by Dr. Patrick Johnston
I hate agreeing with liberals.
Most of the time, when you find yourself agreeing with leftists,
that’s hard evidence that you’re dead wrong.
But with increasing frequency I have noticed hardline conservatives
like Patrick Buchanan, Joe Sobran, Howard Phillips with the Constitution
Party, and others, articulating their discontent with Bush’s war on
terrorism, and I’ve been emboldened.
I’m going to be so bold as to say that Bush has been more effective
in advancing the aims of the New World Order liberals than even Clinton was!
This is primarily because so-called conservatives have forsaken their
principles in order to hold “the party line”.
In his State of the Union address, Bush accused Iraq of not
disarming as they were told. "He
has shown utter contempt for the United Nations and the opinion of the
world," Bush said. The
President requested that the U.N. Security Council convene Feb. 5 to
"consider the facts of Iraq's ongoing defiance of the world."
He sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to make a firm case that
Iraq must be dealt with promptly. Although
Bush welcomes assistance from American allies, he made it plain that he
was willing to act unilaterally to disarm Iraq by violent force.
Though Iraq does not threaten us, has not attacked us, cannot defeat us, and does not want war with us, the U.S. is preparing to invade and occupy that country. If we do, it will be the first purely imperial war in our history, a war launched to manipulate a foreign country to our will. President Bush is using the 9/11 terrorist attacks as an excuse for this invasion, but this invasion is unjustified on that basis, as we shall see. There very well may be reasons for the US to go to war against Iraq, but we’re not hearing them.
Recent large polls show public support for a unilateral
invasion is dwindling. Many
in Congress are realizing that the number of their constituents who are
not supportive of this war is growing.
If we make war on Iraq, it should be because Congress has declared
war on Iraq. That’s the
only constitutional recourse for war.
This, Congress has not done. Instead,
they’ve voted to give Bush the right to use military force to make war
against whomever he wants to in this war on terrorism, and not adhering to
the Constitutional limitations of making and declaring war, they have
demonstrated for us all why the founders designed the legislature to be
the political body that declares war, not the executive branch.
Congress doesn’t have the constitutional right to give up its
constitutional powers to the executive branch.
They are authorized to make a declaration of war, and giving Bush
the right to use military force on his own whim is a cop-out of their
constitutional obligations. If
Congress doesn’t like the means the Constitution provides for declaring
war, the same Constitution also provides a means to amend it.
Short of an amendment, they are bound to it and intentional
violation of it is usurpation and betrayal.
Now that Congress has voted away its obligations to declare and
make war, it has little right to complain if Bush makes a war that they no
longer want.
Here are the Administration’s reasons for war against
Iraq, followed by rebuttals:
Argument #1 for
invading Iraq: Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, with the
ability to kill thousands upon thousands of innocent people.
He’s made these weapons of mass destruction, he’s lied
about his weapons of mass destruction, he’s not unveiled evidence
that he’s destroyed these weapons of mass destruction…
Did I mention that he has weapons of mass destruction?
Rebuttal:
So does China, N. Korea, the Soviet Union.
So do we! Could
Saddam justify a preemptive attack upon the United States because, indeed,
we have weapons of mass destruction?
Using Bush’s reasoning, he could!
The key effectiveness of this argument is to mention those ominous
words, weapons of mass destruction, with enough repetitiveness that
all common sense goes out the proverbial window in hopes to drive us to
violence against anybody our government says has them.
But owning weapons of mass destruction do not by themselves justify
a preemptive violent invasion of a sovereign nation.
Intrinsic within a nation’s right to exist is it’s right to
obtain the means for their self-defense.
The same God-given, inalienable right to personal self-defense that
our forefathers acknowledged in the second amendment also belongs to
nations of persons.
Argument #2 for
invading Iraq: Saddam has used those weapons on his own people!
He has used biological and chemical weapons on his own.
Destroying Saddam’s government would be a favor to the Iraqi
people who have suffered terribly under his tyranny.
Rebuttal:
N. Korea and the Soviet Union have each used biological and
chemical weapons on their own people!
N. Korea, China, and the Soviet Union have abused and slaughtered
their own people to a much greater degree than Saddam.
Furthermore, the U.S. government has used biological and
chemical weapons on its own people!
A.
Recall the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln invaded a Confederacy who had
seceded democratically and peacefully, and made war on them.
B. Recall the Federal-government backed Tuskegee
Syphilis Study that began in 1932. Two hundred poor black men with
syphilis began an experiment in which those men were to be studied
long-term and kept from life-saving therapy.
As many as one hundred of the original two hundred victims died as
a direct or indirect result of the illness. The wives and children of the
subjects also suffered as a result of the disease.
C. From 1946-1974, the Atomic Energy Commission
authorized a series of experiments in which radioactive materials uranium
and plutonium were given to individuals in many cases without being
informed they were the subjects of an experiment, and in some cases
without any expectation of a positive benefit to them.
