Don't believe the hype:
a case for war on Iraq
This article is primarily a summary, with many of my own ideas and syntheses, of The Threatening Storm, by Kenneth M. Pollack, possibly the leading source of the pro-war argument. All unaccredited quotes and facts are his.
- Joe Kern, American ALT
| Note from the editor: The following article was written and sent in shortly before the war in Iraq started. Although the war is now pretty much over, much of what is said in the article is still applicable to the current situation and I have therefore decided to include it in this month's issue. |
As most people know by now, the United States intends to wage war on Iraq with the intention of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and his regime. Among my peers it is practically a foregone conclusion that the war is uncalled for, just another in a string of cynical imperialistic military actions with nothing more than the U.S.'s base greed and lust for power behind it, coupled with an ignorance of and disregard for the outside world. The arguments against America are strong, and while I do believe that the U.S. is culpable for its worldwide abuse of power in some regions and neglect in others since the end of WWII, I do not believe that this addresses the whole issue of this particular action. The world, not the U.S. alone, is in a precarious situation and has been since Saddam Hussein turned his attention away from Iran in 1988 and began to focus his peculiar megalomania on the rest of the planet, hitting at the heart of the international economy with Kuwait and its oil. My intention here is to discuss the issues that the anti-war propaganda ignores.
SADDAM HUSSEIN
To say a country's leader is a bad man is to say almost nothing. There are so many different kinds of badness that one must have more details before passing any sort of judgment. Is he Richard Nixon bad, Ferdinand Marcos bad, Idi Amin bad, or Adolf Hitler bad? It is an important distinction, because no 'good' power in the world (whether that means to you the U.S., the U.N., or merely an unrealized hypothetical entity) can possibly deal with all of the bad powers and right all of the wrongs in the world, so the battles must be chosen carefully.
Though some deride the comparison as hyperbole, I think there are several characteristics Saddam shares with Hitler that put him in the category of most dangerous: his practical intelligence in maintaining power, his unpredictability resulting from brazen hubris and very grand ambitions, his ruthlessness, and his control over commodities that concern the larger