Prospect of war looms
By NATASHA GRANT
News Writer
Ever since Congress voted to give President Bush the power to declare war on Iraq, many people have worried about the prospect of a military conflict.
Notre Dame political science professor Daniel Lindley, considered an expert on the military, sees Congress' decision as a step toward an inevitable war.
"In some ways they had very little choice," he said, "If you are for the war, you vote for it. If you are borderline against the war, you still vote for it to give the United Nations a strong hand." Lindley sees this as essential to avoiding war altogether. "If you want the U.N. process to work, give Bush the vote. The best hope to avoid war is through the U.N."
The motivation behind the war would be neither economic nor political, Lindley said.
"It's a combination of a sense of threat from weapons of mass destruction and after 9/11, the opportunity giving the right-wing hawks a lot more ability to go against Iraq," he said.
Lindley also believes the season would be a driving force behind the urgency for the potential war.
"The war has to happen at winter time because it's too hot for our troops in summer," he said. The United States would prefer to move sooner rather than later, he said.
Lindley compared the war to a bet, saying, "It's a bet on a number of dimensions. Will the Iraqi army fight or not fight? If they fight, it will be bloody. If they don't, it will be easy."
Yet, he said Iraq's threat was minimal when compared to Russia and Pakistan.
"Why are we focusing on Iraq at the risk of hurting the campaign against terrorism and downplaying more pressing threats within Russia and Pakistan?" he said. Because Russia offers a bigger threat of holding nuclear weapons, Lindley said, the United States should be invading there instead of Iraq.
"Strategy is the art of prioritizing, of weighing costs and benefits," he said. "The threat from Iraq is outweighed by other threats, and an Iraq war will hurt more important U.S. priorities."
Lindley said Bush will choose to attack Iraq instead of the bigger threats because Iraqi President Saddam Hussien is tied to economic threats, including higher oil prices, and attempts to assassinate several foreign presidents.
Economics student Edward Faustin agreed that Iraq is a hostile threat because of its military capabilities. "They're probably harboring weapons of nuclear destruction over there," said Faustin, a senior.
Faustin, however, did not agree with Congress' decision to give Bush power to declare war on Iraq.
"War is not resolution," he said. "I feel like any decision for war is made with haste."
Diplomacy and an attempt at reaching a peaceful outcome have not been fully considered, according to Faustin.
"You'd assume that we've explored every avenue of diplomacy to come to some sort of peace, but it doesn't seem the case here," he said.
Political science major Veronica Berger shared opinions similar to Faustin's and said she didn't see a clear reason for the United States to attack Iraq.
"In order to declare war on Iraq, there needs to be a credible and immediate threat," she said. "If the U.N. is the organization that has a problem with Iraq, then the U.N. needs to act multilaterally against Iraq, not the U.S. alone."
U.S. involvement in the conflict would be a means to prevent Iraq from acquiring nuclear weapons and using them irrationally, Berger said. She said having nuclear weapons could cause Iraq to become "a hegemony in the Middle East."
All News Stories for Wednesday, October 16, 2002
