Arguing our position: the war in Iraq

fairness, responsibility, justice, freedom, strength, compassion
War in Iraq:
America must set a good example for the rest of the world.
We must walk our talk.
A responsible nation does not attack another without just cause.
First strike attacks will not lead to a safer world.
Invading another country to forcibly topple their government and then replace it with the system of the invader's choice is not fair.
Freedom cannot be installed and maintained by force. That negates the very definition of freedom.

Remember the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
This principle is understood by people throughout the world and stated in all major religions, including Islam. For most of our nation's history, we have had a military policy of defense and supporting other countries when they were defending themselves from outside attack.
Now we have set an example that pre-emptive war can be justified, with the dubious example of our attack in Iraq. We set another example by using nuclear bunker-buster missiles, breaking the long planetwide moritorium on use of nuclear weapons.

Wouldn't we be outraged if another country dealt us a pre-emtive strike, because they had a poorly confirmed suspicion that we were planning to harm them? What if they wanted to impose their form of government on us by force, to make them feel safer? Would we accept it if they told us it was for our own good? What if they claimed they were following our example?

We know Saddam was a terrible dictator. We knew that when he gassed the Kurds and we did nothing to help the Kurds defend themselves because at that time Saddam seemed useful to us. Where was our compassion for the Iraqi people then?

The United Nations sanctions and inspections successfully prevented Saddam from building weapons of mass destruction. We know that now, but President Bush refused to believe it because it didn't support his mission of "nation building". So he instructed the CIA to dig deeper and find intelligence to support his suspicion. He needed a rationale to take down Saddam, a key part of the long term Wolfowitz plan.

The U.N. had also monitored and contained the hazardous materials which were stolen after our invasion. We only protected the Ministry of Oil and left the rest of the country's infrastructure unprotected. So much damage was done that now Halliburton has a really big contract to repair it all. But the missing hazardous materials are probably in the hands of terrorists.

Our country's actions have not made the world a safer place.
In fact it has made Americans more of a target now than before the war.