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President Bush's War
By Dick Akermann, Winsted
If we wage war with Iraq, historians (if there are any) will look at this time in the life of our planet and make judgements having all the facts at their fingertips. What will they see? The most powerful nation in history invading a small, backward nation that was trying to recover from a devastating war that had ended twelve years before. This small nation had been struggling to survive since then, under the strong economic sanctions imposed by other nations led by the U.S.
Until recent times Iraq was little more than a large desert with little arable land, a nasty climate, inadequate water supplies and not much else. Then oil was discovered underneath the hot, sandy soil—a lot of oil. Iraq then became a player in world trade and politics.
Following a national and regional tradition, Iraq came under the leadership of a man with a great ambition to keep his position and expand his influence over his neighbors. Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant who used whatever force he had to subjugate all those who might oppose his plans to become the number one man of the Arab world. He waged chemical warfare against those whom he perceived as enemies to his ambitions.
The world is full of men with the same qualities as Saddam Hussein. Fortunately for us, most of them have not had the opportunities he had. For the most part we have ignored them unless they threatened us like Hitler and Stalin did. We have stood by as other tyrants have struggled with visions of power and brutalized all who stood in their way. For the most part, we have done little to help the oppressed people involved.
But Saddam is different. There is an enormous amount of oil in Iraq. There are non-Iraqis who covet this oil and all the wealth and power it represents. Why else is President Bush preparing to send our young men and women into a war where many will be maimed or killed?
President Bush states that the Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction. President Bush says that the United States is at risk because Saddam Hussein has used them against his own rebellious people. Does anybody really think that Saddam Hussein would use such weapons against the United States without being provoked? That would be insanity. We have hundreds of nuclear weapons we could deliver within hours in retaliation.
Does anybody doubt that Saddam Hussein would use all his weapons in defense or retaliation if we were to invade Iraq and rush towards Baghdad? Wouldn't we retaliate if this country was being overwhelmed by some enemy? We have thousands of nuclear weapons scattered around the world for the express purpose of retaliating against whoever would strike us first. That has been our stated policy for many years. Do we expect Saddam Hussein to be more noble than we are?
If George Bush persists in waging war with Iraq he will find few other nations that will help us. Almost the entire world is opposed to an invasion of Iraq. There are a few nations that we will be able to intimidate or buy for cash or promises; we did precisely that in the Gulf War twelve years ago.
During the Gulf War, a Vietnam veteran asked me if I thought we would be invading Kuwait if that country had no oil but instead was the world's leading grower of kumquats. That was a very interesting question at that time. Change Kuwait to Iraq and it is still a very interesting question.
Maybe posterity will call this the Oil War. More likely, it will be known as President Bush's War.
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