The victims were from vulnerable populations: the poor, the
elderly, U.C.-San Francisco college students, and mentally retarded
children. In those
experiments, the children were fed radioactive oatmeal without the
consent of their parents! In
1993, the experiments were uncovered and publicized.
In 1996, the United States settled with the survivors for 4.9
million dollars. In
that suit, the court claimed 20,000
other Americans were used for biochemical experiments in the 1940s, '50s
and '60s.
D. Remember the Branch Davidians at Waco, where the
F.B.I. used CS gas on the religious compound – a biochemical warfare
agent banned by hundreds of nations by international treaty.
That’s a weapon of mass destruction, and our government
used it on our own people. The
award-winning film, “Waco Rules of Engagement”, which you can rent at
most video-rental businesses, established in my mind that the Feds
murdered those 86 men, women, and children - executed them without so much
as a trial by jury. They did
not die by suicide, as the media proclaimed.
There are many more examples, but this is adequate to prove
that the United States has employed weapons of mass destruction on
its own people throughout its history.
If Saddam’s use of weapons of mass destruction against his own
people justifies our invasion of his country, then Saddam, using Bush’s
reasoning, could justify launching a preemptive invasion of our country!
Argument # 3
for invasion of Iraq: Saddam justifies and finances terrorist
activities. On March 12,
2002, Saddam Hussein’s deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz said Iraq would
double the cash he awards to the estate of Palestinian suicide bombers, to
$21,000, as reported by the London Mirror.
He has provided safe haven to terrorists in the past.
Rebuttal:
If there was evidence that Iraq played a role in the 9/11 attacks
or the anthrax attacks against us, or that he provided safe haven to
terrorists he knew were involved in the 9/11 attacks, then this would be a
powerful justification of a unilateral invasion of Iraq.
But our government has claimed that the 9/11 terrorists did not
operate under the auspices of any nation, but were madmen on the edge of a
society. Our government has
claimed that anthrax attacks were probably the work of a domestic lunatic.
Unlike Afghanistan in their harboring of bin Laden, there has been
no evidence that Iraq has harbored terrorists that he knew were
responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
There very well may be evidence that Saddam was involved in 9/11,
and we may be being kept ignorant of the connections between Saddam and
9/11 for national security purposes, but we can only judge based upon what
our government tells us. Based
upon our government’s public statements, there’s no evidence that
Saddam engaged in terrorism against us.
Saddam’s endorsement of terrorism against other nations
is immaterial to our war against our terrorists just as it is negligible
our nation’s interests. There
are many Arab nations that endorse or finance terrorism on behalf of the
Palestinians – even Saudi Arabia, home to most of the nineteen
terrorists that struck us on 9/11. An
American healthcare worker in Saudi Arabia was quoted as saying that Saudi
Arabians joyfully cheered when the terrorist attacks took place on 9/11.
Yet we have called Saudi Arabia an “ally” on the war on
terrorism. How can we attack
and invade Iraq because they justify terrorism against other nations all
the while we declare to be allies nations such as Saudi Arabia who do the
same thing?
Argument #4 for Iraqi
invasion: Saddam hates Israel and is a threat to Israel, our ally.
He has justified and financed terrorism against our ally in the
Middle East.
Rebuttal:
So have our allies in the war on terrorism!
The U.S. needs to let Israel handle their own squabbles –
they have shown themselves more than qualified to defend themselves.
We need to stop tying Israel’s hands with promises of money for
peace with the Palestinians, and openly encourage their occupation of the
lands where those who terrorize them take refuge.
Whatever we do, we need to keep our military out of entangling
conflicts where our national interests are not at stake.
Allies should be ends, not means.
Israel is more likely, not less likely, but more likely
to be attacked if we preemptively invade Iraq.
Concern for our ally, Israel, should keep us from attacking Iraq.
Saddam’s contained and does not threaten the stability of the
region, unless we invade. None
of Iraq’s neighbor’s fear him or want us to invade.
Might does not make right.
Just because we can play policeman of the world, doesn’t mean we
should. I am a patriot of
God-given liberties first, then secondly, my country.
No freedom-loving person should devote unconditional allegiance to
any government or governor but King Jesus.
No agenda is worth our supreme devotion but His.
If our country continues to play the bully of the world,
threatening the sovereignty of other nations and endorsing population
control programs around the world, America will find her best God-fearing
patriots more and more frequently sympathizing with the foreign
freedom-fighters who slay her soldiers on the battlefield.
The constitutional obligation of our leaders is serving the U.S.
citizenry and providing for our safety and security, and we need to get
our military out of other nations where our interests are not directly
involved.
Argument #5 for Iraqi
invasion: Saddam has violated a dozen or so U.N. resolutions.
How long do we let him spurn the opinion of the civilized world
before we put teeth to those resolutions with violent vengeance?
