Peace movement ignores need for removal of Saddam
Damian Zurro
senior
As a result of the peace protests last weekend and the calls for no war in Iraq that have surfaced on this campus, I feel compelled to respond. I know many of the students personally who are clamoring for peace, and they are very sincere people who have a world-view worthy of respect. I even had the privilege of attending the delightful Sheila Provencher's talk on what she witnessed on a recent peace coalition trip to Iraq. She is a true person of non-violence and very brave to do what she did. Yet, a nagging fact remains that if the counsels of the peace movement are followed, at the end of the day Saddam Hussein remains in power. This is an injustice that cannot be simply overlooked.
Now I realize that no one in the peace movement cares for Saddam Hussein, and they are certainly not among his apologists. But the fact remains that by opposing any military action to remove him, they are indirectly supporting the status quo and the continued oppression of the Iraqi people.
There are many reasons to support regime change in Iraq, and all of these have been stated by people better than myself. The first is the fact that Saddam Hussein has broken every law on genocide and human rights. As a result, Congress under President Clinton passed the Iraqi Liberation Act calling for Saddam's removal many years before this current debate.
Second is Saddam's continual efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction in violation of several U.N. resolutions over the past decade. A third is that the Iraqi secret police are known actors in the international underworld of terror.
In fact, regime change has already happened in Iraqi Kurdistan. Due to American and British enforced "no–fly" zones the Kurds have successfully constructed a flourishing civil society complete with newspapers in several languages, TV stations, Internet cafes and satellite dishes. At the University of Sulaimaniya, a significant number of the students are home.
If the peace movement wishes to remain consistent, they should protest that these no–fly zones be lifted since they are ongoing measures from the last Gulf War. Then we would see how quickly Saddam's death squads would move in and attempt to annihilate the Kurds once again as they did in 1988 and at the end of the last war. Surely a principled peace movement would not ignore these self-determined peoples.
There remain objections that have been raised and that merit serious consideration. One of the most ubiquitous is that this is a war for oil. On one side, I feel I can say that if it were simply about oil, would it not be easier for President Bush to call for the lifting of the sanctions and give Saddam a green light to do as he pleased, only asking in return that Iraq sells us its oil a little cheaper? I find it hard to believe that Saddam would not jump if given that chance. On the other hand, I guess one can say it is about oil.
A consensual government in Iraq would ideally raise the oil production to over three million barrels and allow the world price of oil to decline or stabilize. This would benefit millions of people outside the United States, and it would allow the Iraqi people to benefit from oil profits to rebuild their country instead of the money going toward Hussein's anthrax labs or palaces while the people starve. If there is anyone who does not want the current oil situation to change, it is the large oil companies who rely on the large profits that come from the status quo of a tight world oil supply. Those who accuse the United States of being economically imperialistic need only reflect that there was no oil to be found in Grenada, Panama, Somalia or Kosovo, all places where the United States has carried out military operations in the past twenty years.
What is in place now in Iraq are crippling economic sanctions that I would agree are immoral. They punish the Iraqi people while letting Saddam keep a grip on power. Yet, they cannot be lifted while he is still there since this would allow his regime to regroup and pursue weapons of mass destruction.
What the peace movement should be advocating is a coherent policy for a post-Saddam Iraq. This is an area where we can reasonably question the current administration's commitment to staying the course after the war.
Iraq will be very fragile once Saddam is gone and could "Balkanize" with all the different ethnic factions fighting among themselves. Jeffersonian democracy will not catch overnight and will require many years of multi-lateral presence in order to keep the peace and help the Iraqis construct a democracy. We would owe the Iraqi people no less. A new government in Iraq could serve as beachhead from which waves of democratic reform could emanate to the failed regimes that surround it.
In the end, if the views of the peace movement had been followed over the past decade, Kuwait would no longer exist as a country, having long ago been gobbled up by Iraq and Saddam Hussein would have nuclear weapons. This would risk a much bloodier more destabilizing conflict than we can now imagine if he were to ever use them.
Continuing with this thought, if the peace movement prevailed in 1999, Kosovo would currently be ethnically cleansed. An interesting note is that Saddam Hussein came out against the removal of Slobodan Milosevic, a man who was killing Sunni Muslims, members of Saddam's own sect. These reactionary dictators tend to stick together. When faced with all of this it surely must make a hands-off approach to Saddam more problematic. This leads me to ask my friends in the peace movement if it really is about peace.
All Viewpoint Stories for Tuesday, January 28, 2003
