Students disagree on U.S. involvement in Gulf
U.S. must police world
to protect weak countries
Eric Aspengren, writing on the DN
editorial page, (DN, Sept. 7), contin
ues to perpetrate the mistaken notion
that the current operation in the Per
sian Gulf concerns solely the availa
bility of oil to the West. Nothing
could be further from the truth. While
oil arguably may be the catalyst in the
crisis, it is not the logical basis for the
U.S. military buildup in Saudi Ara
bia.
What frightened passivists (and
pacifists) refuse to recognize is that in
the post-Cold War era, the United
States survives as the only super
power economically and militarily
capable of inserting force into any
area of the world inflamed by a crisis
such as currently exists with regard
to Kuwait. For better or for worse,
that capability compels us as a nation
to accept the role of policing the world
so that tyrants, such as Saddam Hussein,
do not sleep well at night knowing a
price will be exacted for their trans
gressions.
Consider the alternative. If the
United States as a nation fails to meet
that obligation, it seems likely that
the world’s future holds the prospect
of an explosion of small, regional
conflicts led by trigger-happy dema
gogues who know their preying upon
weaker neighbors can be accomplished
with impunity. The bleak aspect will
be one of war, war, war; peace will
become a forgotten concept in many
parts of the world with anarchy and
despair the bountiful harvest of our
inaction.
Particularly irritating, Aspengren
illogically panders to the oft-voiced
ideal of protecting democracy and
democratic institutions to argue that
our nation is hypocritical in defend
ing Saudi Arabia and attempting to
dislodge Iraq from occupied Kuwait.
No reasonable American would de
fend the desirability of the present
Kuwaiti form of government (as it
existed before Iraq’s blatant aggres
sion), but rather would prefer a stabil
ity such that the Kuwaiti citizens, by
their own institutions at their own
pace. If Saddam Hussein is not forced
to return to the people of Kuwait their
land and their property (yes, Eric, you
conveniently managed to forget that
Saddam’s armies robbed, raped and
pillaged Kuwait), then no one will be
safe in the future from any like-minded
madman.
Even more outrageously, Aspen
gren piously claims it to be propa
ganda to equate Saddam Hussein with
Hiller. Eric, did you think to ask those
families in the Kurdish provinces of
Iraq upon whom Saddam unloaded
his lethal arsenal of poison-gas bombs?
What the civilized world regards as
loathsome and inhuman, Saddam has
elevated to an art such that he must
relish the thought to exterminate an
independent-minded people who stand
in the way of his metallurgical de
signs for an Arab world ruled from
Baghdad.
No thinking person would accord
Saddam Hussein the status to speak
of peace for the Arab world; like
Hitler, he ranks right down there in
the cesspool of humanity and deserves
little more than to be dragged out in
the dessert and shot like the mad dog
he has proved to be in light of the
Kurdish genocide he masterminded.
While Aspengrcn, thankfully, failed
to dredge up the perennial whipping
boy in any Middle East discussion —
Israel -- this issue is subtly being
interjected into the current conflict
by the Iraqi propaganda apparatus.
Saddam Hussein remains busy crank
ing out the invective he deems neces
sary to unite a fragmented Arab re
solve to fight a holy war against Is
rael. He cannot forget that Israel
deprived him of the opportunity to
unleash upon the world the specter of
nuclear holocaust. But for Israel’s
bombing of Iraq’snuclcar complex in
the early 1980s the world might even
now have been consumed in a nuclear
conflagration.
Finally, if history teaches us any
thing, it is the lesson that turning a
blind eye toward a neighbor’s distress
ultimately results in compounded costs
economically as well as spiritually. A
decisive, early action by concerned
governments against Hitler’s lunacy
prior to World War II might well have
prevented the nightmare of six mil
lion Jewish deaths in the Holocaust,
the millions of military and civilian
war casualties, and the eastern, com
munist-dominated governments even
yet collapsing! Because of the pa
ralysis of fear that war might result if
governments acted to contain the
Nazi’s aggression toward its neigh
bors, the world was plunged into the
very war it desperately hoped to avoid
by appeasing Hitler.
Yes, I am fed up with the tripe that
passes for fair-minded and respon
sible journalism. Increasingly, so many
in the profession appear willing to be
duped by an ever more shrill segment
in our society acting upon an agenda
designed to withdraw and isolate
America from the rest of the world by
resorting to smear tactics of eternally
labeling our government as a war
mongering aggressor. It is time to
resist the myopic view to negotiate
and hope for peace; rather we should
continue to take firm, persistent and
militarily powerful action to restore
peace and stability to that troubled
part of the world. The paradigm of
parent/child relationship illustrates the
point: as parents, we sometimes must
forcefully interject ourselves between
our children in order to preserve the
peace and often their bodies. Such is
the course we are presently faced
with respect to the current crisis in
Kuwait. To wait is to risk losing it all.
