Depate pre-empts war

In case you’ve been hiding in a cave with your fingers stuck in your ears for the past few weeks, I’ll say what most of you have heard dozens of times. President Bush has been talking about sending troops to Iraq for a “Pre-emptive strike” to remove a hated despot, destroy all of his nasty weapons and save the opppressed people living there. Sounds good doesn’t it? Sounds like something that the United States of America, land of the free and home of the brave, should do for the good of mankind. If you happen to be one of the people who are “Anti-war even before the war” as Mr. Bryan wrote the other day when bashing a political cartoon written by a B.U. Professor, then shame on you. Mr. Bryan writes that, “In the old days, anti-war protesters would actually wait for war to begin before insulting the president and protesting for peace.”, Implying that we should all keep our mouths shut because we are not REALLY going to war with Iraq and that it’s just a bluff. This may be true, but I don’t think Mr. Bryan is as good of a poker player as he lets on, because the thing about bluffs, is that sometimes they get called. There seem to be a significant number of Americans who think that the administration’s current course of action, whether a bluff or not, is not a very good idea, and many of these choose to voice their opinions in the form of cartoons, protests, or letters to the editor. In democracy, civil discourse is a tool that citizens use to inform the government officials of their opinions. The officials, in turn, act based on the opinions of the people whom the represent. However, sometimes there are cold hard facts, and you can’t argue with facts, you just have to accept them. Right? The facts of this issue seem to be that Saddam is a tyrannical oppressive leader with a flair for slaughtering his own citizens and that he is a threat because he has weapons of mass destruction. I and most other people would agree with this and would feel a whole lot better if he were not there anymore. However, there are scores of third world countries just like Iraq that oppress their people, have dangerous weapons and leaders you wouldn’t want to have over for dinner. Why just last week, we found out that Nort Korea part of the “Axis of Evil” has the bomb. So why are we rattling out sabers towards a guy with a couple of chemical factories and some warehouses of twenty-year old rusted Soviet surplus? Oil and Politics. It’s been a while since the last time we tried something like this in Iran when we installed the Shah. A lot of people have forgotten or were born after that whole thing blew up in our face, so some of our buisiness and government leaders are thinking that it might be a good idea to try again to replace a government in the Middle East with one that would welcome U.S. industry and sell us lots of oil at a good price. Secondly, as all good politicians know, there’s nothing like a war to boost your popularity. The potential for a sucessful war in Iraq makes an excellent proxy for our war on terrorism which, after a year, isn’t going all that well. We ousted the Taliban without too much trouble, but we haven’t caught hide nor hair of that pesky Bin Laden fellow that we were so gung-ho about catching “dead or alive” last year. On top of this, George Tenet said two weeks ago that the threat of domestic terrorist attacks is the same as it was in the summer of 2001. It’s very convenient for the President and his poll numbers that the Iraq issue is nicely overshadowing the mediocre results of his war on terrorism, the shredding of the Constitution by the PATRIOT act, not to mension the stagnant economy and the evaporation of the budget surplus that was to fund his big tax cut. Whether or not we go to war, the more serious and long term issue is the alarming trend these days since 9/11 to attack certain viewpoints not for their content, by responding with logical counter-arguments, but to criticize those individuals for impeding the swift action of our government, who is, after all, just trying to keep us safe. Benjamin Franklin one said that “Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.” I implore you the reader to not be bullied into giving up your liberty to voice your opinion, whatever it may be and bring about an open discussion instead of just calling each other “childish and immature.”

Carl Andersen CAS 2003