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Preemptive Military Attack

September 23, 2002

I have been considering this letter for a bit. It was hard to find the words. Surely too little, and likely too late, here is my take on Iraq. I'm sending this one to the local paper:

Hussein has proven himself an oppressive dictator, he sponsors terrorists, and he has used weapons of mass destruction on his own people and his neighbors. The international community has been trying to do something about it for years, with mixed results.

The President wants to step up the effort. He is planning to attack Iraq. He is moving immediately on the heals of 9/11 observances, to draw support from that wellspring of angst. Two years ago, any nation, however rogue, would have had to sponsor recent, high profile terrorism before an American president could even lob a handful of conventional cruise missiles at them. Now, this president can lead a full-scale attack, preemptively.

History is not my strength, though a friend once told me of Churchill's chagrin on learning that Rolls Royce was selling engines to the Germans. Churchill could see that the Germans were building up for war, but his fellow statesmen were mostly blind to the fact. I have a very disquieting feeling that there is a parallel here. I am convinced that something should be done.

But, do we need to skip straight to regime change forced by preemptive military attack? And, should we take such action as an independent nation, when the international community has clearly requested we not? These two questions disturb me considerably. Hussein isn't the first despot to threaten the U.S. or its allies, and he certainly won't be the last. We cannot go around preemptively attacking each of them, yet Bush's "Axis of Evil" speeches suggest he may already have the next two targets in mind.

Angry people are prone to make mistakes. Bush is rushing to attack Iraq, in part because the angst lingering from 9/11 makes the attack more possible now, and he does not know if he will be able to lead the nation to war at a later time. But, if the attack is something that will not be palatable enough to pursue in the future, when minds are cooler -- I contend that that is reason enough to stay the hand of war now.

This administration needs to go back to the U.N.. Bush needs to sit down with his good friend Putin, and they need to work out a program of inspection and disarmament. This program can involve force if necessary, but it should be on a timetable that allows for the possibility of success without an attack.