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The Battalion
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Bitten by the past
or foreign policy decisions of past presidents resulted in current Iraq debacle
DAVID
SHOEMAKER
anaci
« init
)ne p;
y to t, rihe political
il. A| maneuvering of
id Tei X nation-states
id Wii.fli vary greatly from
■Wo*| country to country,
tio Some make erratic
ge :urns, others seem to
itsc oe stuck in a policy
deft rut. The United States
ame, is n a bizarre co
mics: dependent rut of its
■5 vie* n in the Middle
mioroBst right now. Because of past American
io hiw Middle Eastern foreign policy deci-
d to| Ions, the United States now finds itself in
■oor position. America currently stands
for t for the growth of democracy and economic
dom in the region, but past U.S. poli-
s are wedded to a collection of authori-
|ian monarchs and dictators. The respon-
ility for this dates back to the late 1970s
I take and the presidency of Jimmy Carter.
gionaMThat makes it all the more ironic that
), Bendy, a group of officials from former
j biBninistrations issued a report condemn-
i seniiing the policies of the current Bush
jrep administration in Iraq, according to the
5,Jy.®C. Included were some officials who
e bo, served under former President Bush,
i \vrr|i But, the report does not seem to
urne*address any policy failures by the United
fttes or its allies in the past 20 years that
left America with a foreign policy equiva-
lelt to an open, painful wound in the
ddle East. The blame for the current
ate in the Middle East is not entirely
thl work of the Bush administration.
The fall of the Shah in Iran in 1979
s the first area where U.S. policy and
ilikt of its allies faced a major choice.
A|ihough the hostage crisis was an imme-
merdi ite problem, the deeper issue was what
Me approach should be taken to the new,
i ret. ag; ressive theocracy,
anas: iThe United States at that time decided
their
Id Si
in
na S'J
to try to pursue a policy of containment,
which was not a failure in and of itself.
But the decision to support Iraq as a part
of it was. According to a brief history of
the Iran-Iraq War courtesy of us-israel.org,
the United States and allies such as the
Saudis and other Gulf states thought that
supporting Iraq was a good way to keep
Iran in check.
Then the United States changed its pol
icy and tried to help the Iranians through
the half-baked Iran-Contra “arms for
hostages” deal. Although this fell through,
it made it clear that both countries were
problems for the United States.
By the end of the war in 1988, Iraq had
a large military and still sought to dominate
the Persian Gulf. Iran was still trying to
export its Shiite Muslim theocracy, much to
the dismay of the Persian Gulf states.
This is where the decision to support
Iraq came back to bite those who had
made it. Iraq turned on Kuwait, an act
made possible in part by previous U.S.
support. The failure of the coalition to
remove Saddam in the following war was
another squandered opportunity.
The first Bush administration should
have gone back to the United Nations and
other coalition members to ask for pennis-
sion to finish the job it started in Iraq. By
leaving Saddam in place, the stage was set
for 10 years of stalemate that sapped the
good will derived from the war.
Those 10 years included the rise of al-
Qaida, which used the presence of U.S.
troops in Saudi Arabia to contain Saddam
as a rallying call for its supporters. The
United States also squandered support
among Shiites and Kurds in Iraq by refus
ing to aid them against Saddam's regime.
By the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, the
series of bad decisions had caught up with
the United States and its allies. The
United States is the target of a worldwide
terrorist insurgency, based upon the heavy
American presence in the Middle East and
its support for Israel and Arab autocrats.
The decision to fight in Iraq may legiti
mately be questionable, but it does not rise
to the level of disaster as painted by the
recent panel report. One member said, “I
think we will in time come to be very
ashamed of this (current) period in history.”
That seems doubtful, considering
that in the course of policy in
the region, the United States
tried to trade arms for
hostages, has supported
an array of repressive
autocratic leaders who
have left permanent
scars on the history of
their countries and has
abandoned those like the
Iraqi Shiites who might have once
been willing agents for change.
The key thing that
the war in Iraq
has done has
been to scatter yw"
the pieces on the
chess board of the
region. There has not been enough
time for events in Iraq to prove disas
trous. But if the Bush administration
doesn’t take care of what is going on
in Iraq, the war could just become an
addition to the list of poor decisions and
squandered opportunities in the region.
