Annabelle de St. MauriceSometime this month we will most likely begin an invasion of Iraq. The objective is unclear. We are either trying to eliminate a threat to the United States, performing a noble act of liberation for the Iraqi people (for which they should be grateful), or simply punishing Saddam Hussein for violating a slew of U.N. resolutions.
What is clear, however, is that we live under an administration obsessively bent on war with Iraq. We live in a time when protestors, nay-sayers, and people with alternative viewpoints are labeled “un-American.” At the risk of being labeled as such, we are taking a stand and voicing our disagreement with the coming war with Iraq.
Iraq is not a direct threat to the United States. Twelve years of inspections have not yielded any conclusive evidence that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction. They have no means of delivering a weapon to the United States. The missiles that they are currently destroying are not weapons of mass destruction; they are weapons that fly a few kilometers outside of the range the U.N. will allow. If the administration has compelling evidence that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, then they have an obligation to show it to the world before calling for war.
They have not shown any such evidence, and the world community is not convinced. Nearly every country in the world is opposed to this war. The ones that agree to support us do so after intense diplomatic arm-twisting and payouts of billions of dollars. There is something to be said about the legitimacy of a war that has virtually zero international support.
There are other, more pressing threats to our national security. The CIA has acknowledged that North Korea currently possesses the technology to deliver a missile to our western seaboard. North Korea itself admits that it is developing nuclear weapons. Additionally, they have several times recently fired missiles into the Pacific Ocean as ‘tests.’ In comparison, we have been unable to show that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, and we do not know that they have the means to launch them at us.
This is not to say that we should begin a war with North Korea right now. However, it does highlight the inconsistency in the administrations’ reasoning if they would have us believe that we are going to war solely to protect ourselves.
All this being said, no one can deny that Saddam Hussein is an evil madman. He tortures and kills his own people. He rules Iraq with an iron fist. When Iraqis speak out against him, they and their families mysteriously disappear. He is uncooperative with the U.N., refusing to allow scientists and other officials to be interviewed. He has continuously been a thorn in the side of American and European foreign policy for many years now.
But who is to say that we have the moral authority to decide when it is all right to declare war on this type of person? During the Iran-Iraq war, the United States funded Iraqi military efforts, knowing full well the devious tactics of its dictator, because Iran was our enemy. We continue to enforce sanctions on Iraq that only harm its people; Saddam Hussein remains well fed and pleasantly plump while Iraqi citizens starve. The U.S. has not retained an air of moral purity in this crisis, and to call for war because we think Saddam is evil is embarrassing.
We have to decide whether Iraq represents enough of a threat to the U.S. to justify preemptively initiating a war against a country that has not attacked us. Right now the evidence is flimsy. We say that we can’t find Saddam’s weapons not because he doesn’t have them, but because he’s hiding them. We say that he has links to Al Qaeda even though Osama bin Laden hates Iraq as much as we do. We cry out alone amidst a planet full of world leaders that disagree.
Other options besides war exist. Inspections have kept Iraq cornered for the last 12 years. Saddam is unable to develop weapons under the eyes of the inspectors. The situation, while only slowly improving, is not worsening. Waging a war to speed up the pace of progress is not a just reason.