Devon Gould – 11/3/04

This page was last updated on November 3, 2004.

Why are we there?; Devon Gould; Beaver County Times; November 3, 2004.

It appears this letter may have been part of a high school assignment. Three letters from Monaca Senior High School students were published today.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“Many times each day, I ask myself why we went into Iraq, and every day, I just can’t seem to see why we went there.

“I was told that we went there because Saddam Hussein was killing his own people.”

[RWC] See the Iraq War Resolution passed by Congress for a list of the reasons.

“If that’s the case, then why aren’t we in the Sudan right now?”

[RWC] The United States is leading the effort to get the United Nations to take action, just as we did with Iraq.

“I was told Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. I remember Secretary of State Colin Powell showing everyone in the United Nations exactly where these weapons were.

“Now I’m told that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Of course this is not the president’s fault; it is, of course, faulty intelligence.

“Then again, according to Bush administration officials, nothing has ever been their fault through the entire time Bush has been in office.”

[RWC] Now Mr. Gould is getting into repeating Democrat talking points. You have to admire the anti-Bush crowd’s dogged effort to get an “I was wrong” sound bite from President Bush. It’s a no win situation for President Bush. If he admitted mistakes, liberals would bash him. When he refuses to provide the sound bite, liberals bash President Bush for not recognizing he made mistakes. It’s a variation of the classic question, “When did you stop beating your wife?”

“Some people say that we went into Iraq to protect the world from these terrorists. According to the president, we are supposed to be some sort of world police force.”

[RWC] This is a reason I hadn’t heard. We went into Iraq for United States security reasons, not for the rest of the world.

I never heard President Bush claim “we are supposed to be some sort of world police force.”

“The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, ‘Don’t let anyone make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has ways of standing before the nations with judgment. And it seems to me as if God is saying to America, ‘‘You are too arrogant. And if you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power. And I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn’t even know my name.’’’”

“Could this have some sort of meaning for this Iraq war? I don’t know, but it is certainly something to think about.”

[RWC] I’m not sure where Mr. Gould gets the idea we’re trying to be a policeman for the world. In general terms, I believe we should not be. At the same time, being the world’s pre-eminent republic and the lone superpower brings responsibility. In some cases, that means we’ll occasionally need to use our military strength to protect those who cannot protect themselves even when there is no security threat to us. We would do this for the same underlying reasons we provide disaster aid. Regardless of party, no U.S. administration wants to use force. Sometimes, though, that decision is not in our hands.