An Analysis of the Flaming-Liberals Partisan Hatred for President Bush in Regards to Iraq
| Published 09/17/04

Graphic by: Tim Tuley

I feel that I need a special disclaimer to attach to this document, because as soon as a reader assumes the political ideology of a writer, they immediately close their theoretically "opened mind" and fill it with the indoctrination of four years of their party's political platform.

I am neither an ardent supporter of George W. Bush, nor am I a Republican by any means. I am a pragmatic voter, willing to support a President despite his political party based off how I view the decisions he makes while in office. However, there are certain things about this year's election that do not sit well with me when it comes to the liberal portrayal of Bush.

It seems that most of the flak that Bush catches seems centered around the war in Iraq, specifically issues regarding if it was just, how it was carried out and the motivations behind the war. I saw the war in Iraq as a sort of necessary evil.

No, I am not a war junky, but I also am not one to think that there should be absolutely no war in the world. While it is an admirable idealist thought, it simply is impossible to realize. Ever since the world became civilized, there has been and there always will be war. Due to this fact, I have come to accept that at times we will be faced with the prospect of war. So getting over the hump of whether or not it should happen by realizing that it just will happen leads me to examine the reasons that it is happening in the first place.

There were many reasons for going to war in Iraq; a few of them included: Saddam's history of defying the UN's Resolutions to disarm all of his Biological and Chemical WMDs, his links to Terrorism (note: I did not say 9/11), his hostility and destabilization factor in the region and his treatment of his own citizens (worse than any US bungle in Iraq).

This is the point where people will scream, "Where are the WMDs?" - since this appears to be a key point in the whole argument. "Were they ever there?" "Bush lied!"

First of all, it is apparent that no one has yet to find where the WMD in Iraq are (if they are even still in Iraq and have not been smuggled out). However before you say WMDs were never in Iraq, please look back at the history of what we know about WMD in Iraq.

Until 1998, UN Weapons Inspectors were being stone-walled by Saddam in their attempt to uncover all his caches of weapons and disarm them. We had lists of known WMDs that were not disarmed during the time we were forced to withdraw. Saddam never accounted for the WMD that we knew he had, and yet people still believe he does not have them. So instead of you telling me that Bush lied, why not show me evidence of what happened to the WMD that we knew about all along?

Now on the topic of Bush lying, I really pray that Democrats release this straw that they are grasping. Three separate, independent non-partisan committees who investigated the incident determined that Bush did not lie and that the intelligence in the case of the WMD was faulty.

For those of you who stay current, you should realize that faulty intelligence has been an issue since the end of the Cold War (the Soviet Union and United States basically had their hands into everything, and the world was aligned one way or another).

Also, I would have the WMD critics take note that from 1998-2002, top notch democrats such as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Madeline Albright, Ted Kennedy, and even John Kerry, spent time illustrating the WMD threat in Iraq. So if Bush lied, then so did the party that you are so quick to replace him with while on your moralistic high horse. In fact, John Kerry gave a rather eloquent speech before the vote to give Bush the authority to go to war; in that speech, he detailed the threat of Iraq's WMD program. Earlier in 2004, after all the hub-bub about no WMD, John Kerry stated that if he knew then what he knew now about the state of things in Iraq and the WMD, he would still have voted to give Bush the power to go to war.

The motivations behind the war in Iraq were not centered on Iraqi oil or finishing his daddy's war. No, if you really want to blame Bush for a lofty motivation that exceeds his reasons to go to war, then blame him for his idealistic approach to furthering the creation of World Democracy. If anyone has studied Bush over the years, it is clear that he is a greater idealist than he is an insidious shadow-agenda maker. His critics claim how dumb he is, but then they manufacture these elaborate conspiracy theories where he is manipulating the CIA, Congress and World Affairs for his nefarious schemes.

With that being said, I would like to join in criticism of one thing involving Iraq: winning the peace. I am not going to solely place this blame on George W. Bush, because there are so many factors involved that are simply beyond his ability for oversight. I am resolved to believe that Iraq, unless occupied for several years to come, will simply fall into political turmoil and will eventually be replaced by a dictator. Sadly enough, terrorists are willing to blow up their own people (Iraqis) in order to get the general populace to turn against the United States.

Whoever told George Bush that Iraqis would be overwhelmed with joy and immediately rise up to assist us in the transition to democracy should be fired. As a junior in college and a student of political science, I could have told Bush that there was no way the Iraqis would have made this easy for us, and we should have been prepared the American public for a long, difficult haul.

This November, everyone needs to get out and vote for whichever candidate that they feel will be best for our nation, whether it be Bush, Kerry, Nader or Lou Gallo. All I would ask is that the general public makes sure that it educates itself beyond the talking heads. Make sure when you pick that person to lead for the next four years.