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[Return to Home] [Return to Reflection Room] The End Begins:
It is difficult to imagine how history will remember the events of the week of March 23rd, 2003. With everyone I've spoken to, it is a source of no small amount of debate or discussion. Why is war necessary? What does this have to do with the war on terror? Is this war about oil? Is it more American Imperialism? Does it violate international law? Kofi Annan perhaps said it best when he stated that it is up to the United Nations Security Council to work out their differences, and that their failure to do so will reflect on legitimacy of the entirety of the United Nations. In the days before the opening of conflict, when it was clear what the Bush Administration's position was, no other nation, not France, not Germany, not Russia, stepped up to the plate to offer a counter proposal or attempt to address the Bush Administration's concerns. Not one of them was willing to ATTEMPT to quantify, in terms the world could clearly understand, a definition and time table with check boxes for meaningful inspections for disarmament that would clearly and unequivocally demonstrate the Iraqi regime's compliance with resolution 1441. Unfortunately this lack of specificity engulfing resolution 1441 has affected many resolutions passed by the UN, including the UN resolutions that ended the Gulf War which left room for the United States to resume the war should the Iraqi regime violate ANY of the disarmament conditions. People can argue about what is or isn't legal in the realm of International Law, but when it comes down to it on this day, there are several facts that remain unsettling. The Facts
Opinion is opinion What's difficult is that there is not a global consensus that the action taken by the United States is inappropriate, wrong, or even immoral. In the first gulf war the United States had nowhere near the kind of support it has now. The Gulf War I, the United States had the support of most of the really strong first world nations, but nowhere near as many nations geographically as Gulf War II. There are 189 nations in the UN. 2 nations, Switzerland and Vatican City are not in the UN. And Taiwan hasn't been counted as a nation. The fact 45 of those nations (Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, the Solomon Islands, Mongolia, Palau, Kuwait, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Angola, El Salvador, Colombia, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras) would openly support the Bush Administration's action and feel it confident politically to do so, is clear evidence how split the world is over this action. And clearly there are a number of nations supporting the United States effort but are not counted in the coalition, including several members of the Arab League. I've heard some say in very derogatory terms, about the relative "insignificance" of some of these nations in the coalition supporting the Bush Administration. Well, if we gave a voice to only those states that were truly significant, our country would probably be run by maybe thirteen or fourteen states. The top 13 states by population are California (33.8M), Texas (20.8M), New York(18.9M), Florida (15.9M), Illinois (12.4M), Pennyslvania (12.2M), Ohio (11.3M), Michigan (9.9M), New Jersey (8.4M), Georgia (8.1M), North Carolina (8M), Virginia (7M), and Massachusetts (6.3M). These 13 states total 173M out of the total population of 281M people, making up 61% of the population. Who's to say what defines "significant" anyway? Wyoming is the least populated state with just under half a million people and Alaska and Vermont just peak over 600,000 people. Albania with 3.1M people has more population than 20 of our individual states. Are the voices of less populous or even less prosperous countries worth less in the community? For those unaware, United States is the third largest nation in the world by population at 281M people behind India at 1B and China at 1.29B. France, Germany and Russia weigh in at 60M, 82M, and 144M. And finally among Islamic countries, the most populous Islamic country isn't in the Middle East. It's Indonesia in the South Pacific, the fourth largest country by population in the world at just under 235M. In the Middle East itself, the most populous country is Iran with 65.6M followed distantly by Iraq and Saudia Arabia with 22.6M and 22M respectively. Egypt, technically a part of Africa weighs in at 70.7M while Israel weighs in at number 6 in the Middle East at 5.8M behind both Yemen and Syria with 17.4M and 16.3M respectively. In the global theater, every country should and thankful does have a fair say. Saddam's Regime is no Eden At the end of the first Gulf War that liberated Kuwait, Saddam Hussein retook his country by force and murdered over 250,000 Shiite Muslims. He is a man who has authorized the use of chemical weapons on his own people and the execution of all opposition, including those who disagreed with him in his own party. He has used rape, torture, and executions to secure his position, and trained others in the use of such tactics, tactics he learned and emulated from his hero, Josef Stalin. Saddam is a man who has built an empire of opulence for himself and his cronies at the expense of the Iraqi people. During the past 10 years, Saddam and his sons continued to amass wealth worth more than the over 1 billion dollars worth of Iraqi assets recently frozen by the United States government. He has squandered money that could have gone to buy food to build his palaces, statues, and weapons for his loyal Republican Guard to make sure they're well equipped and ready to defend him to the death. The Real Reason for War The true reason for this war is fear. It is fear that an untrustworthy, brutal dictator with no morals or ethics will supply terrorists with weapons that will kill thousands of Americans. The fear doesn't have to be real. Or it might be real and we just don't have enough information, but it doesn't have to be. It just has to seem real enough to be a threat. Like many things in life, how something appears is often more important than how it might really be. The difficult thing is that it's nearly impossible to quantify fear by any conventional means or inspections either because Saddam