"Pro-Democracy Killing in Iraq
by Jacob G. Hornberger, September 14, 2007
During the recent Republican presidential debate, former Governor Mike Huckabee took Congressman Ron Paul to task for calling for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Huckabee suggested that it was irrelevant whether the United States should have invaded Iraq. The point, he stated, was that because the invasion had “broken” Iraq, the United States had the obligation to remain and fix it. As Huckabee put it, “We bought it because we broke it.” Huckabee said that his analysis was based on what his mother had taught him when he was a little boy: “If I picked something off the shelf and I broke it, I bought it.”
Huckabee is wrong on several counts, and his reasoning only goes to show how far American conservatives have fallen in terms of conscience and morality.
Let’s assume that when Huckabee was a teenager, he broke into his local hardware store with the intent of stealing supplies to give to the poor. Let’s say that as he reached for the items, some of them fell to the floor and broke.
When the police arrived, would Huckabee have had the right to remain in the store to fix the items he had broken? Could he have told the police that this is what his mother taught him when he was a little boy? Of course not. The police would have taken him into custody and removed him from the store. While he would have been obligated to reimburse the store owner for the broken items, Huckabee would not have had any right, legal or moral, to remain in the store to fix them.
Thus, Huckabee is wrong to suggest that the justification for invading Iraq is irrelevant. Given that the United States had no right, legal or moral, for invading and occupying Iraq, it has no right to remain there to fix anything it has broken. The United States is in no different position, legally and morally speaking, than the burglar who has broken the items in the hardware store. After all, let’s not forget that in the Iraq War, the United States is the aggressor and occupying power.
Unfortunately, as Huckabee well knows, the invasion of Iraq did not simply involve the breaking of houses, automobiles, office buildings, museums, and other inanimate objects. It also involved the killing of Iraqi people — in fact, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people, a fact that exposes the callous and immoral way that Huckabee and so many other pro-war conservatives view the Iraqi people.
Let’s go back to the hardware-store example. Suppose that when Huckabee broke into the store, there were several employees and store owners doing late-night inventory in the store, some of whom began firing weapons at the burglar. Let’s say that Huckabee fired back, killing some of the people who were firing at him and, in the process, breaking many of the products in the store.
Would those deaths and those breakings entitle Huckabee to exclaim to the cops, “When I was a little boy, my mother taught me that if I broke something in a store, I bought it. Therefore, I have the right and responsibility to remain inside this store to fix what I broke”?
For one thing, how would Huckabee fix those dead people? For another, to remain in the store would presumably mean killing the people who were still resisting Huckabee’s presence in the store. Could anyone really say that Huckabee would have the right to continue killing people in the store in the process of fixing what he has broken?
No, Huckabee would have no right, moral or legal, to remain in the store, despite the fact that he wished to fix the products he had broken or the people he had killed. When he was hauled into court on murder charges, could he claim that he was firing in self-defense, given that the employees and owners had fired at him first? No, he could not claim self-defense because he had no right whatsoever to be in the store. The employees and the owners had the right to shoot him and he had no right to shoot back.
Amidst all the discussion and debate as to whether the “surge” in U.S. forces has been successful or whether the “war” in Iraq can still be won, there is a dearth of conversation about something much more important: the killing of Iraqi people."
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