President Bush has been saying for a few months that Iraq is possibly going to be the next stop in our “2002 War on Terrorism World Tour.” Now I’m no military expert, but if I were going to invade a country, I wouldn’t be telling CNN and every other major media outlet in the world that I was going to do it. I’d get it done and over with before they knew what hit them.
It sort of reminds me of something my dad once told me. “Son,” he said, “if somebody’s going to kick your butt, they ain’t gonna talk about it.”
As I thought about what to write concerning a possible invasion of Iraq, I thought a lot about the first time we went toe to toe with Saddam Hussein. I was a junior in high school when our guys and gals rolled into Casa de Saddam.
I remember “smart” bombs being guided down Iraqi chimneys. I remember our Patriot missiles thwarting Scud missile attacks on our positions in Saudi Arabia and on civilians in Tel Aviv. But most of all, I remember the fear.
Fear of getting involved in another Vietnam. Fear that this would be the beginning of World War III. Most of all, fear that we would still be dealing with this 10 years later. Boy, I was naive … or was I?
There’s no question that Saddam Hussein is not a pleasant fellow. Anybody who invades Kuwait for no apparent reason and uses chemical weapons on his own people isn’t somebody to invite over for Sunday dinner. But why are we expanding the war to get him when we haven’t even got our hands on Osama bin Laden yet?
It seems to me that you need to get the rat out of your kitchen before you go after the weasel in the backyard. Many calamities have befallen commanders trying to do too many things at once. But again, I’m no military expert.
Before we haul off and start planning a trip to Baghdad, I think we need to ask ourselves a few questions. First of all, who will replace Saddam and his government?
In Afghanistan, there was already a massive resistance in the Northern Coalition. All they needed was a big brother to help them move into Kabul.
While there are Iraqi resistance groups, there is nothing comparable to the scale of the Northern Alliance. If we don’t have a plan, we will indeed have another Vietnam. Iraq will have a government that is seen as our puppet, which will not make it very popular with its own people or in the region. The demagogues in that part of the world have great numbers of people convinced that’s what we want to do anyway.
As distasteful as their choice might be, we ultimately have to ask what the people of Iraq want. We must be aware of the fact that what we do now could spawn something else down the road. Flash back to the 1950s.
We didn’t like Iran’s choice of leadership in Mohammed Mossadeq back then. We thought his idea to put Iran’s oil fields under state control resembled socialism a little too closely. Since we were the self-appointed crusaders against all things remotely communist back then, we fermented a coup and put Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in power.
The Shah was an oppressive dictator, but that didn’t matter because he was “our guy.” In 1979, those chickens came home to roost when an Islamic Revolution toppled the highly unpopular Shah and put the Ayatollah Khomeini and his wacky band of theocrats in power, most of whom are still there.
I also know that there is the issue of Saddam not allowing weapons inspectors into his country-something he agreed to do when he signed the treaty ending the Gulf War. What the president should do is tell Saddam to either allow inspectors in so they can assess the threat or face the consequences.
Thanks to the rhetoric coming from Washington, he’ll know that we mean business. After all, we already have planes in the air over northern and southern Iraq creating a no-fly zone, which is another part of the post-Gulf War agreement, so we should be able to back our words up with a modicum of force.
So what is my bottom line? Should we or should we not invade Iraq? I think I’ll wait to answer that question when I see that bin Laden has been brought to justice. I believe that’s what Bush should do as well. Then at least we’ll be able to focus all of our resources in one place.
Tony Odom is a graduate student in the history department. Send comments to [email protected].