Face it, people. We have a name to protect—did the lion get to be king of the jungle, the top of the food chain, by negotiating with the other predators? While many countries don’t want to accept it, we are the top of the food chain, baby. We’re the king of the jungle, and we’re facing more opposition than ever. We have people to protect—if we don’t do something about the hotbeds of terrorism now, like Iraq and Afghanistan, what are our grandchildren going to do without the World Trade Centers? Without the Golden Gate Bridge? Without the Empire State Building? Without Mount Rushmore? Yes, our sons, fathers, husbands are suffering overseas for these military and political actions, but how many more planes had to be hijacked, how many more bombs detonated, before someone stood up and said it’s time to nip the problem in the bud? How many more lives had to be stolen from us by extremists and zealots before those who have willingly signed up to put their lives on the line for us go to the root and rip it out?

And even beyond all that, we have allies to protect. I hate politics more than anyone, but in a global community, it’s necessary. And alliances are part of any community. If someone approached and accosted a friend of yours, whether you knew this someone or not, would you just turn a blind eye until he finished his assault, or would you intervene on your friend’s behalf, especially if that friend isn’t as strong as you are? America has a lot of resources that makes us stronger than other countries, and while I believe that more of those resources should be utilized within our own borders, it’s also our place to help others who don’t have such resources; for example, the give and take between the Indonesian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. But back to the point, the Global Community is the ultimate goal for everyone. No more war, no more atrocities, just a world full of peaceful peoples who can share the world’s resources to everyone’s benefit. But this is very idealistic, very utopian, very Lennon, and may very well never be feasible. But with people like Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, and Saddam Hussein in power, there will never be any possibility of such a thing.

You cannot peacefully coexist with that which would kill you, especially that which would rather kill you. Back to the analogy of the animal kingdom, you could not possibly expect a rabid wolf to cohabitate with a benign deer. The wolf would necessarily slaughter a doe, but if this was a buck, who showed his horns when the wolf bared his teeth, then our deer has a chance—but he has to be willing to use his horns. We cannot, in good conscience, not remove people like Marcos and Mussolini from power as long as the global community is our goal. We cannot ally ourselves with those who slaughter and plunder their own people, unless we are willing to turn a blind eye to their doings, which we as the “good guys” can’t do.

The only way we could (again, in good conscience) not dethrone such leaders is if their own people had the means with which to overthrow them. Not every coup has been (or should have been) at our hands, but when you have a situation like Iraq where there is a madman in control who usurps everything he wants, and everything he has is usurped, who strips the riches of the people from them, who kills all who oppose him (and their families, and their friends, and their associates…), an extremist dictator who is ruining his country by every possible standard, who has systematically stripped all but his own loyalists of their ability to even defend themselves, how long should we wait for their people to take matters into their own hands? How long should we ignore the fact that they are not able to? How long do we wait to step in? Until he begins invading other countries? He was. Until World War III? That was the next step—look at WWII. Look how it started. And look how long it took for us to get involved. Look what our supposed neutrality bought us. And now, look at how much scarier the military technology has become across the board. Look how many people have nuclear weapons, and look who has fingers on those triggers. If that thought doesn’t scare the shit out of you, it should.

Like it or not, we were drawn into war. In a lot of ways, it was our choice. (Not my choice, you say? I never voted on that, you say? No war in my name, you say? Go read “Freedom, in my Name” by Cadillac Frank. That’s all I’m going to say on that topic.) We didn’t have to go storming into Iraq the way we did. There are always other options. But the truth of the matter is, we had exhausted a lot of other options. More than 15 years had already been spent trying to get Hussein to behave in a way befitting of a human being. We tried negotiation, we tried military action, we tried almost everything in between. He needed to be taken down, not just for us, but for the people (and peoples) of Iraq, and for the people of the surrounding nations. Who else was going to do it? Same with Afghanistan. Who else was going to go in there and clean up? The Afghans? Certainly not. If we really do want world peace, we have got to be realistic about it. There will be no peace as long as we leave murderous tyrants in power. Clearly, the next step is getting the tyrants out of power. How do we do that? Do you negotiate with them until they agree to put someone nicer on the throne? Do you ask nicely? How else will any of them surrender their respective thrones unless they are wrenched out of them?