Hussein is a just a really clever guy or it's not there. What we have is a type of faith driven by fear, what you believe, what you fear might come to pass because of the way things seem. Whatever the flavor of fear, magnify it by the events of 9-11, throw in a dictator with a brutal horrible past, the continued historical record of deception, failure of inspections over the past 10 years because of the deception, and the bizarre almost piece-meal reluctant behavior of Saddam's Regime during the current round under UN resolution 1441, and you have a recipe for a disaster. The reports from the inspectors have repeatedly stated the Iraq could be more forthcoming and more cooperative than it has. Again the facts: Has Iraq been completely uncooperative? No. Have they been completely forthcoming? No, and so much so that both the Arab League and Vatican City had both called for more cooperation from Saddam's regime in the strongest terms. The problem is they look like their cooperating and not cooperating at the same time. They conveniently lose letters from the inspectors, suddenly find things and documents they accidentally left out, and when caught with things they aren't supposed to have or didn't disclose, try to excuse it as something they did not believe was in violation or as an unfortunate accidental non-disclosure. Has Saddam's regime presented any information that would have definitively proven they have dismantled their weapons, as resolution 1441 called for? No, and this is strange because we know that the regime keeps meticulous records where all their weapons are, who has/had them, and where they are/were stored. You would think they would be overjoyed to show the empty chemical shells as clear evidence of compliance. And certainly they'd have records of all the weapons they destroyed. Certainly the UN inspections in the last 10 years found a few and destroyed them, but certainly not the quantity that Iraq was known to have. What value is there in secretly destroying weapons of mass destructions that everyone thinks you have? The clever diabolical dictator would hide his best stash, while parading the weapons they did destroy as "sacrificial" PR pieces for the world to see. Did the inspectors find solid proof of the existence of chemical or biological weapons? No. The closest they found were empty artillery shells and missile warheads that used to be filled with chemical weapons that the Iraqi regime did not admit it had. Reports like that do not ease the feelings of discomfort and fear. A cynic could too easily ask "If Saddam's cronies conveniently forgot about that, what else did they conveniently forget?" Weapons of mass destruction provided by an immoral man to organizations that hate the United States. It seems an almost trite notion now to many people, particularly in the absence of any solid proof, not that such proof would ever be easy or even necessarily possible to acquire. But take a moment and imagine yourself president of the United States. On September 11th 2001, four commercial airliners are hijacked by members of Al-Qaeda. Three of those planes hit their mark, one crashes well before. If you're a conscientious president, you would want to know how this happened and whether attacks like this be stopped in the future. It has been amazing how crafty and sneaky the terrorists were, but in this case, many signs were present but ignored. Even with all the new procedures in place, can we really detect the next big attack before it happens? It is the ultimate nightmare of a president and his or her administration to be blamed for the failure to stop an attack that wipes out half of New York or San Francisco and leaves tens of thousands of people crippled for life. The United Nations had documentation that 10 years ago, Iraq had the means, the labs (mobile or otherwise), and the facilities to produce chemical and biological weapons. It even had an infant nuclear program until it was bombed by Israel. It also had a checmical and biological weapons stockpile that no one has apparently been able to account for. Really. If the documents exist for their placement in bases and eventual removal, the Iraqis refused to provide them. The question that we all should be asking, is how it is since November, we haven't been able to determine with any certainty whether or not Iraq has destroyed any of the weapons the UN believed it had? Remember, we know Iraq HAD these weapons. We didn't find evidence they still exist, but Saddam also didn't provide evidence except his word that they were destroyed. If you really think about it, there's no more perfect feed for paranoia and fear than uncertainty and evasiveness. Now let's play President of the United States or a member of the cabinet for a moment. Can any president be remembered in history positively, much less survive re-election if a massive chemical or biological attack wiped out half of the population of San Francisco? That's 500,000 Americans for those of you who don't know. I don't believe a disaster like that in the shadow of September 11th is even remotely forgivable. It would be a tragedy of biblical proportions. And then what would be an appropriate response if we found the weapons were Iraqi? Nuclear? Fear motivates action on the world stage. Do The Iraqi's Want Us There? Iraq is made up of primarily 3 different ethnic groups. The Shiite Muslims in the South, Kurds in the North and Suni Muslims in the Center. 65% of the population of Iraq are Shiite Muslim. Saddam and many if not all of his cronies are Suni. It is highly likely that Saddam's most loyal forces will be those among the Suni. But it would be equally true to say that no Suni Iraqi who opposed Saddam was spared his wrath. News programs after news programs have interviewed Iraqi exiles in the United States who have been in contact with families still in Iraq. All of them that I have seen support the United States action for the sole reason of freeing their families and the people from under the brutal thumb of Saddam Hussein. But I will add the caveat that nearly all of them interviewed were either those who had escaped Saddam's torture for political reasons (including his son Uday's body double and Saddam's mistress) or family of Shiite Muslims from the Southern areas of Iraq. Religion
-Albert Wang |