Speech (11/23/05)

(The following is a persuasive speech that I gave at the end of November. It is not intended to be a scholarly journal article, but the points are good, anyway.)

Today I am going to talk to you about something that we are all familiar with to some degree: the Iraq War. Recent polls have suggested that a majority of Americans have a negative opinion of what is transpiring in the country, and grandstanding congressmen have called for an immediate troop withdrawal. Over the next few minutes, I am going to argue point-by-point why the War on Terror is the best policy to follow in order to bring about our goal of a peaceful Middle East.
Time, casualties, the liberal media, and Howard "Screamin' Dem" Dean have all combined to create the current negativity in regards to the mission. However, it is crucial that we remember the lead-in to Operation Iraqi Freedom when debating the merits, or lack thereof, of our invovlement in that country.
Saddam Hussein's reign as dictator of Iraq was marked by utter disregard for both international law and basic human rights. His invasions of Iran and Kuwait cost well over 1 million lives. He used chemical weapons against civilian populations in his own country, killing thousands of innocent men, women and children where they stood. His forces fired on NATO aircraft patrolling the northern and southern No Fly Zones almost daily (zones that were set up to ensure that Hussein would not be able to once again attempt genocide on the Kurds). Finally, he failed to account for the weapons of mass destruction that everyone KNEW he had which was a clear violation of the unanimously passed UN Resolution 1441.
Furthermore, in 2003 he had arguably the worst human rights record of any leader on the globe. Saddam Hussein had a real passion for torture. The following are accounts published in the USA Today shortly after the capture of Baghdad:
-"I was beaten, refrigerated naked, and put underground for a year because I am a Shiite and Saddam is a Sunni."
-A reporter described being one of the first westerners to walk into a torture chamber: "Pictures of dead Iraqis, with their necks slashed, their eyes gouged out, and their genitals blackened, fill a bookshelf. Jail cells, with dried blood on the floor and rusted shackles bolted to the walls, line the corridors."
-An Iraqi soldier: "Interrogators regularly used pliers to remove men's teeth, electric prods to shock men's genitals, and drills to cut holes in men's ankles. Gang-raping a prisoner's wife in front of him was a common practice."
Of course, we all hear about the mass graves still being found throughout the country, and who could forget about the shredder? Saddam would gather an enemy's family and stand and watch with them as he passed the dissident through a meat shredder. Alive. Slowly. And feet first, so he could see and feel himself being shredded to death.
Abu Ghraib is looking like Disney World about now, isn't it?

It is a popular inconsistency of the antiwar crowd to say, "we are glad Saddam is gone, but not the way that it came about." They say that we should have allowed inspections to continue, should have added sanctions, and should have followed a policy of containment.
I have already detailed the depth of Saddam's contempt for international law, so a verbal slap on the wrist clearly would not have worked. You cannot contain insanity. He kicked weapons inspectors out of the country in 1998, and deceived later inspections teams until they were pulled out in 2003. There is absolutely no evidence that continued inspections would have been anything but embarassing for the international community. And more sanctions...really? The sanctions in place after the First Gulf War accomplished two things: 1. starved the people of Iraq, and 2. lined Saddam's pocketbook with billions of dollars from embezzled international aid.
The U.N. is an unreliable, unaccountalbe bureaucracy that has spiraled out of control in recent years. It cannot be trusted to handle it's own finances (Oil for Food) much less the pressing issues of the world today. In a post-9/11 world (and I want you to remember what you felt that day...some day I will dedicate a post to life that day in a large city),we CAN NOT afford to allow lawless, genocidal dictators to rule in an already volatile part of the world.
One the other hand, the Bush Doctrine, as it is called, has already proven successful. Anyway you analyze it, two harbors of terror, Iraq and Afghanistan, are on the road to Democracy.
In 2004, when Libya's Muammar Gaddhafi voluntarily gave up his country's unconventional weapons programs and subsequently agreed to weapons inspections ON OUR TERMS, it was not because he was killed by kindness by the American Left. He did so because he knew he was going to held accuntable for his actions for the first time in probably his entire reign. The "good cop, bad cop" routine does not work when there is a total lack of a "bad cop" (don't read too much into that).
The antwar crowd distinguishes between the War on Terror and Operation Iraqi Freedom. I do not, and neither should you. It is common knowledge that al-Qaeda has been operating in Iraq for years now. Al Zarqawi has had countless communications with top lieutenants of bin Laden intercepted by American and British intelligence agencies. Al Cowarda is flooding into Iraq right now to fight our well-trained soldiers. They are focusing all of their manpower and resources in that region. What does this mean? It means that they can fight our well-trained, well-armed military in Iraq, or they can fight your mother here in the U.S.A. We have successfully opened a second front in the War on Terror, and this is not articulated in the American press.
Pat Basham, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute for Policy Research in D.C., has said that, "Democracy is an evolutionary development rather than an overnight phenomenon." AMEN! Our U.S.A. hasn't truly embodied the spirit of Democracy until recent decades. It takes time to work out the "kinks". Many of my (D) friends claim that Iraqis are not ready for freedom. This is both racist and ignorant in nature. I would refer these people to the various elections of the past year.
Everyone and their great uncle Larry knew that to stand in a line at the polls was to endanger one's life, but the Iraqis did so anyway. Some lines were bombed. After the smoke cleared, people got back in line and finished what they had started. They refused to be intimidated. They refused to leave until they had cast a ballot. Talk about defiance. Talk about sending a message. The people of Iraq turned out to the polls in numbers that rivaled or surpassed voter turnouts in the U.S. and Europe under conditions that could be considered nothing less than completely dangerous. Do we even have that kind of courage? Would we still have within us that stony determination to exercise the rights of a free citizen in a free country under those conditions? I would certainly like to think so, but when it comes to our Iraqi friends, I KNOW so.
After each person cast his ballot and triumphantly waved his or HER ink-stained finger, people danced in the streets. And many of them cried. They cried tears of joy because for the first time in their lives they had control of their nation. They cried tears of joy because for the first time in their lives they had control of their own destiny. What a moving experience it was for the world to watch the greatest affirmation of the power of freedom since 1989. The native peoples of the Middle East might not want Democracy? Nonsense. Within every man, woman, and child on this earth there lies a desire to be free.
I want you to recall the images that you have seen (albeit rarely) of the amazingly long lines at the polls. Recall the scene of burqua-clad women voting...of our soldiers giving children sports equipment, candy, and toys...of schools and hospitals opening....I want you to recall all of these images and consider the first common thread that comes to your minds. When I envision those images, I see one thing, and one thing alone...hope. Hope; which is absolutely the greatest gift that one man can give to another man. And hope was given to the people of Iraq by OUR men and women in uniform under OUR flag. Hope was not given to Iraq by Saddam Hussein. Nor was it given to them by sluggish, corrupt U.N. bureaucrats, Washington talking heads, Cindy Sheehan, or Howard Dean. It sure as hell was not given to them by Russia, Germany, or France.
So here is what we all need to do: 1. We all need to support political candidates who are strong-willed and prepared to stay the course in Iraq, despite waning public opinion; and, 2. We need to honor our troops and their extreme sacrfices by supporting their mission.
If you remember one thing from this speech, I want you to remember this: be proud to be an American. Be confident in our identity as a nation of liberators, and not as an occupying force. Look for oppression, injustice, and tyranny in the world and fight it the way it should be fought, with passion. This is our noble calling as a beacon of liberty. After all, in the immortal words of Ronald Reagan, "We are today, the last, best hope of man on this earth."
Thank you, and may God bless America.