yesterday they showed Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 movie on the local cable channel. it's the first time i had a chance to see it, and since it did so much noise when it was released, i thought i'll see it.
so, is Bush a fool? so it seems. did he and his government plan to invade iraq before 9/11? probably. did iraq and saddam have nothing to do with 9/11 or al-qaida? most likely. i don't know why they wanted to invade iraq. was it because he wanted to complete his father's work, or was it connected to the oil, or some personal vendetta because saddam tried to kill his father (which, as the supreme commander of the armed forces, was a legitimate military target). the cause was wrong, but the result was just.
yes, many Iraqis died in the war. but i would argue that many iraqies would have died anyway by the hands of Saddam himself. you've all seen the graves of tens of thousands of Iraqis killed by Saddam and his men, and there's no reason to think he would not have continued do kill more Iraqis. so one may argue that the total number of civilians that died since 2003 wasn't much different with or without the war.
now, why go to war anyway? the arab world, and that included iraq, is ruled by dictators. all of them. egypt, Morocco, saudi-arabia, and all the rest. the result of this is a low income, and the result of this, is frustration at the success of western civilization while the arabs are left behind. and the result of this, is terror. the best way it seems to me to minimize the terrorist option for young arabs, is to release them from their dictators, give them democracy, and allow them to prosper. that won't prevent terrorism completely, but it will be allot more difficult for extremists to recruit people for their groups, when they have that much to loose.
furthermore, if the US wants to see itself as the promoter of democracy in the world, it just can't sit back and cooperate with anti-democratic regimes like those that exist in the middle east.
Moore, like many people, fails to see the big picture. he finds that the war was started for the wrong reasons, and comes to the conclusion that the war should never have started. he forgets that in the long run, toppling saddam and installing a democratic government in iraq, that will hopefully spread itself into other arab countries, is in the interest of the national security of the US and the rest of the world, not to mention the new markets that can be opened, once the oil money reaches the people, instead of for the rulers and their armies.
oh, after that they played Bowling for Colombine. having a constitutional right to carry a gun is nuts, and it also contradicts the principle that the government, any government, must have a monopoly on weapons.
