Before Operation Iraqi Freedom began, anti-war leaders such as Democratic Congressman Jim McDermott questioned American leadership while giving Hussein’s regime the benefit of the doubt. Others continue to protest and say the war is an example of American imperialism harming innocent civilians.
The United States argued the war not only would benefit the world by ridding it of a threat, but also Iraqi citizens the most by being freed from an oppressive dictatorship. Hussein’s is a regime that has slaughtered his own people and is responsible for more Muslim deaths than anyone else in history.
Throughout all the diplomatic efforts, Hussein continued to deny the existence of all weapons of mass destruction while referring to the United States and Britain as evil. As preposterous as his claims and namecalling may seem to some people, many sided with him in the pre-war battle.
While many protest in the streets of the world, a few decided to defy the American coalition and become human shields. These volunteers said they were not protecting the Hussein regime, but trying to prevent a war and stop the killing of Iraqi civilians.
American human shield volunteer John Rosse told the Washington Post he was going to Iraq because the American troops were going to Iraq, “to kill, murder, devastate the civilian population of Iraq.”
Most human shields came home once they realized they couldn’t stop the war. Some left Iraq with a change of heart about the war. Kenneth Joseph, a young American pastor with the Assyrian Church of the East, told United Press International the trip “had shocked me back to reality.”
Since human shields were seen as friendly to the Iraqi regime, they were allowed to interview Iraqi people on camera without government monitors. The stories he collected on camera gave him a new realization on the U.S.-led effort to rid the world of Hussein.
He said they “told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn’t start. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler. Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet first so they could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from foot to head.”
The American troops are beginning to see firsthand the horrors of this evil regime. In the six days of the conflict, reportedly it already has executed seven American prisoners of war, paraded mistreated POWs on Iraqi TV, used civilians as human shields, told civilians to fight at the threat of their lives, used hospitals as battle staging areas, had Iraqi soldiers dress as American and British soldiers then execute surrendering Iraqi soldiers, burned oil wells, destroyed Iraqi civilian water plants, creating a humanitarian disaster, and may soon resort to using chemical weapons on Allied troops and any civilians standing in their way.
Compare that to the efforts taken by the coalition of the willing to preserve the lives of Iraqi civilians. The United States has used precision bombing to refrain from hurting any Iraqi infrastructure, given Iraqi soldiers ample chances to surrender even at the cost of some American lives, given Iraqi POWs shelter, medical treatment and food, laid water lines in cities where the water supply has been destroyed by the Iraqi military and is giving every effort to bring aide to the hurting citizens of Iraq.
On Tuesday, a Sky News correspondent and a United Kingdom pool correspondent reported thousands of Shiites in Basra, Iraq started a popular uprising against Saddam Hussein’s forces. Now brave Iraqi citizens feel empowered to fight for their freedom even if the cost is their lives.
Does it seem as if America is attempting to take over a country for territory and oil? Or can it really be true that we are fighting to free an oppressed people and the world of a rogue country with weapons of mass destruction?
Regardless of political ideology, ethnicity or religion, the world should unite behind the efforts of the coalition of the willing and condemn those of a dictator clutching to power regardless of the cost paid by those he rules.