Sign the Jews Against the War Petition
Jews Against the War, the Jewish anti-war initiative organized by Aryeh Cohen, Adam Rubin, Joshua Levine Grater, Sarah Newman and Shaul Magid, now has a website where you can add your name to a petition calling for an end to the Iraq War. The petition will be published in Jewish newspapers across America and sent to every US Congressperson and Senator the week of Shavuot.
The Rabbis, following the Hebrew prophets, were strongly aware that war was the most destructive of all activities. Even a war that is permitted or necessary is evil, as it unleashes uncontrolled violence and death and brings out the worst in humanity.
[…] Believing in the wisdom and relevance of the Jewish tradition, we, the undersigned, maintain that the invasion of Iraq was not just and that the continued occupation extends this injustice.
Read the rest of the statement and sign the petition here.
What part of “Never Again” does Jews Against the War not understand?
In 1945, the world said “Never Again.” It turned out to be “Never Again” except for the killing fields of Cambodia, Darfur, Uganda, Rwanda, North Korea, and what Saddam Hussein was doing to the Kurds and his own people until my country’s Armed Forces put a stop to it.
Whether it was worth 3200 American lives (with perhaps ten wounded for every fatality) to put an end to Saddam Hussein using poison gas on his own people while his murderous son Uday would have women kidnapped so he could rape them and then throw them to his attack dogs (while also torturing soccer players who failed to win) is open to question. The justice of the war is not. It was a clearcut case of good versus evil, and evil got hanged a few months ago.
The United States is not responsible for the murderous choices that some Iraqis made once they were free of Saddam Hussein. They must be held responsible for their own behavior. The United States did not encourage them to kidnap and murder other Iraqis, or blow up each other’s mosques. My country did the Right Thing, and some Iraqis chose to abuse the benefits of freedom from a vicious dictator. That does not make what my country did any less right.
gee bill, i thought you were simply a liberal upset by the antisemitic rhetoric you saw posted to the moveon.org forums. here, you sound like a full-on neocon.
but that’s an aside.
the very same people who planned the invasion of iraq enabled saddam hussein’s chemical weapons attack against the iraqi kurds, and they continue to enable that same type of behavior, providing weapons, training, and funding to militias and regimes known to be engaged in human rights abuses (as they did with the taliban, the contras, pinochet, mugabe et al) the world over.
if the purpose of invading iraq was merely to remove a hostile dictator from power, why the lies about al qaeda, enriched uranium, weapons of mass destruction, and so forth?
and why go on a rescue mission to save the iraqi people right after 9/11 when all resources ought to have been focused on tracking down bin laden?
since the invasion of iraq, more iraqis have died than during the entirety of saddam’s reign. hundreds of iraqis have been falsely imprisoned and tortured by u.s. forces. iraq’s economy has been delivered into the hands of foreign oil interests. and iraq has become a hotbed for terrorism — one constantly fueled by the ongoing occupation which has done positively nothing to reign in the militants on either side. oh, and let’s not overlook the outcome for our own men in uniform, their families, our economy, our safety, and global stability.
so please please please spare me the knight in shining armor routine.
this was a scramble for resource control in the face of an impending peak oil crisis, and it failed miserably.
Bill Levinson you got jokes man. “never again” right. so of the places you mentioned (Cambodia, Darfur, Uganda, Rwanda, North Korea), there are at least two where large-scale atrocites continue to occur TODAY (NK and Darfur). so, like, where is your little aquateen neocon force when those people need them? don’t think maybe there were(*gasp*) ULTERIOR motives for invading Iraq?
Mobius, I didn’t say that the war was a good idea. I said only that it was 100% justified. And I don’t like the fact that we once consorted with Saddam Hussein because he was the enemy of our enemy.
Re: “since the invasion of iraq, more iraqis have died than during the entirety of saddam’s reign.” Have they managed to kill a million yet? Saddam is reputed to have killed that many.
no — u.s. sanctions killed 1,000,000; not saddam.