Response

This article in in response to my Op-Ed article about Shakira's concert on November 2002. Both articles were published in www.thetriangle.org.

Iraq war justified through liberation of Iraqi people

By: James Mack, Jr.

Posted: 4/16/04

If you could, imagine you're sound asleep in your bed. You and your family work hard to make enough to get by and all of you play by all the rules. As you're drifting off in your warm, comfortable bed, you hear your front door kicked in. Apparently, the secret police have found out you, God forbid, possibly spoke out against your current president, and they are here to arrest you and your entire family. After being hooked up to a car battery and shocked for five hours straight, the interrogators mercifully decide to shoot you in the head with a 9 mm as your punishment for speaking your mind. But not before your wife is forced into a room with soldiers and violated repeatedly and your three children placed in jail until they become adults, after which they must swear undying allegiance to the government. This, of course, does not happen here in the United States, and it never will. Across the globe, somewhere between the 29th and 37th parallel, there once existed a nation that was subjected to these and innumerous other injustices - until recently. Iraq is now free, and so are its tens of millions of people. The more opponents of the war claim that there were no weapons of mass destruction, the easier it gets to justify the liberation of the Iraqi people. The continuing fight in the Middle East proves to me, every day, that we have freed an entire population from a tyrannical reign that would only spiral the nation downward into an inescapable abyss of oppression.
In response to Elisa Bermudez's commentary ("Shakira's concert about far more than just music, The Triangle, April 9, p. 14"), let's rewind to March 16, 1988. Saddam, unhappy with dissidents, detonated chemical warheads in the Kurdish part of Iraq in the north. Sarin nerve gas was released and killed over 5,000 Iraqi citizens, injured 7,000, and caused the debilitating health effects to ripple through the area even today. In the last 20 years, there have been 10 other recorded incidents of Saddam using chemical weapons to pacify his own people, or launch a military strike against his neighboring countries. Never mind that the Geneva Convention prohibits all use of poisonous or asphyxiating gases during combat. He committed acts of aggression so often and so egregiously that he was a danger to not only the world, but also to people in his own country.
I am not exactly a fan of the United Nations. They are slow, argumentative, overly political and far too lenient. While they posses all of these qualities which assuredly slow down definitive action, they managed to pass 15 resolutions in a period of a few years demanding that unconditional access be granted to United Nations weapons inspectors forthwith and disclosure of all information regarding weapons of mass destruction. He had used these weapons in the recent past, and was more than capable to use them again. Saddam blatantly defied resolution after resolution, fluctuating between expelling inspectors from the country, refusing access to sites and allowing limited access to low-level facilities. Not shady and deceitful what so ever. Every time the U.N. threatened military action, he would repent his sins, state publicly he would allow access and then eventually shut them down again at his will. He toyed with the world community and threatened the neighboring nations' safety and security. While the U.N. talked the talk, they certainly did not walk the walk. Definitive, decisive action needed to be taken in order to end his rule.
War is something that tears apart families and causes destruction and death. Iraq has had its own war ever since Saddam seized power. It was a war between Saddam's selfish, deadly rule and the resolve of his people to be free. The war to free Iraq from Saddam, while it may have caused deaths, prevented hundreds of thousands and possibly millions in the future from being subjected to his evil form of rule. His undeniable connections to various terrorist organizations had allowed them to roam freely about his country and his offering of rewards to the families of suicide bombers goes to show his adoration not just for the fall of America, but the terrorizing of Christians, Jews and Muslims abroad. Saddam defied the U.N., murdered, tortured, and raped his own people, and supported the conduction of fear throughout the international community. There is no possible way to make this a clear-cut case for war.
The Bush administration never said it was only about the search for weapons of mass destruction. They wanted Saddam removed for the good and safety of the world, and to say that they lied about WMDs just to go to war is ignorant. In Iraq, a dictator with a history of using chemical weapons is told not to even make them anymore. After being prohibited from the manufacturing of WMDs, as an agreement to a ceasefire he signed, the dictator is subject to random searches of weapons sites. But lo and behold, he starts denying access to those sites and expels the inspectors from the country. Doesn't that set off any sort of warning light to the world? Are the countries that opposed the war so blind that they need to see him use the finished product before they say, "Wait, hold on, that's not right?" He violated a cease-fire agreement, and unlike the precedent set in world history, the world let him violate it for years afterward with 15 or so security resolutions and countless inspector expulsions. In the past, once a country violates an agreement like that, it's lights out. But we gave him more than a decade to get his act together and prove he was a relatively safe member of the international community. He proved himself to be a selfish, murderous, decadent shell of a man.
The war in Iraq is a success, no doubt about it. We have established a democracy where people's voices matter, captured the deposed dictator and he will soon face the justice from his people that the world was too feeble to deliver. There will be no Hague fiasco where a defendant, like Milosevic, can toy with the court and delay justice for years only to not be met with a sentence of death because that's ... ahem ... inhumane. The people of Iraq are going to get some justice for what has been done and they are free. This has, in no way, any resemblance to the problems in Vietnam, and I am glad that partisan democrats in congress publicly state that. You cannot expect the new country to immediately be crime free and not have a good amount of psychotics trying to bring back the old rule. It's been one year people, give it some time. Vietnam lasted more than a decade, and ended not because we lost, but because the military did not receive the necessary manpower from Washington it required to win.
We're fighting for people's lives, for their future, and for the safety of not only America, but the safety of Israel, the safety of the European Union, and even the safety of Iran. When professors of international affairs like Shakira open their big, Columbian drug cartel mouths at concerts and proclaim war as evil and trivialize it with a puppet show, it shows the ignorance of those not willing to listen. Half of a milligram of Sarin will make Shakira start to sweat a lot. Then, she'll think that she is swallowing her tongue, but it really is just blocking her airway. Bronchial constriction will start to occur, and eventually, she'll gasp for air for about a minute before passing out and having vomit seep into her lungs and losing all bowel control. The ultimate cause of death is anoxia, but it's much more than a lack of oxygen. It's unimaginable suffering, followed by a merciful cessation of breathing and consciousness. I am sure Shakira doesn't want to die like that. But hundreds of thousands of people under Saddam's rule have, or even worse.
This is not a game of power, as Shakira says. Sure, we have yet to find WMDs. But there are hundreds of mass graves, discovered or waiting to be, that have bodies in them as evidence of his cruelty. Instead of a game of power, it is a struggle for life and security. If all the evidence of his terror is not enough for you, and you still think Bush is a dictator who did it for political means, step into the way-back machine to Halabja on March 16, 1988. While you're coughing up the second lobe of your right lung, think about Shakira's powerful words about the war. It'll really hit the nail on the head while your tongue recedes into your lower airway.

James Mack Jr. is a junior majoring in criminal justice.

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