Frank Adams
senior
law college
they took over, slashing or ending
federally sponsored alternate energy
research and removing evergy inde
pendence from the national agenda,
replacing it with Star Wars and the
Communist threat. Thanks, Bush, for
your vision and foresight regarding
these matters.
God Bless America, and President
Bush.
Gary W. Longsine
senior
international affairs
Saddam not a madman,
his rationality is evident
Naveed Siraj Memon’s rabid cri
tique of a recent DN editorial column
by AmJ' Edwards (DN, Aug. 27) does
nothing to detract from Edward’s
essentially correct analysis of events
in the Persian Gulf. Memon’s mis
taken and unjust accusation that
Edwards, a warmonger of campus
repute, would approve of the use of
nuclear weapons in Iraq to “get things
over with quickly’’ does however
solidify my conviction that the death
of sarcasm is high. Her skilled and
subtle use of this writing technique to
suggest the United States should,
perhaps, not be the watchdog of the
world must have passed right through
Memon’s grey matter without being
intercepted.
However, Edwards made one
important error, committed this month
by several far more experienced and
better paid analysts than she. Saddam
Hussein is not a “madman.” As citi
zens of the United States interested in
preserving our lifestyles in a peaceful
world order, we would do better to
ignore efforts by charged rhetoric.
Even such a devout cold warrior as
Zbigniew Brzezinski has expressed
concern with the Bush efforts to gain
support for his policy in the Middle
East by making Saddam Hussein into
evil incarnate (presumably for rea
sons other than this role’s status as
reserved for communists). Ousting
Saddam, he says, should not be the
primary objective of U.S. policy in
the area.
Focusing on Saddam obfuscates
the genuine foreign policy interests
of the United States and may even
make the chance of war more likely.
If Saddam Hussein feels that Bush
will not allow him to survive this
crisis as the ruler of Iraq, then he has
less to lose by attempting a victory
through violence and everything to
gain.
Saddam’s rationality is evident in
several of his actions in this crisis.
The most obvious was his sudden
settlement of the terms of peace with
Iran, on terms favorable to the Iranian
government. Several commentators
speculated that Saddam had cut a deal
to sell oil from Iraq and Kuwait by
shipping it through Iran. This is pos
sible, but on any significant scale,
such actions would be relatively easy
to detect, and would embarrass Iran.
More likely, Saddam secured a prom
ise from Iran to remain neutral in the
event of actual armed conflict.
If Saddam wanted to invade Saudi
Arabia, the time to do it was immedi
ately after rolling over Kuwait. Every
day he waits makes a military victory
in such an invasion less likely. It is
very likely that he is only interested
in annexing Kuwait, and that Bush is
interested in using military force, if
necessary, to push him out. Bush,
therefore, is using the threat against
Saudi Arabia as an excuse to get
American military forces in a posi
tion to lever Iraq from Kuwait. Lever,
of course, is a neat strategic term
which shields strategists from thoughts
of 18-ycar-old men and boys cough
ing up blood and lung parts on a
chemical battlefield.
Bush learned w'ell under Reagan
that adventuristic foreign policy can
successfully draw voters’ attention
from domestic problems such as the
recurrent budget deficit, the swelling
national debt, the savings and loan
fiasco, AIDS, poverty, the environ
ment, and the lack of meaningful
presidential leadership on these and
other issues. The current iteration of
crisis in the Gulf should prompt us to
ask more than * ‘ How many troops are
going?” and “When will they come
back?”
For example why does the United
States remain dependent on oil from
the region after the warnings we’ve
had in 1973 and 1979? The answer
can only be that the Reagan-Bush
administration dismantled the fledg
ling energy policy that existed when
That’s one way of
looking at it.
Another way is to ignore it
and hope it goes away. Or
tell yourself it's hopeless.
And that’s called playing
with fire. Because there’s
one thing we know for
certain.
And that is that high
blood pressure can usual
ly be controlled. By follow
ing your doctor’s advice.
Bj/exercising regularly to
control weight. By cutting
down on salt in your diet.
And by sticking to your
prescribed medication.
Because if you don’t take
it seriously today, it could
take you by surprise
tomorrow.
WE'RE FIGHTING FOR
YOUR LIFE
4
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