Jeff Jacoby: "The humanitarian case for war in Iraq"

I should make one thing very clear. I do not think the United States should (or can) get involved in every area on Earth where people are being tortured or mistreated. There clearly has to be a reason of "National Interest" for us to sacrifice our soldiers to any cause--on this there should never be a dispute.

For many, many, many reasons I believe our foray into Iraq served our national interest. It is on this humanitarian side of the effort that Jacoby, writing in Townhall addresses.

But condemning Saddam's brutality, let alone doing something to end it, was not a priority for most of the left. I remember asking Ted Kennedy during the run-up to the war why he and others in the antiwar camp seemed to have so little sympathy for the countless victims of Ba'athist tyranny. Even if they thought an invasion was unwise, couldn't they at least voice some solidarity with the innocent human beings writhing in Saddam's Iraqi hell? Kennedy replied vehemently that he took a back seat to no one in his concern for those who suffer under all the world's evil regimes, and demanded to know whether supporters of war in Iraq also wanted to invade North Korea, Burma, and other human-rights violators.

It was a specious answer. The United States may not be able to stop every homicidal fascist on the planet, but that is hardly an argument for stopping none of them. If the Bush administration had listened to Kennedy and to the millions like him the world over who protested and marched raised their voices against invading Iraq, would the world be a better place today? Leaving Saddam and the Ba'athists in power -- free to break and butcher their victims, to support international terrorists, to menace other countries -- would have emboldened murderous dictators everywhere. The jihadists of Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas, celebrating the latest display of American irresolution, would have been spurred to new atrocities. The Arab world would have sunk a little deeper into its nightmare of cruelty and fear. And women's heads would still be getting nailed to the front doors of Iraqi homes.

Read the whole article. And then, when you are done, consider the Christian Peacemaker Teams who just had three kidnap victims freed by the American forces today in Iraq. Read the statement on their website or the abbreviated version in my post below.

Then see whose side you are on. The Baathist and al-Qaeda led insurgency side, or the coalition forces seeking to free a nation.