Those who would be quick to criticize
the efforts as being destructive should ask
themselves how successful their own
efforts were in protecting the interests of
America, its allies and the people who
live in the Middle East.
David Shoemaker is a senior
management major.
Graphic by Ivan Flores
ommission findings don’t contradict Bush
ush administration never asserted an Iraq-al-Qaida link to Sept. 11 attacks
any of those following the 9-11
Commission hearings in the
media have come away woe-
r on fully misinformed. Newspaper headlines
ist iand published reports have misled some
nd in o thinking that the commission has
To and no link between Saddam
os' Hussein’s Iraqi regime and al-Qaida.
Last week’s New York Times and
Washington Post headlines, just to
mime a few, said exactly that, and the
is I urfortunate result is that the layperson
he.casually following the headlines may think that
Resident George Bush deceived America in his
;ity justification for the Iraq War.
As columnist Joel Mowbray said in his latest
vnhall.com editorial, “The Times’ Page One
ry reads like a John Kerry press release.”
But, in reality, Saddam and al-Qaida were
ked, and have been since the early 1990s.
Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the mem-
I s of the 9-11 Commission all agree on this
int. So, what gives? Why has the liberal media
which Cheney has repeatedly labeled “irre-
id.|ia$pbnsible” in it’s reporting on commission find-
giMs — denied Iraq-al-Qaida ties?
BjThe unfortunate but not-at-all-surprising
[swer is partisan politics. Many of the left-lean-
im pillars of the media, such as the Post and the
tines, would sooner paint Bush as a liar and the
commission’s findings as contradicting
the Bush administration than concede
any justification for war.
Admittedly, the commission has
found no indisputable evidence — yet
— of a direct tie between Saddam and
al-Qaida in carrying out
the Sept. 11 attacks. But
this fact has somehow
GEORGE been reinterpreted by
deutsch some of the media as
meaning there were no
ties between Iraq and al-Qaida at
all. That assertion is patently false.
The Bush administration has
deceived no one. It never claimed
a link between Iraq and al-Qaida
in the Sept. 11 attacks. It only said
that there was a link between the
two prior to Sept. 11.
Chairman of the 9-11
Commission Thomas Kean said
last week that “We don’t see any serious con-
ii u
The Bush
administration has
deceived no one. It
never claimed a
link between Iraq
and al-Qaida in the
Sept. 11 attacks.
flict” with what the Bush administration is say
ing. Fellow 9-11 Commission member John
Lehman agrees.
The ties between al-Qaida and Iraq are clear.
So clear, in fact, that there is so much circum
stantial evidence linking Iraq and al-Qaida that it
would be hard for an informed person not to at
least suspect Saddam’s regime of having a hand
in the attacks.
First, consider the most recent findings that
the 9-11 Commission didn’t even incorporate
into last week’s interim report. Lehman told
NBC’s “Meet the Press” of new intelligence
linking a top al-Qaida operative
to Saddam.
“Some of these documents
indicate that (there was) at least
one officer of Saddam’s
Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel,
who was a very prominent mem
ber of al-Qaida,” Lehman said.
“The vice president was right
when he said that he may have
things that we don’t yet.”
Admittedly, this is no direct
link to Sept. 11, but it certainly
reshapes the debate.
Even the 9-11 Commission’s
interim report saw evidence of
clear Iraq-al-Qaida ties stretching back years.
USA Today reported that “the commission said
(Osama) bin Laden sought Iraq’s help in obtain
ing weapons and setting up terrorist training
camps a decade ago.” As the old saying goes, the
enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Cheney told CNBC that there is evidence
that these ties include an Iraqi brigadier general
MAIL CALL
who joined bin Laden in Sudan — his terrorist
base before Afghanistan — to train al-Qaida
members in how to manufacture bombs and
forge documents.
Cheney went on to mention evidence of a
Czech intelligence report, which has yet to be
confirmed or denied, that asserts that Sept. 11
hijacker Muhammad Atta met with senior Iraqi
officials in Prague just weeks before the attacks.
