Arshad Hasan: A muddled picture of war in the gulf

Since when have terrorists announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?" Of course we all nodded our heads at the self-evident logic of the statement in last week's State of the Union address. We don't need to give much thought to the fact that, yes, in these times we need to be extra vigilant and, yes, sometimes this requires sacrifice. This is an emergency, after all. Immediately afterwards, President Bush explained to us that this is why we must not wait to attack Iraq. Stop. Think some more about the weight of that small question. No, terrorists will not stop to ask us if the time is right. So we should give the government the powers it needs and give Bush the leeway he asks for to protect the country. But terrorists will NEVER ask us when the best time is for an attack. If, as Bush has told us in the past, this terrorist threat is indefinite in length, then must we give him extraordinary leeway all the time? In not so subtle ways, Bush told us that we will be in this emergency situation indefinitely. The question seems innocent, but it distracts us from recent foreign policy failures. Bush's shifts in foreign policy have been so radical they have struck a nerve in the average American. We don't like to see ourselves as the aggressor. We don't like to see ourselves so universally disliked. When Americans see our president pitting our good name against nearly the entire rest of the world, alienating us from our friends, it gives us pause. We've received harsh words from some of our strongest allies in a manner and intensity that surprises us. We saw our president struggle to convince countries in the very region he wanted to help that war in their backyard is good for them. We saw the president praising Iraqi exiles who committed many of the same atrocities as their leader. The picture became more muddled when we caught North Korea delivering missiles to Yemen and then let them go. The administration still hasn't explained why North Korea, an "evil" dictatorship -- which features an erratic, promise-breaking tyrant who abuses his own citizens and neighbors and the country's neighbors -- is different from Iraq. Then the administration attempted to explain why intervention in North Korea, a state with confirmed short-middle range missile capability and an actively illegal nuclear weapons program, is less "evil" and thus, less deserving of war than Iraq, a country with no remaining missile launching ability and no confirmed weapons of mass destruction even in current stockpiles. The administration has waffled back and forth, each time claiming a principled stance. The work of the inspectors in Iraq seems to be a difficult concept for the administration to handle as well. Bush has gone from "We don't need no inspectors" to "A-ha! Look what we've found!" to "They won't find what we're looking for anyway." Mark Steele of the Independent characterized it best when he described the administration's stance: "Saddam continues to try and hold up this war by not having weapons of mass destruction, and that is something we simply cannot allow. He consistently flouts the inspectors by not having a secret cave full of chemical warheads, and that is, frankly, intolerable." No wonder support for the war is rapidly dwindling. Right before Bush's State of the Union, most Americans actually opposed war without U.N. authorization. His address didn't give us anything new because, frankly, nothing new has happened in Iraq. Americans want to know why we're going to war if even the CIA can't tie Iraq to the Sept. 11 attacks. We know that terrorists won't wait. No one needs to remind us of that, especially a president in a cynical attempt to cope with falling approval ratings. Remind us instead of our unfinished project in Afghanistan. Remind us instead about where Osama bin Laden might be. Remind us, while you're making another promise regarding AIDS medicine, why U.S.-funded overseas hospitals can't discuss AIDS prevention programs. We remember Sept. 11. Does Bush remember the promises he made during the last State of the Union address? Since when was it OK for the president to use people's fear to hide policy failures? Arshad Hasan is a senior Political Science major from Grand Forks, N.D.

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