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Part 9

Iraq & A Hard Place Part 8 - 

What Gives Us the Right?

23, 2003 53: AM CST

Opponents of a war in Iraq claim that we have no right to overthrow a sovereign government. In fact, under international law and millennia of historical precedent we have every right. Iraq has violated the terms of an agreed cease-fire agreement. Furthermore, Saddam Hussein presents a clear and present danger to the security of the United States and the world. But most of all, the United States is the only world power that both can and will deal with the problem.

Nobody argues anymore that the first Gulf War was unjust. The world community united to expel a foreign army from a sovereign nation. The war was a complete rout of Iraq’s forces. After exactly one hundred hours of ground combat, Saddam knew he had been defeated. In order to preserve his regime, he signed an unconditional surrender. We agreed not to overthrow Saddam Hussein, but in return we imposed a long list of requirements on Iraq. For twelve years, he tried every trick in the book to fool the world, but there is no doubt that he failed to live up to these demands.

Saddam keeps his power today only because we allowed him to. And we allowed it only because he made agreements that he has since broken. This fact, in and of itself, completely justifies the upcoming invasion of Iraq, both morally and under international law. This is not a preemptive war as some call it. It is merely the completion of a fully justified war against an aggressor nation. I suspect that in a hundred years historians will likely refer to only one Gulf War.

Furthermore, Saddam Hussein represents a major threat to the security of the United States. We are not colonizing a sovereign nation. We are acting in defense, both of ourselves and of our allies. Nearly every culture in history understood the right to self defense. The United Nations is no different. Its charter specifically authorizes defensive military action.

Saddam Hussein proved himself an aggressor by invading his neighbors Iran and Kuwait. He showed the world his willingness to use weapons of mass destruction during the Iran-Iraq war, and later against his own citizens. We cannot allow these two factors to combine. The potential damage is simply too high.

The United Nations should have dealt with the problem years ago. The idealists who push for multilateralism forget that the United Nations not only has the authority to deal with this problem, but also the responsibility. Instead of facing this responsibility, the United Nations shirked it for twelve years.

President Bush decided that if the United Nations would not live up to its duty than the United States would. We are effectively the only other power in the world capable of carrying out this responsibility. Americans are not warmongers. We are not comfortable being the world’s policemen. At times, we border on isolationist. But when history calls, we always rise to the challenge, and now we rise again.

Part 9