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Liberty, peace and an Iraq anniversary review

In the world of LiberalThink,¹ what is believed to be true carries far more weight than what is in fact true. Want an example? Read the New York Times editorial, Friday, March 18, 2005, "The Bush administration was famously flexible in explaining why it invaded Iraq. . .." Rubbish. The Times editorial is famously wrong. Bush was famously specific six months before the war, before the United Nations, on September 12, 2002:

• immediately and unconditionally forswear, disclose and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction, long-range missiles and all related material.
• end all support for terrorism and act to suppress it
• cease persecution of its civilian population,
• release or account for all Gulf War personnel whose fate is still unknown
• return the remains of any who are deceased, return stolen property, accept liability for losses resulting from the invasion of Kuwait
• end all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program
• accept U.N. administration of funds from that program to ensure that the money is used fairly and promptly for the benefit of the Iraqi people.

Liberty -- The word hasn't meant much to a United Nations that has long tolerated oppression, and that continues to do so in countries like North Korea, Sudan, and Iran. Nor does liberty mean much to people who want "peace" that only means the absence of war. The stronger peace means embracing a process of problem resolution that avoids war.

Absolutely the best war is no war at all. The best way to avoid war is to have a strong international organization that believes not in peace at any price, but in the institutions that make peace possible; institutions that foster liberty for all the world's citizens.

On the second anniversary of the war in Iraq, opponents should concede the opportunity for liberty in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East that is at hand. And peace demonstrators should make clear which definition of peace they believe is paramount. Do they want the one that guarantees that oppressed people will remain without liberty, or the one resolved to be sure they get it?

The war in Iraq should never have had to have been fought, but the United Nations did not accept President George Bush's challenge. And many, fogged by LiberalThink, don't want to admit the good that may come out of it -- including a strengthened United Nations.

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¹ LiberalThink isn't true Liberalism and it's counterpart, the equally ridiculous ConservativeThink, isn't true Conservatism. Both are distateful.

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