A rchive Date
[ 09-02-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/steward.html
Yanks still not sure that war's the answer
By HARTLEY STEWARD - Toronto Sun
February 9, 2003
Daytona Beach, Fla. - The threatened war on Iraq seems to have confused and divided Americans. While Secretary of State Colin Powell's show-and-tell session with the United Nations Security Council appears to have convinced more of his compatriots of the need to attack, the country has not united unequivocally behind the administration in what this president would certainly describe as its darkest hour.
It has been a difficult notion for Americans to understand. In the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, Osama bin Laden and his terrorist organization, al-Qaida, were identified as the culprits. The war in Afghanistan to root them out was easy to understand and support. President George Bush's simple rhetoric was effective in light of the 3,000-plus innocent deaths.
Americans were hurt and angry and this was the kind of war they could get behind without reservation. This was retaliation, vengeance, justice. This was the American way. The arguments for intervention in Iraq, especially violent intervention, are much more complicated and subtle. Iraq has not attacked the United States and has at least tried to claim a benign attitude toward the American people, too many of whom could not find Iraq on a world map. Too many of whom would not bother to look.
The American people have mostly responded positively to an isolationist role. Their favourite foreign policy often is no foreign policy at all. They have traditionally insisted on restraint by their governments when clearly restraint was not the prudent response. For almost two years President Franklin Roosevelt chafed under his nation's reluctance to enter World War II. He secretly committed as many American resources to the Allies' war effort as he could without risking impeachment.
It took the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor to convince the American people the problems in far-away Europe were their problems, too. It seems they've been afflicted with the same short-sighted vision where Iraq is concerned.
It is this historic desire to stay out of things, born of ignorance and self-absorption, which is making it difficult for Bush and his administration to rally the American people behind them for a war against Iraq. Even before the compelling performance by Powell before the UN, the need to replace Saddam Hussein would have been obvious to the American people were it not for their persistent, recurring international myopia.
That he is hiding weapons from the arms inspectors goes without saying. If he is not hiding nuclear weapons, certainly he is hiding the makings for them. The world, or a least those people who bother to look, has seen his troops employ shells filled with deadly gases. No one doubts he has experimented with biological warfare. There is little of which even his allies do not consider him capable.
The fact is the response of Saddam, his scientists and troops has been consistent only with a nation which is trying to hide weapons of mass destruction.
The process necessary to convince the arms inspectors - indeed, the world - that Iraq is not hiding weapons of mass destruction is simple. Iraq need only co-operate with the inspectors. It need only stop throwing obstacles in their way. It need only hand over the keys, the scientists and the evidence that it has abandoned the deadly projects we know of.
Cat and mouse
Even Saddam would not put his nation in danger of the devastation that an attack by the U.S. and its allies would wreak on his country simply to tweak the nose of America, the Great Satan. He would not put in peril thousands of innocent Iraqis just so he can play a game of cat and mouse with America.
Without doubt, he is hiding weapons and deadly programs of preparation for war from the UN inspectors, and the world. No other explanation for his posturing exists.
Yet Americans, true to their traditional reluctance to get involved, remain unwilling to support their president and an administration which clearly feels Iraq poses a threat to the American people. It appears Bush will have to act without the sanction of the UN and the total support of his own countrymen.
It seems only another attack on the scale of the World Trade Center will get the nation onside.
Steward appears Tuesdays and Sundays. E-mail: hartleysteward@canoemail.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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