The Doubting Thomas Inquiry Regarding Free Iraq

While warmongers march in tiny Crawford, Texas to announce their support for the American invasion and occupation of Iraq, important questions emerge from the Doubting Thomas of the world.

How sincere is the desire of these people for Iraqi freedom? Where were these people when the U.S. Government was goading Iraq’s (later deposed and hostage) President Saddam Hussein into launching a devastating (to Iraq) war with neighbor Iran? Did these people believe that arming Saddam Hussein by the American government was about Iraqi freedom, especially when Saddam Hussein used those weapons on dissidents within Iraq, while the American government winked and nodded in the persona of Donald Rumsfeld himself?

And where were these Americans for Iraqi freedom when Kuwait was slant/drilling for Iraqi oil despite the international protests of the Iraqi government, further harming the Iraqi people and their ability to pay off the massive debts incurred from waging the U.S. sponsored war with Iran? Did Americans worry about the welfare of Iraqis at that point in history, and did the American government warn the Kuwaitis to quit stealing Iraqi oil? Or did the American representative Gillespie meet with Saddam Hussein and tacitly encourage him to use whatever means necessary to solve his problems with Kuwait?

And where were the Americans for freedom in Iraq when the American government installed a dozen years of brutal sanctions on the children of Iraq, depriving them of life and health itself? Why was there no concern for the freedom and life of Iraqis then, as specifically pointed out by Jewish-American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright herself at the time?

And now that the invasion is over, the Saddam Hussein regime is deposed, and the Iraqi nation is now "sovereign", must we be building permanent military bases throughout Iraq? Whose freedom is guaranteed by the construction of American military bases in Iraq, especially as many Iraqis have made it known that they will fight and expend their very lives to obtain freedom FROM American hegemony?

Some American soldiers’ moms are supporting the war despite the death of their sons because they say they want to support what their sons died believing in. This is in no way noble when one considers that the sons died believing in lies deliberately foisted on them by an American government who lied repeatedly to its own soldiers and its own citizenry. There is no great honor in dying for a lie, and there is no honor in dying to enslave a nation in the interests of an empire.

Americans who want freedom for Iraq should want Iraqi freedom in the context of Iraqi patriotism, which means freedom FROM the greedy, lying, thieving American government and corporations. Any claim for support of Iraqi freedom without freedom from America is rank hypocrisy.