I find it interesting that for once I am in complete agreement with Sen. Joe Lieberman.
Having just returned from Central Asia, Lieberman made a speech at Georgetown University saying that we must assist Muslim nations in modernizing and building up to join the rest of the world community at large.
"While we drain the swamp, we must also seed the garden," he said.
Further, he took a hard stance on Iraq.
"Our clear, unequivocal goal should be liberating the Iraqi people and the world from Saddam's tyranny as we should have done in 1991," said Lieberman.
He is precisely correct. The United States' efforts there to keep Saddam Hussein's tyrannical regime docile has simply allowed him to rebuild his ruthless grip on his subjects, not to mention building weapons of mass destruction and aiding anti-U.S. terrorists.
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While public evidence of such things may be scarce, we all know it's happening. Saddam did not reform himself after his abortive attempt at Kuwaiti conquest. Leaving him in power there only taught him that to oppose the West, he must resort to more underhanded, subtle tactics.
Not only should we see Hussein as a potential perpetrator of another Sept. 11, we should consider the fate of the people we left languishing in Iraq. Life for the Iraqi people is no better than it was before the Gulf War. In fact, it is probably worse, considering the economic sanctions.
That's the essential problem with economic sanctions in this day and age. They only hurt the people of a country, not their leaders. Dictators such as Saddam can even use the starvation of their people to raise more support against the United States and the outside world.
Also, though economic sanctions might prevent a country from building up its traditional armed forces, it cannot stop them from cooking up terrorist schemes and caches of biological and chemical weapons. Containing Hussein will not prevent future terror attacks on the United States. In fact, it almost guarantees them.
Historically, the United States has been timid about using its military in overt preemptive measures that might be interpreted as "imperialistic." The idea that we should forcibly remove Hussein and then help rebuild Iraq into a modern nation is derided as "nation building."
Eventually, however, we are going to have to realize that the best defense is a good offense. No matter how powerful our military or vigilant our guardians, we will not be safe as long as men like Hussein are free to plot against us. For years it was obvious to anyone who was paying attention that the Taliban was up to no good and that al Qaeda was actively planning attacks. Yet we did nothing about either of them until after they killed more than 3,000 Americans on our own soil.
Can we allow ourselves to make that mistake ever again? It was a lesson that we should have learned after World War II, when the world's leniency toward Hitler let him become so powerful that he almost couldn't be stopped. Why is it that sixty years later we are still so reluctant to take action before it's too late?
President Bush surprised many with the audacity, scale, and speed of his attack on the Taliban and al Qaeda. Secretary of State Colin Powell has acknowledged that Iraq is known to be a terrorist state and that the administration is reviewing ways to deal with that. Now, with a prominent Democrat calling for action, the world may finally see the United States take the initiative to scrub out threats to peace and security early on.
Not only is such action in the interests of the United States for safety reasons, it is also better for the Iraqi people, and for the world economy. A free and productive Iraq as a global trading partner would be far better for everyone than an Iraq ruled by a despot and walled off from the outside world.
by Craig A. Butler
Daily Lobo Columnist
