The editorial from the Sept. 17 edition of The Miami Hurricane spelled out the writer’s belief that war with Iraq cannot be justified. What is most telling about this editorial is that it seems as much about a war that can’t be justified as it is about the writer’s personal dislike for George W. Bush. As if to highlight this point, the editorial ran next to an anti-Bush political cartoon which at best can only be described as uncreative while at the same time lacking in any informative value.
For eleven years the government of Iraq (i.e. Saddam Hussein) has not lived up to any of the treaty stipulations leading to a formal end to the Gulf War; stipulations to which it agreed and was a signatory. This fact alone is sufficient justification for the introduction of military forces to “guarantee” that government’s future cooperation. After all, they lost the war. The defeated do not have the luxury of deciding which conditions imposed upon them by the victor they will follow and which they will disregard. The last time defiance of this sort reared its head it was not confronted. As a result, the world was left with nearly thirty million dead.
While it is true that President Bush has made no secret of his desire to remove Saddam Hussein from power, it is because, like the continued endurance of Fidel Castro, there can be no progress on Iraq while the Ba’ath party remains in power. Hussein was not removed in 1991 because of the very same multilateralism that the editorial supports by implication. Additionally, while it is true that the economy is having problems, it is both self-centered and narcissistic to proclaim that only the Great Depression was worse; clearly, the recession that propelled Bill Clinton into office made for far worse economic conditions than what we see today.
Distrusting your government is a good thing. In contrast, distrusting your government while relying on the “honorable” motives of Tariq Aziz and Saddam Hussein is not. This kind of thinking is naive – on a scale of Chamberlainian proportions.
Scott Wacholtz is a junior majoring in computer science and political science who served as a Marine Corp Sergeant in Desert Storm.