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Guest Commentary June 8, 2002
America Should Not Instigate War Against Iraq
The Honorable John Duncan
Ever since the Gulf War ended in 1991, the U.S. has been spending about $4 million a day enforcing a no-flight zone in Iraq, $4 million a day. This has been a tremendous waste of money and manpower.
I believe almost all Americans would have preferred that this 12 or $13 billion that has been spent over these years would have been spent in almost any other good way. Most Americans have not even noticed that we have been dropping bombs and still shooting at missile sites all these years in Iraq. I remember reading a front page lengthy story about a group of Iraqi boys we accidentally killed there.
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Now there are some people here in Washington who seem to be clamoring for us to go to war against Iraq. I represent a very patriotic pro-military district in Tennessee. My people will strongly support our troops if we go to war. But I can assure you that as I go around my district I hear no clamor or even a weak desire to go to war against Iraq.
Saudi Arabia had much more to do with the September 11 tragedies than Iraq did. I heard yesterday that one of the main financial backers of the terrorists is from Kuwait. Yet we are not talking about going to war against Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, nor should we. We have been too quick to get involved in ethnic or religious disputes around the world. We have been too quick to drop bombs on people who want to be our friends. We turned NATO from a defensive organization into an offensive one in Bosnia.
Chris Matthews on Hard Ball the other night said, "In the past we always had the world on our side because we did not go to war unless we were attacked."
He strongly questioned this eagerness to go to war against Iraq. He said in a recent column that the American people are being "herded into war." A war that he says will just lead to more hatred of the U.S.
David Ignatius, the nationally syndicated columnist for the New York Herald Tribune and The Washington Post wrote on March 15: "How can the United States sell a war against Iraq to skeptical Arabs and Europeans? A good start would be to level with them and admit there is no solid evidence linking Baghdad to Osama bin Laden's terrorists attacks against America."
The Joint Chiefs of Staff have questioned this eagerness to go to war against Iraq. Yesterday, William Raspberry, the very highly respected columnist for The Washington Post, in a nationally syndicated column repeated words he had written a dozen years ago. He wrote: "...It is not that I doubt the ability of America's fighting forces to take out a third-rate power like Saddam Hussein's Iraq. My doubts concern the purpose for doing so. Saddam is being described as a ruthless and power-mad tyrant bent on achieving political control of the Arab world. I do not question the description, but it does seem to me that most of the current saber rattling is coming from Washington, not Bagdad." And Mr. Raspberry continued: "I wrote those words a dozen years back when the first President Bush was contemplating the invasion of Iraq. Why are we rattling sabers now? The reason I recall my earlier doubts is that they are so much a carbon copy of my present ones." ...
In 1990, Saddam Hussein, who I am not praising or defending in any way, had invaded Kuwait and was threatening to go further. We had to act and I voted for the original Gulf War.
However, we later found out the Iraqi military strength had been greatly exaggerated. The so-called "elite" Praetorian Guards were surrendering to CNN camera crews or anybody who would take them. Hussein has been greatly weakened since then in almost every way. Let us not exaggerate his strength this time. If he starts to attack us, I will be the first to support a war effort, but please let us not provoke war. Let us not change the name of the Department of Defense into the War Department once again. We should not try to be the policemen of the world. We should try as hard as we can to reestablish our reputation as the most peace-loving Nation on the face of the Earth.
John Duncan, a Republican, represents the 2nd Congressional District of Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives. The above commentary has been adapted from a speech Rep. Duncan delivered on the floor of the House, June 5, 2002. To contact him, Click Here.
The above column has been distributed by PoliticsOL.com.
