Heroes and liberators
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2003131405,00.html
TO anti-Americans, there is nothing but evil in the war against Saddam Hussein.
For the peace protesters who always seem to know best, the USA is the tyrant ? and vicious psychopath Saddam Hussein the victim.
They turn the world on its head by likening America to a gang of thieves trying to steal Iraqi oil.
The opposite of this conspiracy theory is the truth.
For the first time in history, a benign superpower is using its military might to stop a monster slaughtering his own people and putting world peace at risk.
We should not be comparing the world?s greatest democracy with a gang of bank robbers.
A better analogy for what is going on in the Gulf would be the tragic case of schoolgirl Victoria Climbie, who was tortured to death while the authorities stood by and did nothing.
For poor little Victoria, read the entire Iraqi people.
For the social workers who wrung their hands but took no concrete action, read the United Nations and Europe ? especially France.
When the history of this week?s momentous military offensive is written, America will come out ? not for the first time ? as the good guy.
Thanks to much- maligned George Bush, we are seeing the beginning of a new era in global politics.
America is a ?can do? society armed with the finest democratic system the world has ever seen.
Now it ?can do? something about international order and justice.
It has the wealth, the military capacity and now, under President Bush, the moral certainty to stop the rot.
What is happening in Iraq today will be a salutary lesson to those rogue states who thought the West had gone soft.
North Korea?s tin-pot tyrant Kim Jong-Il will certainly be thinking twice before testing US resolve with his nuclear programme.
Syria, Iran and Libya are already reassessing their roles as sponsors of terrorism.
And Saudi Arabia, false friend of the West, will begin reigning in the allies of al-Qa?ida leader Osama Bin Laden.
Importantly, Israel and the Palestinians are also ready to work towards peace.
Guardian readers do not like the use of American might ? even when it is right.
But they relish the free speech, prosperity and democracy that goes with it.
America may not get everything right all the time.
But its critics should try imagining how free, democratic and prosperous life would be today if Russia, not the USA, had won the Cold War.