Oh yes, it’s all coming together now. Every day more Democrats jump ship and swim over to join the Republicans in backing President Bush’s Iraq-war resolution. Blurred party lines, contradicting reports and frenzied press coverage are all elements of the proposed war. Politicians and voters alike are divided over what to do next.
Those who dare make a plea for a peaceful, non-military action are scoffed at and summarily dismissed by camp Bush. In fact, the president’s speech to the nation Monday had paragraph after paragraph of “we’re all going to die” rhetoric.
Scrunching up his face and getting really serious, Bush looked at the cameras and said, “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
Well, after a speech like that, how could anyone dare to question the declaration of war? Bush just said Iraq has a nuclear weapon pointed directly at us, and Hussein is giddily fingering the trigger. Never mind that Iraq doesn’t actually have any nuclear weapons, and it hasn’t actually made any threats against us.
But it will, Bush’s camp says, any day now. But the CIA, which is in place to predict international threats, disagrees with the president. Portions of a letter sent to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence were made public Tuesday afternoon; the entire letter was made public later Tuesday evening. It was written by CIA director George Tenet, and in it the agency seems to gently dissent from the president’s assertions.
In its intelligence estimate, the agency said, “Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or chemical and biological weapons against the United States.”
Well, that rather dampens the smoking-gun postulate. But wait — there’s more. The CIA also indicated that it believes Iraq would be pretty likely to retaliate if we attack. That reasoning, of course, falls under the “well, duh” category.
The president is standing by his comments, naturally. But don’t call Bush a warmonger — he’s all for peace. Witness his comment in the Monday address: “For the sake of peace, we will lead a coalition to disarm Hussein.”
Those who oppose unprovoked military attacks were clearly being hasty. This is a peace war. In the name of peace, America will march into Iraq and pry the weapons out of Hussein’s cold, dead hands.
Of course, it’s not like we’re declaring war in the center of a peaceful time period. America is already involved in a war on terror. And the Tenet letter does indicate that the CIA believes there are strong links between al-Qaeda and Iraq.
Should America declare full-blown war to clear out a few al-Qaeda members who may or may not be hiding in Iraq? Hussein may have collaborated with terrorists in the past — he’s an evil tyrant, big surprise — but should his subjects pay for his evildoings?
The war will be fought in Iraqi territory, at least at first. It will not simply include soldiers. Civilians will die, lose their homes, see their country destroyed and watch their government fall into a terrifying political vacuum. All this on a hunch that a nuclear threat may exist sometime in the future.
It is important to question the administration’s plan to declare war before we start a landslide of military action and reaction which cannot be stopped.
–Kate MacDonald ([email protected]) is a journalism, film and economics student at UW-Milwaukee.
