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One Scary President
By Dick Ackermann, Winsted
President Bush has been insisting that we must get rid of Saddam Hussein under any circumstances. He wants other nations to participate in the effort to do this. However, he keeps insisting that we will do it without help from allies if necessary. He also is anxious to do this as soon as possible. He says that Saddam Hussein will use weapons of mass destruction if we don't do something about it now. Just what threat is Saddam Hussein to the U.S.?
We were told that Saddam Hussein was working on nuclear weapons before the Gulf War. After that war was over we had inspection teams roving throughout Iraq looking for nuclear weapons, nuclear laboratories and stockpiles of materials needed for the making of nuclear weapons. The Iraqis did not appreciate this and were uncooperative. They finally expelled the inspection teams. They have had four years to work on these weapons without any inspection teams looking for evidence of research, testing, manufacturing or deployment.
So for twelve years the Iraqis were involved in making these weapons. Have they succeeded? We don't know. At least you and I don't know. Maybe George Bush knows. He hasn't really told us, so we need to speculate:
(1) Saddam Hussein does not have these weapons. We are planning to destroy Iraq, further alienate the Muslim world, and lose prestige and goodwill from the rest the world. We will also suffer casualties. How many American families will be devastated in this senseless and futile effort at eliminating something that doesn't exist? We have much to lose and very little to gain from an invasion of an Iraq that does not have nuclear bombs.
(2a) Saddam does have these weapons but has not used them against us. Why not? Because he knows that we would retaliate with a greater number of even more powerful bombs, and neither he nor his nation would survive.
(2b) Saddam does have these weapons of mass destruction, and would use them if his nation is under attack from the United States and he knows he cannot win. We used atomic bombs in World War II to speed up the end of the war. Does anyone doubt that Saddam Hussein would use his nuclear weapons if his nation was being destroyed? Has he a plan to use his weapons against targets in the U.S.? Who knows?
If Saddam used his bombs first, would we really retaliate? I cannot imagine that we would not. Certainly we would suffer terrible casualties. How would the world perceive us if we did not retaliate? How would the world perceive us if we did retaliate? I am sure that our enemies would say we provoked this nuclear exchange and we would lose credibility, and generate a hatred and contempt amongst all nations. This is a lose-lose scenario.
Why don't we consider the Iraqis as human beings? Has President Bush or Defense Secretary Rumsfeld ever once mentioned the pain and misery they would inflict upon so many innocent people, the families of all those killed or maimed by our bullets and bombs? This cavalier attitude towards the people of other cultures must make us appear to be unfeeling monsters. In other words, we regard others as some sort of lesser creatures who are somehow less than real human beings. This attitude is a fundamental part of the problem.
Our tough-talking President seems willing to send our troops into battle without considering either consequences or alternatives. His consultations with other nations are reported to be nothing more than one-sided dialogue that says "either you are with me or against me." He is not making friends for us with this approach. We are losing status and squandering our goodwill throughout the world.
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