Rebuttal:
That’s the business of the United Nations.
They were not U.S. resolutions, but U.N. resolutions, and so it’s
the U.N.’s business to enforce that.
The United States has no business in the U.N. at all!
At a U.N. summit in South Africa last year, the U.N. voted to
include Israel and the United States as nations that sponsor terrorism!
Our delegates walked out of the conference in protest, but we need
to keep on walking, right out of the U.N. altogether!
We need to get our money and our noses out of the socialistic
sovereignty-threatening United Nations.
We need to stop forcing our Americans soldiers put on baby-blue
U.N. helmets and serve under foreign commanders who haven’t taken the
same oath to defend the Constitution of the United States.
The U.N. doesn’t respect our God-given rights, our Christian God,
our nation’s Christian foundations, our 2nd Amendment, or our
constitutional limitations on centralized power, and so we shouldn’t
respect them or their sovereignty-threatening resolutions.
If the United Nations had their way and democratically
passed a “U.N. resolution” to disarm America and march in our streets,
then their baby-blue helmet wearing soldiers would find out first hand
what my .308 caliber hollow-points feel like in the sternum at 3000 feet
per second! (Not to mention
the arsenal my wife and family would be shooting at them from
inside my compound. J)
Seriously, we need to get the U.S. out of the U.N., and if we
do that, then we’ll see just how powerless the U.N. is to enforce its
own resolutions.
Argument # 6
justifying an invasion of Iraq: Saddam’s been firing at our jets
with anti-aircraft weaponry ever since we have been patrolling the
“no-fly zone” since the end of the first Gulf War.
This places the lives of our soldiers at peril.
An invasion to neutralize the threat to our armed forces is
therefore critical to our nation’s interests.
Rebuttal:
This argument is one of the better arguments for an invasion of
Iraq. Certainly, the
protection of our armed forces is in our national interests.
Nevertheless, the whole argument is based upon the legitimacy of
the U.N. resolution that dictated the “no-fly zones” in the first
place! Has it ever occurred
to us that the “no-fly zone” is in Iraq?!?
The U.N. has declared that Iraq can’t fly their own jets over
their own nation and that the U.N. jets can.
What if Iraq, with the vote of some Arab national congress,
declared north of the Kentucky and south of Georgia a “no-fly zone”
and wanted to fly Iraqi jets over the “no-fly zone” on a regular
basis? Should we respect
that? Would we not try to
blow his jets out of our sky for violating our sovereign space?
Even if we had agreed to those terms as a condition of surrender in
a previous conflict, we would not be eternally bound to them.
Nations and their leaders can change their minds, as Bush
demonstrated for us last year by his much-publicized, unilateral
withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
The United States and Iraq have every right to defend themselves
from foreign enemies who threaten their sovereign airspace.
I submit unto you that the democratic vote of other nations
hold no sway over the sovereignty of an individual nation.
If England, Canada, Australia, Cuba, Russia, China, and the E.U.
voted that we should trash our constitution and give up our guns like they
have, we would not be obligated to do it!
The U.N. has no right to force its will upon other sovereign
nations. Thanks to the United
States’ military backing, the U.N. has the power to enforce its
dictates, but might does not equal right.
Argument #7 for Iraqi
invasion: Saddam could give his weapons of mass destruction to
people who hate the U.S. and who might use those weapons against us
in terrorist acts.
Rebuttal:
So could China, N. Korea, or the Soviet Union!
We don’t invade nations because they could
or might do something.
It is much, much more likely that the U.S. will attack or
invade Iraq than it is that Iraq will attack or invade the U.S.
If Saddam followed Bush’s rules of engagement, he’d be saying
that since Bush could give weapons of mass destruction to
those who might use those weapons against him, then a
preemptive invasion of the U.S. is justified!
See how poisonous this reasoning is?
We don’t attack and invade other nations because they might do
something to us. I think that
America is much more likely to be attacked by Saddam if we
attack and invade him.
In conclusion, there is no promise of victory over
terrorism apart from repentance and faith in God.
There’s no assurance of victory over those who terrorize us so
long as we continue to legalize the terrorism of our own babies in the
womb. God actually promises
to send military defeat and economic depravity to nations that depart from
Him. Do not forsake His
longsuffering for complacency, America.
He is a just God, and He will avenge the innocent blood shed in our
land; namely, the 45 million slaughtered in the Abortion Holocaust.
We need to return to the Holy Bible and to the principles of our
founders in the way we govern ourselves.
This requires humble repentance our personal and national sins.
This requires justice for the preborn.
I fear that if we do not forsake our sins soon, then coming
generations will ask themselves, “Whence cometh the destruction of this
once-great nation?” And the
answer will come: “Because they have forsaken the God of their
forefathers and the covenant they made with Him, and they have shed
innocent blood and followed after idols.”
Patrick Johnston, D.O.