It appears that the war with Iraq will start sometime in early February, when the nights are the darkest due to the new moon, or so goes the current speculation.

I’ve been avoiding the topic of war until recently, as my primary interests lie in the areas of firearms, technology, and civil liberties.  At heart I’m an isolationist who believes in free trade.  That may sound weird, but it just means I’d prefer to have peaceful commercial relations with other countries and to pretty much keep to ourselves otherwise.  However, I also believe strongly in the idea of self-defense and I think this must also apply to nations.  So you can imagine the ambivalance this has generated for me.

But I still find myself in reluctant agreement with the invasion of Iraq.  However much I may be tempted towards revenge for the attack of September 11, 2001 (and I would not hesitate to put a bullet in bin Laden’s head if you put him in front of me; if he were still alive, that is), my contemplation of Iraq has been much cooler.  This is not something I arrived at flippantly or through blood lust.  I worry about the coming war.  No matter how well we plan and how superior our forces, Murphy always rides along when the flag flies.  I worry about our troops who may not come home or those who will come home horribly wounded.  And I know that while our forces will do everything in their power to prevent innocent deaths, they will happen.  The reports I’ve seen indicate that many Iraqi people understand this, and accept it as the price of freedom, but I hope that they still feel that way after the war is over.

I also worry about the aftermath of the war.  Will we have the resolve to stick around for however long it takes to turn Iraq into a functioning democracy?  If not, then I fear that 20 years from now we’ll have to go back when the next madman pops up and threatens the world.  I also hope that President Bush releases some of the definitive proof that he and Tony Blair have been claiming to have.  It would go a long way towards putting some of my concerns to rest.

But regardless of my isolationist tendencies, I cannot in good conscience side with the anti-war crowd.  There may be some principled people among them, but I can’t separate the signal from the noise to distinguish their message from that of groups like A.N.S.W.E.R.  According to some scholars, socialism and communism are directly responsible for more deaths than any other cause in the 20th century (over 100 million dead in places like the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, etc).  I have absolutely no qualms about saying that communism is evil.  I also cannot abide anti-semitism.  The anti-Israel and anti-semitic (not exactly the same, but usually linked) sentiments expressed by some of the protesters are sickening.

I think ultimately what brings me to my conclusion is something that has been denigrated by many, but that still moves some of us.  That something is patriotism.  I’m not a flag-waver.  I didn’t go out and put flags on everything on September 12th.  I don’t believe in God or any of that, but there’s more to patriotism than God or flag waving.  I may rant and rave and rail about the creeping socialism that I see encroaching on our country, but I still wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.  I have a great love for this country and the ideals on which it was founded.  I want to see us continue to live by those ideals.  I believe that in order to do that we must neutralize the external threats before we can deal with the internal ones.

Anyway, that’s just the opinion of an isolationist who has become a reluctant hawk.  I suppose this post will contain parts that will upset both the pro- and anti-war camps.  Oh well, it can’t be helped.