It should be asked
Writing by treason on Friday, 26 of May , 2006 at 8:25 pm
“I don’t really think it’s a matter of our vindication. I think, in a way, that’s the least important part of it. But I do think that occasionally we should just take a step back and ask, why are we doing this? Why is it so important?
Saddam was removed from power three years ago. Since then, incidentally, our forces have been there with the United Nations mandate and with the consent of the Iraqi government, itself, the Iraqi government, becoming progressively more the product of direct democracy.
So whatever people thought about removing Saddam — you agree with it, you didn’t agree with it for these last three years, the issue in Iraq has not been, these people are here without any international support, because we haven’t had any United Nations resolution governing our presence there. The issue is not, you’re there, but the Iraqi people don’t want you there, because the Iraqi government, and now this directly-elected Iraqi government has said they want us to stay until the job is done.
So why is it that for three years, we have had this violence and bloodshed? Now, people have tried to say it’s because the Iraqi people — you people, you don’t understand; you went in with this Western concept of democracy and you didn’t understand that their whole culture was different, they weren’t interested in these types of freedom. These people have gone out and voted — a higher turnout, I have to say — I’m afraid to say, I think, than either your election or mine. These people have gone out and voted…They have gone out and voted despite terrorism, despite bloodshed, despite literally the prospect of death for exercising their democratic right.
So they have kept faith with the very democratic values that we say we believe in, and the people trying to wrest that democracy from them are opposed to absolutely everything we stand for and everything the Iraqi people stand for.
So what do we do in response to this? And the problem we have is very, very simple. A large part of the perspective with which we look at this is to see every act of terrorism in Iraq, every piece of ghastly carnage on our television screens, every tragic loss of our own forces — we see that as a setback and as a failure when we should be seeing that as a renewed urgency for us to rise to the challenge of defeating these people who are committing this carnage. Because over these past three years, at every stage, the reason they have been fighting is not, as we can see, because Iraqi people don’t believe in democracy, Iraqi people don’t want liberty. It is precisely because they fear Iraqi people do want democracy, Iraqi people do want liberty.
And if the idea became implanted in the minds of people in the Arab and Muslim world that democracy was as much their right as our right, where do these terrorists go? What do they do? How do they recruit? How do they say, America is the evil Satan? How do they say the purpose of the West is to spoil your lands, wreck your religion, take your wealth? How can they say that? They can’t say that.
So these people who are fighting us there know what is at stake. The question is, do we?”
– Prime Minister Tony Blair, May 25, 2006, in the East Room of the White House
President Bush, standing to the Prime Minister’s left, interjected:
“I’m going to say, that was a great answer.”
I’m going to say, the Prime Minister asked a great question. So…do we?
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