Feline Warrior

Absolutely nothin’!

I promised to discuss war vs. invade, so here we go:

War: “A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties.”
Invade: ” To enter by force in order to conquer or pillage.”

I would like to point out a key difference between these two words’ definitions. “War” features the word “conflict.” “Invade” does not. Because of this, I maintain that the activity in Iraq was not originally a war. It was an invasion.

Is it good that Saddam is no longer in power? Prolly. Would it have been good to have a full plan, complete with backups (Plans A, B, C, and D, etc.) before engaging in this invasion? I would have to give that an enthusiastic “Yes.”

Now, was there a hidden conflict between US and Iraq, a la Michael Moore’s film? Maybe. But the God’s honest truth is that Iraq presented no iminent danger to the US several years ago. There has been some awful backlash from this invasion-cum-war, however. By insinuating to the American public that Saddam (and therefore Iraq) had some involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Dubya & Co. allowed for the wheels of racism to be greased, oh-but-good. This turned out to be a good thing (for Dubya & Co.) because it made the Patriot Act seem like such a good idea. Who can argue with the Patriot Act, when we have these mad Iraqis masquerading as American citizens all over our country? Hmm?

Of course, it turned out that the Patriot Act is, in fact, a horrible idea. And it turned out that, upon a bit of simple research (for those who’d not been completely obsessed with it back in the fall of 2001), one could easily see that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. But that Osama guy… now he was bad news. And yet… gee… where is he? Why did we suddenly stop looking for Osama and instead invade Iraq? Are they somehow interchangeable, Osama and Saddam? (And let’s face it, so many of the brown folk do look alike.) (Please, don’t write complaining - I’m being a smartass, as is my God-given right to be.)

So let’s review, as we so love to do here: 9/11 - the US is attacked by terrorists. We find out pretty quickly that those directly involved (the suicide flight guys) were Saudi. (One was Egyptian, I think.) Note the lack of an Iraqi. So time goes by, time goes by, time goes by, we hear about Osama bin Laden, what a rich-bitch-power-monger type dude he is. There are promises to catch him, dead or alive.

And time goes by… and then suddenly Dubya says, “HEY KIDS, I don’t mean to freak you guys out, but my peeps told me that Saddam, over in Iraq, has WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!”

And we all said, “Oh, my stars! But what about Osama?”

And Dubya said, “God bless you!” and handed us each a tissue (at which we stared, all puzzled-like), and then he went on, “Did you hear me say WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION? We even have a snappy name for them: WMDs!”

And some of us -those who are gullible and believe anything said by a white dude in power- fell for it, and waited to see if Saddam would turn over the WMDs. And he didn’t! The bastid! And so… we invaded his country!

Voila, there you have it. Is it a war? Is it an invasion? Has it changed from an invasion to a war? If so, who makes up the two sides of the war? What is the conflict? These, my friends, are the questions I leave you with as I depart for slumberland.