More Baloney from Bush: State of the Union Speech
by James Buchanan
As usual, Bush pushed the notion that occupying Iraq has something to do with fighting terrorism. In the real world, the Iraqi rebels are nationalists, who want the foreign occupation troops out of their country. Only a small minority of the rebels are not from Iraq. One article notes “Two new studies… ‘painstakingly analyzed the backgrounds and motivations of hundreds of foreigners entering Iraq to fight the United States’ have found that most foreign fighters in Iraq were not terrorists before the Iraq war, but were ‘radicalized by the war itself.’ ”
Bush said that men like bin Laden and al Zarqawi would take over Iraq if we pulled out right now. First this is a complete lie. Most likely, one of the religious mullahs such as al Sistani or Moqtada al Sadr would take over. Second, it is none of our business who runs Iraq. The US president does not have the authority to pick and choose who runs which country. A civil war will probably break out if we leave Iraq, but there would be one big improvement: No US soldiers would be dying in that civil war. The Iraqis would be fighting amongst themselves to sort our their future, which is exactly what will happen if we pull our troops out right now, two years from now or ten years from now. (more…)