Justice matters
Roger Dodds

I'm glad Greg Snyder attended the April 12 Town Hall meeting on the Iraq war. His April 27 Soapbox allows me to remind him of what I said on the panel that night.

More than 95 percent of the insurgents are Iraqi nationalists opposed to U.S. occupation. In June 2006, 11 Sunni insurgent organizations offered peace with the Shiite government if the Americans would commit to a withdrawal within two years. The Bush Administration smothered the initiative. (1)

The Iraqi government is being pressured to pass a "bench-mark"oil law establishing "Production Sharing Agreements" that give Western oil companies 75 percent of profits. Iraq used to run its own oil industry (like all countries in the Gulf). Oil provides 90 percent of government revenue. (2)

Snyder asks "what we should do to prevent the violence that radical Islam is being carried out around the globe in order to establish Sharia law" (sic).

The Islamic reaction is very understandable. Since the invasion of Iraq, there has been a documented seven-fold increase in jihadist attacks. (3)

We're trying to fight a colonial war in a postmodern world. Images like Abu-Ghraib are broadcast across the Islamic world. People have no trouble recognizing the dishonesty and corruption and brutality of Western power. And they don't want it.

Justice matters. Iraq's oil belongs to the Iraqi people. Let them have it, and they'll produce it and sell it on the global market. That's the honest solution.

For documentation see (1) www.cjpe.org/stp/timetable.htm, (2) www.cjpe.org/stp/no_war_with_Iran.htm (footnotes 12-13), and (3) www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2007/03/iraq_effect_1.html.

Roger Dodds,
Strength Through Peace,
Fort Collins