USA on the brink of war
War is imminent.
President George W. Bush attempted to gain international support from the United Nations on Thursday to enforce Iraq’s immediate disarmament.
“We cannot stand by and do nothing while dangers gather,” Bush said.
According to an MSNBC report, Bush challenged the entire United Nations, asking it to “live up to its responsibility.”
The Bush administration feels Iraq is a growing threat, since it has failed to meet demands set at the conclusion of the Persian Gulf War. The resolutions of 1991 and several other U.N. Security Council resolutions, in which the country of Iraq is forbidden to develop weapons of mass destruction, have not been met, according to the report.
“Iraq has answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance,” Bush said. “All the world now faces a test … and the United Nations, a difficult and defining moment. Are the Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced … or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding … or will it be irrelevant?”
In a 22-page White House report entitled “A Decade of Deception and Defiance,” a list is given of 16 Security Council resolutions the United States claims Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has violated. According to a CNN report, the original demands from Resolution 687, which required Iraq to “destroy its weapons, stop making more weapons and submit to weapons inspections” at the conclusion of the Gulf War, are also listed.
The Associated Press prepared a CNN report saying Hussein and Iraq have been violating U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed after the country’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. At the end of the Gulf War, Iraq agreed to end weapons of mass destruction programs and submit to U.N. inspections.
However, News Ed 9/15/02 according to the Bush administration, Hussein has expelled inspection teams on several occasions and violated the U.N. sanctions time and time again.
According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), an independent international research group, Iraq may have been stockpiling chemical and biological weapons since 1998, when U.N. inspectors left the country and were refused permission to return.
“Wait, and the threat will grow,” according to the IISS. “If you wait, you run the risk that the Iraqis will get further along, perhaps even acquire a nuclear weapon, and that will make it much more difficult to pressure Baghdad or to prevent them from taking actions in the region that would jeopardize U.S. interests.”
In President Bush’s address to the U.N. on Thursday, he said it has been four years since a U.N. inspector set foot on Iraqi soil.
“The history, the logic and the facts lead to one conclusion: Saddam Hussein’s regime is a grave and gathering danger,” he said. “To assume this regime’s good faith is to bet the lives of millions and the peace of the world in a reckless gamble, and this is a risk we must not take.”
While the Bush administration and several world leaders see the growing threat of Iraq as a threat of peace, leaders with opposing opinions expressed their concern and reservation at Thursday’s U.N. meeting.
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien has said his country will not support military strikes unless there is evidence Iraq is posing an immediate danger to the world, according to a CNN report.
Positive reactions from France and Russia were drawn at the meeting, when French President Jacques Chirac said the U.N. should set a three-week deadline for Iraq to allow inspectors. If Hussein does not comply, then the U.N. Security Council should pass a resolution on whether to back military force, he said.
As for Great Britain, News Ed 9/15/02 NBC correspondent David Gregory said the country is “solidly in the United States corner when it comes to ousting Saddam Hussein.”
According to a CNN report, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned President Bush and the United States against “taking unilateral military action to topple Saddam.”
“Mr. President, I believe that such a response can only succeed if we make full use of multilateral institutions,” Annan said. “I stand before you as a multilateralist by precedent, by principle, by charter and by duty. I also believe that every government that is committed to the rule of law at home must be committed also the rule of law abroad.”
Shannon Peterson, USU political science professor, said she wants the U.S. to hold Iraq accountable, but not without backup.
“I do not think the United States should pursue military action without ally support,” she said. “The U.S. should not go into this unilaterally, without support, but we should definitely pressure Iraq into allowing weapons inspections.”
The United Nations should develop an ultimatum for Iraq to allow U.N. inspectors, Peterson said. If it does not comply, then there will be some forced retaliation.
Time magazine reported, in a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, while 64 percent of Americans support U.S. military action to oust Hussein, only 30 percent favor going in without allies.
Likewise, a New York Times/CBS poll published last week found 68 percent of Americans “approved of Washington taking military action to remove Saddam, but 56 percent believed it should give the United Nations more time to get inspectors back in.”
Congress has also questioned Bush’s motives, but after his Thursday speech, many felt he made a positive step.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, a member of the Democratic Party, told CNN, “There are many questions about going to war, but I commend the president for the speech that he made today, the values that he presented, the commitment of the United States that he brought to the U.N.”
By contrast, there are some who do not feel Iraq is as dangerous a threat as the Bush administration makes it out to be.
Former U.N. weapons inspector News Ed 9/15/02 Scott Ritter said the information on Iraq is not clear enough.
“Where are the facts … what evidence do they cite for this enduring interest?” he said. “Where are the factories? Where are the weapons? It’s all rhetorical. It’s all speculative.”
Bush said, in his U.N. address, he understands the support of all U.N. leaders is “key to any U.S. military action in the Mideast,” but is prepared to take action against Hussein and Iraq, without the backing of the U.N., if necessary.
According to a CNN report, Bush made clear the United States would “move against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on its own if the council fails to act.”
“The purposes of the United States should not be doubted,” he said. “The Security Council resolutions will be enforced. The dust demands of peace and security will be met, or action will be unavoidable, and a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power.
“So it is time for action,” Gregory said. “The world needs to unite in this action. The threat is real, the threat is immediate. We can’t allow the threat to fully blossom, as we learned on Sept. 11. It is time for the world to act. If the world does not act, the United States is prepared to act to eliminate the threat that is posed to the United States. I think the idea here is to hammer home the idea that there are United Nations resolutions that are being violated and have been violated for 11 years, and it’s time for that to stop, and it’s time for the United Nations to put some muscle behind their words.”
Bush aides told CNN they would like to see action play out in a six-to-eight-week period, first with a new U.N. resolution, followed by weapons inspections in Iraq.
The president will continue his plans, aided by the continuing work of Secretary of State Colin Powell with the other four permanent members of the Security Council – Russia, China, Franceand Britain.
“We must gather between a world of fear and a world of progress,” Bush said in his U.N. add
ress. “We cannot stand by and do nothing while danger gathers. We must stand up for our security and for the permanent rights and the hopes of mankind. By heritage and by choice, the United States of America will make that stand.
-mdinger@cc.usu.edu