The Palestinians are hitting their stride in the never-ending effort to scare the Israelis into capitulation. The Israelis have of course responded in kind by moving further into Palestinian land and rolling tanks up to Yasser Arafat’s own compound in Ramallah.

The Israelis claim they will not harm Arafat, but this is a difficult statement to stand by when Israeli tanks are firing their cannons at point-blank range directly into the building.

At this time, the onus is clearly on Israel to pull back from its obstinate position in order to save the lives of innocent Israelis and Palestinians. Ariel Sharon will only deal with Arafat if he leaves Palestine in exile and never returns. This bodes ill for the most recent, nascent peace process, which never really had a chance to develop.

Suicide bombings seem to be the ultimate in the perverse game of one-upmanship being played out between the Israeli and Palestinian people. For weeks we have been bombarded with this gruesome reality. It boggles the mind to imagine living conditions in which strapping dynamite to your body and taking as many proximate lives as possible is a viable option in the fight for your cause. Yet it continues on almost a daily basis.

Reportedly, for many of the Palestinians, taking the extreme measure of suicide bombing is the supreme demonstration of faith and devotion to Allah and to the goal of freedom to which they have dedicated themselves. It is a tragedy these people feel they must take innocent lives to reach their objective; the battle has digressed to the wanton killing of people in public places. What is worst about this situation is the fact that some of these people are being paid to blow themselves up with as many Israelis as possible.

Saddam Hussein — giving more fodder to those (of us) who believe he should be forcibly removed — has been paying relatives of suicide bombers $10,000 after the act is done. Yesterday he increased the payment to $25,000, making contract killers out of Palestinian citizens. Saddam is not alone; Saudi Arabia and Qatar (both U.S. allies) are paying families of suicide bombers. To be fair, these funds come from charities set up for victims of violence; however, family members of persons inflicting violence should certainly not receive money.

Human sacrifice through self-detonation has led this atrocious war almost to the point of no return. For purely selfish reasons, and in the name of removing terrorism wherever we see it, the United States should take this latest odious action by Hussein as an opportunity to rid the world of his wretched existence. Paying for suicide bombers is an overt (and one of the more heinous) action of Hussein’s longstanding predilection for sponsoring terrorism.

Allowing the “war on terror” to continue without any foresight of scope and without any idea of an endgame would be irresponsible and dangerous. Removing Saddam Hussein, however, would be an appropriate measure given his position as a dictator and our own previous disputes with him. With the sensible caveat of not continuing the fight against terror in some unspecified way, battling Hussein is a reasonable succession to the war in Afghanistan.

The war on terrorism does not stop with defeating Afghanistan. Saddam Hussein’s morbid killer-for-hire system exemplifies the evil we are trying to fight. This fight should go forward with the understanding that expanding the war too much will on lead to a crusade of biblical proportions in which we will certainly lose.

James P. Kent ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in economics and business management.