David Copley: Setting the record straight on Saddam

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Such is the case with the current anti-war movement on college campuses throughout the country. Kind-hearted students who genuinely believe in peace are inadvertently helping to support the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein. These students believe in a pacifist worldview, where all conflicts can be solved through mediation and negotiation. This is a noble ideal, but one that has failed repeatedly in the real world. The fact remains that some people are truly evil; they are concerned solely with their own well-being and quest for power. Saddam Hussein is one of these people. He has single-handedly murdered thousands of Iraqi villagers. He builds palaces while his people starve. He financially supports acts of terror that have left hundreds dead. We must stop these actions and we must stop them now. Some have na‹vely suggested that the U.S. is being "imperialistic" and "undemocratic" by interfering in Iraqi internal politics and attempting to overthrow the current regime. This overlooks one simple fact: organized rebellion is virtually impossible in a totalitarian society with a ruthless dictator like Saddam Hussein. When the residents of certain Kurdish villages in northern Iraq attempted to rebel against Saddam's rule toward the end of the Gulf War, he ordered the murder of every male between the ages of 15 and 70 in these villages. Tragically, this does not represent the worst of Saddam Hussein's crimes. Saddam has wiped out entire villages of Kurds and Shi'a through the use of chemical weapons, which he also gleefully employed against the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War. In 1988 alone, Saddam killed an estimated 182,000 civilians. Saddam continues to intentionally destabilize the Middle East through his support for Palestinian suicide bombers and other terrorists. The family of each suicide bomber is rewarded with a large cash payment of $25,000, a princely sum of money in impoverished areas like the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Saddam is helping to ensure that the Israeli-Arab conflict is never solved because peace is clearly not in Saddam's best interests. Do the Iraqi people want to fight for Saddam Hussein? If the first Persian Gulf War is any indication, the answer is a resounding "no." In that war, entire battalions of front-line Iraqi troops surrendered to unarmed Western camera crews. There is growing evidence that the Iraqi military is even more demoralized than it was ten years ago. In July 2000, a number of Iraqi soldiers invaded the northern safe haven of Baadre. According to residents of the town, when American and British warplanes merely flew low over the Iraqi troops to observe, the Iraqi soldiers laid down their arms and surrendered. Some question why military action must be taken now. Why not wait? The answer is very clear. We have a very narrow window of opportunity to deal with the threat that Saddam Hussein poses. Thanks to Iraqi scientists who have defected to the United States, our intelligence community knows many details of Saddam's efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. Once Saddam has acquired a nuclear bomb, a project on which he is actively working, the balance of power in the Middle East will be irrevocably altered. The U.S. and its allies would no longer be able to do anything to remove Saddam Hussein from power without risking apocalyptic consequences, as is currently the case with "Axis of Evil" charter member North Korea. Should we continue to allow a lunatic like Saddam Hussein to destabilize the Middle East? Should we condemn the Iraqi people to another 23 years of murderous oppression? Should we risk our own national security on the misguided belief that Saddam Hussein is a rational human being who won't help al Qaeda obtain weapons of mass destruction? Of course not. Although we should make every effort to resolve disagreements peacefully, there can be and should be no peace with a brutal tyrant like Saddam Hussein. He is an enemy of human freedom and must be brought to justice. I respect our campus peace activists for their principled stances on the issue, but I think they also need to recognize that a decision not to take military action is a decision to leave Saddam Hussein in power. This can and will have deadly consequences for the oppressed and starving Iraqi people. Our troops stand on the doorstep of Iraq ready to do what needs to be done. We owe them our unwavering support. David Copley is a sophomore Finance and Real Estate major from Bellevue, Wash.

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