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Guest Commentary May 21, 2002
U.S. Has Cause for War Against Iraq
The Honorable John McCain
Several years ago, I and many others argued that the United States, in concert with willing allies, should work to undermine from within and without outlaw regimes that disdain the rules of international conduct and whose internal dysfunction threatened other nations. Since then, two rogue regimes have fallen after military intervention by American-led allied coalitions: Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia and the Taliban's Afghanistan. In both countries, liberal reformers are now in power, and the threat each nation posed to its neighbors ended with the downfall of the tyrants who ruled them.
The American people have heard our President articulate a policy to defeat the "axis of evil" that threatens us with its support for terror and development of weapons of mass destruction. Dictators that support and harbor terrorists and build these weapons are now on notice that such behavior is, in itself, a casus belli. Nowhere is such an ultimatum more applicable than in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
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The United States government went on record in support of regime change in Iraq in 1998, with passage of the Iraq Liberation Act. Successive Administrations have failed to implement this law. I'm glad the Bush Administration has now resolved to act. Support for broad-based Iraqi opposition forces must be a central part of this effort.
Afghanistan was the first front in our global war on terror, but it is not the last. A terrorist resides in Baghdad, with the resources of an entire state at his disposal, flush with cash from illicit oil revenues and proud of a decade-long record of defying the international community's demands that he come clean on his programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. His development of these weapons, including nuclear and biological arms, goes unchecked.
Psychological studies of Saddam make clear that he wants to change history. These weapons will give him the means to do that, if we do not stop him. Thirty-nine Iraqi missiles fell on Israel during the Gulf War. These missiles had only conventional warheads. The 40th missile may not. This is my nightmare. Failure to act against this regime while we still have the freedom to do so would be morally wrong. Europe slept in the 1930s. We must not.
John McCain, a Republican, is a U.S. Senator from Arizona. The above commentary has been adapted from remarks Sen. McCain made before the American Jewish Committee, May 9, 2002. To contact him, Click Here.
The above column has been distributed by PoliticsOL.com.
