is what people still say today. the reasons we went to war with iraq were

A) to find weapons of mass destruction
B) they were providing a safe haven for terrorists, and supporting terrorists

what i have learned since is that…

“Article 2(4): All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” – the U.N. Charter

except in cases of self-defense:

“Article 51: Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.” – the U.N. Charter

from http://www.worldpress.org/specials/iraq/

(i haven’t read that entire article, so i’m not promoting it. that’s the best i could do to find the actual international laws at the moment.)

basically, you can’t just go and attack another country because you feel like it. iraq did not attack us, so we were not justified in attacking them. the nation that attacks another nation without being attacked first…is the nation breaking the law.

so that brings us to weapons of mass destruction…if they had some, perhaps we would be justified in attacking them to “protect international peace and security.”

however…

they didn’t. they did not have any weapons of mass destruction.

so reason two,

were they providing safe haven for terrorists?

behold, the evidence presented by the 9/11 commission report.

“Bin Ladin was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq, even though Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, had never had an Islamist agenda – save for his opportunistic pose as a defender of the faithful against ‘Crusaders’ during the Gulf War of 1991. Moreover, Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army.”

“Bin Ladin is said to have asked for space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but there is no evidence that Iraq responded to this request.”

“There is also evidence that around this time Bin Ladin sent out a number of feelers to the Iraqi regime, offering some cooperation. None are reported to have received a significant response. According to one report, Saddam Hussein’s efforts at this time to rebuild relations with the Saudis and other Middle Eastern regimes led him to stay clear of Bin Ladin.”

“The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some common themes in both sides’ hatred of the United States. But to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.”

beside each of these quotes, i furiously scrawled the question “WHY DID WE GO TO IRAQ?”

reason A was invalid.

according to this report, reason B was invalid.

conversations i have with people and further research provided another reason.

C) Saddam Hussein was so evil, we had to do something.

if that was the reason…why were the other reasons given beforehand? you can’t make up new reasons after the fact.

there are a plethora of evil dictators and regimes all over the world. we aren’t doing anything about that. why did we go to IRAQ? it bothers me that we went because we were told reasons that were false, and still went. i do not trust a government that misleads the public. it bothers me that people, myself included, believed those reasons without thoughtful criticism. if morals obligated us to confront him, we would have attacked him before 9/11. we did not confront him because america is so good, and moral, and had to come to the rescue. there are plenty of humanitarian issues going on in the world, and we’re not doing a thing about it. and, in some cases, we’re the ones engaged in humanitarian abuses. so that’s not the reason either.

not to mention the fact that going to one nation to promote democracy, while funding/supporting undemocratic regimes in other nations is, well, kind of confusing. and something i'm still learning about.

human lives are at stake in a war. innocent human lives. (and probably some cattle grazing in the wrong field at the wrong time). i am pro-life, so i should have been thinking more critically about war before now. i should take it seriously. there should be REAL reasons to go to war. not made-up reasons.