Seriously, folks. Look at the trend. It’s been going on all through history, just with different geography. I won’t go too far back, let’s just start with Napoleon. Elected to office, he was supposed to be the savior of his people. Beethoven even wrote him a symphony, complete with dedication. Here was the salvation, not only of France, but most of Europe—freedom from that which had oppressed them up to that time. Then he seized everything, he made himself dictator. He took the mile his country had given him already and tried to take the world. Beethoven literally ripped up the symphony dedication. Bastard betrayer.

Next came Hitler. Elected to office, he was supposed to be the savior of his people. Here was the salvation, not only of Germany, but most of Europe—freedom from the powers that had oppressed them. Then he seized everything, he made himself dictator. He took the mile his countrymen had given him, and with it, tried to take the world. Bastard betrayer.

Next came Hussein. Are you seeing it yet? How were we going to achieve world peace, how were we even going to move a single step closer, watching the next Hitler make his moves across the gruesome chessboard he had made of his country, watching him send his pawns and his knights go to slaughter his people and his neighbors, and not doing our utmost to stop it? I don’t have the words to describe the atrocity that was Hussein. The best I can manage is drawing parallels between him and those like him through history, so that maybe you can see why we had to do this thing, this war that everyone is so up in arms about. Why did we have to wait for him to have WMDs before we stopped him? Why did we have to let WWIII break out? Why did we have to wait for so many millions more to die? Why did we have to wait for Iraq itself to perish into the avarice and insanity that was Hussein? Why did we have to wait until it was an emergency, until we no longer had enough willing men and women to send to help quash the atrocity, until we had to start sending the unwilling?

Truth is, we didn’t. Bush knew that. Hell, both Bushes knew that. What I don’t know is how to pluralize the name Bush, but that’s for another article. We didn’t have to wait for things to get to their worst point before we intervened. We had already watched things go from bad to worse, and there were only going to be more consequences, more dire consequences if we kept putting it off. What if Hussein didn’t have any WMDs? We already know he had the research facilities, we already know he had been trying for some time, and lord knows we gave him more than enough warning to scuttle everything out of the country before we got in there. It still didn’t stop him from invading other countries, from killing off millions of people. What if Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11? Hell, I 100% believe they didn’t, at least, not directly. Does that mean they weren’t a threat? Does that mean they had done us no wrong? Does that mean they had done their own people no wrong? Hell no.

People, we’re in the War on Terror. This isn’t the "War on Whoever May have been Involved in that whole World Trade Center Fiasco". If we really do want world peace, we’re going to have to have some violence to weed out those powerful who would keep it from happening. The only way people like Hussein would allow any kind of world peace would be if he ruled the whole world. Think of it like giving your kid an ant farm. If he does okay with that, maybe eventually he can have a puppy. Well, we already saw what kind of care Hussein took of one little country; we don’t really want someone like that over the whole enchilada, do we?

I am a firm believer in Peace Through War. There will be no peace as long as warmongers are allowed to…well...warmonger.

Anticlimactic place to end, isn’t it? But it’s the truth. It’s the whole point. Think about it.

Update: (09/17/05 21:25)
So, you didn't believe me? You thought I was nuts? You were probably right about that. But I'm not nuts in thinking that these guys like Hussein just have no place in the world we are trying to build, in that global society we are working for. I'm not nuts for thinking they need to be taken out (interpret that as you will). Over 170 world leaders gathered at the United Nations Summit this week, and they came out of there with a document including "an unprecedented agreement on the international responsibility to intervene to protect civilians from genocide and ethic cleansing [and war crimes]."

And this quote from Yahoo! News I found especially pertinent: "The most impassioned plea came Thursday from Iraqi President Jalal Talabani who said his country was in desperate need of help to confront terrorist 'forces of darkness'."

Over 170 world leaders agree with me. Whose side will you be on? The side of peace today for an unknown tomorrow, or the side of giving today our best shot so the rest of the world can have a better, more peaceful tomorrow?

Don't think it works? Check out what Afghanistan is up to for the next few days.