David Johnson’s column, “I Was Here First,” raised some good points about ethnic nationalism, but employed flawed thinking about the U.S. occupation of Iraq. By arguing that the coalition was right to violate Iraq’s sovereignty in deposing its “illegitimate and threatening” ruler, Johnson was illogical.

It’s time to stop peddling the myth, as Johnson did, that the Iraq war is an altruistic mission of liberation. Saddam was merely one among many illegitimate and threatening rulers in the world. I’m sure the suffering citizens of Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan would love to be free from their illegitimate, torture-happy leaders. If they weren’t members of Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing” that is.

If the United States was truly serious about acting as a global liberator, then there would currently be Marines all over the world. How about Eritrea (a one-party state lacking elections, but with no shortage of arbitrary arrests and untried imprisonment); Rwanda (where the present government snatched power militarily, then later won election through fraud, arrests and intimidation); or Saudi Arabia (a country with no constitution or elected legislative body, where police torture is routine)? Yes, they’re coalition members, too. Bush is willing to align with illegitimate rulers worldwide in an attempt to legitimize his own pre-emptive war on a different dictator. So, the administration’s professed mission of liberation is a joke.

Our intervention in Iraq has so far ensured that at least 100,000 Iraqis – including many women and children – will never know the joys of freedom, because they’re dead. It’s time to stop believing that Dubya is interested in liberating anything apart from oil and to start questioning the doublethink used by David Johnson, among so many others.