The Duplicity and Guile of the American Left

“Full of wiles, full of guile, at all times, in all ways. Are the children of men.” Aristophanes 450-385 B.C.

We are seeing so called “political” activity in the United States, which is nothing less than pure hypocrisy and deception carried on by left-leaning politicians now settled firmly in the Democrat Party. The Democrats have lied and deceived (to wit, think about red lines, “you can keep your doctor,” Obamacare will save the nation money, etc., etc.). The best example of this duplicity is the recent damage that has been done to our foreign policy by the political maneuvering incident to the wars in which we have engaged in the Middle East. A brief review of this shameful behavior is in order.

Following the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, the UN issued no less than 16 resolutions requiring Saddam Hussein to relieve the stresses on his people by providing them with food, medical supplies, and other goods needed for decent living. Saddam consistently ignored those resolutions; and the result was a final warning in the form of UN Resolution 1441UN Resolution 1441, requiring Iraq to respond favorable to the previous resolutions or suffer severe consequences. Still, Iraq did not quit the persecution of Iraqi citizens.

The First Gulf War was waged against Iraq from 8/90-1/91 by the United States and 34 other nations. That war was carried out under United States leadership of 34 participant nations because of Iraq’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait. George H. W. Bush was President at the time.

The United States went to war against Iraq again in 2003, this time as a move to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein. “Liberal” or “progressive” politicians criticized this second Iraq War of 2003 begun under the administration of George W. Bush. The claimed criticism of that second Iraq War was ostensibly because President Bush had decided to go to war “unilaterally, deceptively, and in haste,” or, in the words of John Kerry, the war was “the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.”

The facts of the situation, however, were quite different from the left’s formulation. The policy to remove the regime in Iraq by force did not originate with either Bush president; it was put in place by Bill Clinton when he signed the Iraqi Liberation Act in November of 1998. That Act was designed to change the dictatorial and tyrannical regime in Iraq subsequent to the end of the Iran-Iraq war. That war had been fought to a standstill between 1980 and 1988. The war had cost over 1 million deaths and had been prosecuted by Iraq partly through the use of nerve gas and mustard gas—weapons of mass destruction.  Iraq had killed over 100,000 Iranians and Kurds with those weapons.

The Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998 was passed by the House on a vote of 360 to 38; and it passed the Senate unanimously; it was signed by President Clinton. John Kerry, among other Democrats in the Senate, was in full-throated support of the Act. In December, President Clinton ordered the implementation of Operation Desert Fox, which consisted of a huge barrage of 450 cruise missiles and multiple bombs from B1 bombers, aimed at military targets inside of Iraq. That attack destroyed vast amounts of military infrastructure in Iraq.

The second Iraq War was carried out because the missile attack begun in the Clinton years had been unsuccessful in unseating Saddam in Iraq; and the hostile actions against his people and neighboring nations had continued. When Saddam refused to comply with all 16 UN Resolutions, President Bush went to Congress and obtained authorization to use force against Iraq. Both houses of Congress approved this authorization; and that vote included a majority of Democrats in the Senate. President Bush also got an authorization from NATO, and he formed a coalition of 40 nations to carry out the war. The American people were told that the war was necessary in order to assure the world that Saddam did not have any weapons of mass destruction, which were believed to exist by the UN Security Council. Congress voted to support the war based on the National Intelligence Estimate provided by the intelligence community of the United States in October of 2002.

No new weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq; but that country had already demonstrated its ability to use those WMD’s in the form of chemicals against Iran in the previous war.

Although the Democrats had approved the second Iraqi War, they turned against the President within three months of the onset of war. Democrats had charged that the Second Iraq War had been started by President H.W. Bush without consultation and in undue haste. Making the decision to go to war in Iraq was a process that had taken 10 months. Every significant authority was consulted, and agreed that force was necessary. Yet, once U.S. troops actually entered Iraq on March 19, 2003, it took only 3 months for the Democrats to betray them, and to betray the President, by turning their backs on the war they had authorized and supported. Public opinion had turned against President Bush and the government for prosecuting the war; and the only apparent reason for Democrat opposition was purely political.

I think that America absolutely has to quit sending deceivers and liars to Congress and to the presidency. Our nation deserves better than that.