So, the ties between al-Qaida and Iraq are
there, it’s simply a question of whether these ties
extend to the attacks on Sept. 11. When asked on
“Meet the Press” recently about a direct Iraqi
link to Sept. 11, Cheney responded simply, “We
don’t know.”
But what this nation does know is that
Saddam’s Iraqi regime and the al-Qaida terrorist
group stood for the same things: murder, destruc
tion and power at all costs. The war in Iraq, just
like the toppling of the Taliban and the continued
hunt for members of al-Qaida, is wholly justi
fied. No amount of partisan bickering or mislead
ing reporting can change that. Those who died on
Sept. 11 did not die in vain.
George Deutsch is a senior
journalism major.
*0ut-of-wedlock statistics
Ifor blacks inaccurate
response to Nicholas Davis' June 22
)umn:
'ir. Davis writes that "70 percent of all
l-of-wedlock births are to black mothers."
That is incorrect. Although almost 70
Dercent of all black births are out-of-wed-
Jk (00W), black 00W births are far less
tin 70 percent of the total number of
30W births. In the year 2000, there were
1,347,043 00W births in America, and
126,649 of these were black. Thus,
)lacks account for about 32 percent of all
W births. (CDCs National Vital
tistics Reports, Vol. 50, No. 5, Table 1,
://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvs
■50/nvsr50_05.pdf.)
2 Students too often have little respect for
I jrecise thinking. And why shouldn’t they?
! .ogic courses have been stripped from
he curriculum, and our universities are
e staffed by postmodernist professors who
II espouse a hyper-feminine concept of
ruth in which emotion trumps data-driv-
;n facts, and the scientific concept of
truth is seen as oppressive rather than
liberating. Academia’s most influential
feminist, Professor Catharine
MacKinnon, is openly contemptuous of
truth: “ ... we also disavow standard sci
entific norms as the adequacy criteria for
our theory, because the objective stand
point we criticize is the posture of sci
ence. In other words, our critique of the
objective standpoint as male is a critique
of science as a specifically male
approach to knowledge. With it we reject
male criteria for verification.”
Sloppy thinking cannot reduce pollution,
make an airplane fly or mitigate the disas
trous consequences of out-of-wedlock births.
James G. Boyd IV
Associate Professor
Department of Aerospace Engineering
Minimum wage hike is
an unrealistic proposal
The Kerry campaign recently suggested
that the minimum wage ought to be
increased to seven dollars an hour. If
seven dollars is good, why not eight?
Hey, if eight dollars is good, why not 10?
If 10 is good, let’s just make it $20 an
hour! By now, you’ve said, ‘Whoa, twenty
is too much.’
But the same logic made seven dollars
sound pretty good, didn’t it? Seven dollars
an hour is just some arbitrary figure John
Kerry pulled out of his hat in the interest
of “fairness." Here is a better idea: let’s let
the market value of labor determine what
wages people will be paid. To think you
won’t get a competitive wage without gov
ernment “fairness" policies is absurd.
Competition among businesses who are
in the labor market is what causes real
wages to increase. Doctors don’t work for
minimum wage because they know they
can go elsewhere and receive a much bet
ter wage, up to the current market value
of labor in their field of work.
Kerry thinks he single-handedly can dis
tribute wealth more effectively than the
market can.
I get tired of hearing Kerry throw around
the phrase "tax cuts for the rich.” The rich are
the only ones who pay federal income taxes in
the first place! Something along the lines of
96 percent of all taxes are paid by the top 50
percent of wage earners. Bush’s tax cut actu
ally caused the percentage tax burden on the
top one percent of wage earners to increase,
even though they did get the most actual dol
lars in tax relief. So the real question is not
whether the poor are being fairly treated in
terms of the tax burden (since they hardly pay
any), but whether the government should be
allowed to take what the rich earn. Would you
rather have those with good business sense,
those who are entrepreneurs and those who
spur job growth keep their money? Or would
you rather the government, who has no bot
tom line to worry about and no competition to
keep it in check.
Just look at those who Democrats claim
to be helping and ask yourself if you want
to be one of them. Bush understands jobs
are created in the private sector. In times
of recession, tax cuts work.
Kevin Sewell
Class of 2007