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Against the isolationists
Ryan Williams
Last week Ben
Kuipers offered us his opinion of the Bush administration and
the current conflict in Iraq. Unfortunately, the article offered
little in the way of substantive fact and all too much empty,
tired anti-war rhetoric.
It is certainly tragic that many
soldiers have lost their lives since hostilities were declared
over, but if we put it into perspective, the death toll is miniscule.
An often suggested but rarely heeded point is that it is certainly
better to lose servicemen in Iraq than civilians at home.
Kuipers would quickly retort that
this is illogical because Saddam's totalitarian escapades were
confined to his own region of the world and he did not directly
attack the United States. This point of view overlooks the changing
nature of threats to American security and the enormous technology
gap between 1776 and today-a disparity that allows enemies to
attack in a matter of hours rather than weeks or months.
The claim that the Bush administration
rushed to "invent" a new justification when no WMD
were found simply misses the facts at hand. The emphasis on
WMD was not the only justification for the removal of Saddam
and his murderous regime. As in any political environment, it
was necessary to build a coalition-this involved focusing the
debate on certain points and excluding others. The argument
most likely to sway opinion in the United Nations involved the
emphasis on WMD. This choice of argument was a prudential one,
gauged by the Bush administration as most likely to garner broad
support.
Wild-eyed liberal intonations
notwithstanding, it has not at all been "firmly established"
that the administration deceived the American people about the
threat that Saddam posed. In fact, it is constantly becoming
more and more apparent that he did indeed pose a serious threat.
Much of the fiercest fighting in the early days of the war was
guided and reinforced by al-Qaida operatives
and other such terrorists that had come to Iraq to learn how
best to kill innocent Americans. Much of the continued resistance
in Iraq is most likely due at least in part to the remaining
terrorist presence in the region.
Kuipers would have us believe
that the notion of preemptive war is inimical to the founding
vision of this country. However, when we consider the primary
function of government-the duty to protect the people from foreign
threats-the notion of preemptive war starts to make perfect
sense. If there exists a regime that is actively harboring and
facilitating the training of people who are intent on injuring
or destroying America, then a preemptive strike against such
an enemy is entirely consistent with the constitutional requirement
that the executive "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution
of the United States."
The most glaringly absurd contention
in Kuipers' article is the implication that Bush, by attacking
a "non-belligerent state," has acted in a way no less
"totalitarian and tyrannical" than Saddam. It takes
either an utter lack of reasoned observation or a blind veneration
for isolationism to justify this statement.
A short story will reveal the
intellectual vacuity of such an analogy. A judge who was summoned
by the U.S. government to consult with Iraqi jurists about implementing
a solid rule of law was told about an interrogation conducted
by one of Saddam's cronies-it took place in the home of an Iraqi
man, while his wife and small infant stood and watched; when
the man failed to give a satisfactory answer to a question,
the interrogator reached and plucked one of the infant's eyes
out and then repeated the question. This was the everyday tyranny
of the Baathists; to equate it with the actions of a popularly
elected president (who was authorized by the people to use force
in Iraq) is truly baffling.
I am not advocating an unquestioning
devotion to the administration's policies in Iraq. Surely, it
is the patriotic duty of every American to maintain constant
critical vigilance over the actions of our government, but such
vigilance must be informed by the historical and constitutional
nature of American government if it is to be effective.
To claim that the founders of
this country would have considered Saddam and his terrorist-supporting
regime a mere harmless "monster" on the other side
of the world is to misinterpret the nature of Islamic fundamentalism
and the regimes that lend it support; what's worse, it is also
a gross misunderstanding and misrepresentation of our Constitution.
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