| Bush
is Off-Course on Iraq |
| I'm not buying all this talk about Iraq being an imminent
threat to the United States. My daughter's diapers are a more
immediate threat to national security than Saddam Hussein. |
| More than 40 percent of Iraq is patrolled 24 hours a day
by American and NATO pilots, who bomb radar tracking stations,
attack aircraft and generally fire at will at any target they
feel is threatening. |
| As former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Tuesday,
Iraq is in a box by the international community in 1991 after
the U.S.-led Gulf War defeated Saddam Hussein's invasion of
Kuwait. |
| If Iraq has been able to develop nuclear or biological weapons
of such quality that they could be used to harm anyone other
than Saddam Hussein himself, it would represent a huge failure
by the United States and the international community to restrict
any nation from developing such weapons. |
| After all, if a country that has been humbled by weekly
air strikes and economic sanctions from the most powerful
nations in the world for 10 years can still build a nuclear
weapon or turn anthrax or smallpox into a weapon, what hope
is there that any nation's evil intents can be stopped? |
| There's certainly no hope of stopping North Korea's evil
intents, apparently. Where was the United States on that one?
|
| About a year ago President Bush named North Korea as one
of the nations in the œaxis of evil,” which directly threatens
the United States. But now North Korea has nuclear missiles,
and the Bush administration seems barely to have noticed.
|
| Instead, the United States has continued to urge the nation
to focus on Iraq, and Bush advisers are campaigning to gather
support for military action against the Middle East nation. |
| But why should we continue to focus on Iraq, a nation that
has been crippled by the past, when a regime that is just
as evil, desperate, and irrational has already developed the
technology to wreak mass destruction? |
| North Korea will now likely enjoy the very benefit of being
a nuclear power that Saddam Hussein would love to exploit:
diplomacy. North Korea has figured out that launching a military
attack against a nation with nuclear weapons would be an extremely
dangerous situation for the United States, the United Nations,
or anyone. |
| Because of this, North Korea will probably be given a big
seat at political tables around the world, as every nation
tries to keep the regime calm enough that it does not use
its weapons of mass destruction. |
| Meanwhile, the only idea anyone seems to have of handling
Iraq, whose status as a sponsor of terrorism and as an enemy
of the United States doesn't seem to have changed much underneath
all the rhetoric, is to wage war. |
| The United States is on the right path in pressuring the
United Nations to enforce its own resolutions which are supposed
to keep Iraq in check. But the United States should be more
interested in bringing change to the Middle East and in keeping
Iraq from being a perennial threat over the next quarter century. |
| We can expect North Korea to now receive more international
aid to expand its economy, more international political support
to have its concerns answered, and more openness by the international
community because of its status as a nuclear nation. |
| The hope of North Korean diplomacy would be that with international
contact and role models the regime would change from one of
the œaxis of evil” to a nation that is more productive, humane
and stable. |
| One of the lessons that can be learned from the Sept. 11
attacks is that poverty, lack of education, disillusionment,
and disenchantment contribute toward the creation and support
of more evil around the world than any other factors. |
| To eliminate Iraq as a threat in the long run, the Bush
administration would be better served by using the United
Nations to establish social and humanitarian programs to educate,
empower and enrich Iraqi citizens. |
| Teach the Iraqi people to govern themselves, and then watch
how much longer they put up with Saddam Hussein. Educate them
about health and commerce, and then watch how hard they fight
against oppression. |
| This is the process the United States and the United Nations
should have begun immediately after the last war in the Middle
East. |
