Posted on: Sunday, October 19, 2003
COMMENTARY
Saddam clearly represented threat to American people
By Peter T. George
George Lakoff, the Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley (Sept. 15, alternet.org) accuses President Bush of being something worse than a liar. He thinks Bush betrayed the trust of the American people by declaring war on Iraq.
Did the Bush administration really believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?
It is amply documented that Saddam Hussein had such weapons in 1998. Even Bill Clinton is on record as believing it. So is the United Nations. In their Resolution 1441, they demanded that Saddam disclose what he did with those weapons. The resolution was approved by all the nations of the Security Council. He was given more than enough time to comply. He refused.
It is still necessary to determine what happened to these weapons. But whether he hid them, destroyed them or gave them away is immaterial to the justification of that war. Bush asked the members of the United Nations to help enforce their Resolution 1441, which Saddam was flouting, as he did numerous previous U.N. resolutions. Most nations refused. Bush then said that we and our coalition will do it ourselves.
In the words of professor Lakoff, "He (Bush) sought help from other nations, but he refused to relinquish control over the shaping of Iraq's military, political and economic future."
After Bush committed U.S. lives and capital to enforce what the United Nations approved, France, Germany, Russia, who watched from afar, said they should be allowed to decide how Iraq should be administered and who gets the oil contracts. Bush said, "No, we will administer it ourselves."
Is there a reason that we are in Iraq other than enforcing U.N. Resolution 1441? Is there a reasonable person in the world who didn't believe that Saddam Hussein should be eliminated — at least from a position of power? The atrocities he committed rival those of Hitler and some leaders in Africa. And he used weapons of mass destruction in doing them.
Why then don't we go after the bad guys in Africa? As humane as that would be, we just don't have the resources to eliminate all the world's evil-doers. Our president must concentrate on those who most affect the security of the American people.
On 9-11, our nation was brutally attacked by individuals who came from the Middle East. Most of the people of that part of the world are peace-loving, but they have a hard time understanding why Americans, and especially Israelis, are so rich and they are so poor. Many of their schools teach their children that these two nations are very evil and are somehow responsible for their plight. In some of their houses of worship they are told to pray six times every day so that their God may suggest daring and brutal missions to avenge their alleged foes.
Unfortunately, the form of government in most Middle Eastern countries does not allow common people to accumulate the wealth of their labor, as it does in America or Israel. A capitalistic democracy planted in the Arab world would best demonstrate what can be done by their people.
Bush wants to set up a government that will allow Iraqis to take over and prosper, just as we did for the Germans and Japanese — now among the world's most prosperous people.
This very humane mission is expensive in dollars and human lives. But this price is a small fraction of what not doing it now could cost Americans later.
Peter T. George is a retired Honolulu orthodontist and a former Olympic gold medalist.
