LETTER: U.S. shouldn’t fight out of fear
Editor,
I write in support of the article written by Ted Pease titled: “Think again about headlong rush to war.”
I agree with Pease that “Sometimes you have to fight,” but only when your country is directly threatened. This saber rattling that Pease wrote about by Utah State University student body, which surprises me, is I believe, due to our previous success and the belief that our military is invincible.
My generation is naive and quickly buys into simplistic and superficial explanations. We love nice sounding sound bites rather than thought-out logical debate. Even the Bible says war is only an option when your land, home, family, etc. is directly threatened.
The Bush administration claims Saddam is building nuclear weapons and within six months to a year he will have the delivery capability of reaching the United States. If that is the justification for overthrowing Saddam’s regime, what about Korea? What about China? What about Russia? What about Pakistan? What about India? All of these countries have nuclear weapons and have or will shortly have delivery capabilities that can reach the United States, not to mention similar or even worse human rights violations.
Will Bush want to invade China and Russia? I think not, as Pease put it, it’s all political. Let’s wag the dog baby, because without war, Bush is fearful he will loose the 2004 elections. The administration knows it can beat Saddam and Iraq, but to take on China, oh baby!
The sad thing is Senator Hatch fully supports the Bush administration’s policy and Senator Bennett is neutral. What a cop-out. Both these senators are LDS and within the LDS culture, war is condemned unless there is a direct threat. War is only an option when your civil rights are under threat.
But it is clear partisan politics is more important than principled politics for Hatch and Bennett.
Maybe the political science department at USU should teach students in Political Science 1010 that Rambo isn’t a real person.
Brian D. Hughes
Alumnus of USU, 1999