Examines issues of the day against a triumvirate of core principles: liberty, responsibility and justice.
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This is where you stick random tidbits of information about yourself.
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Wednesday, January 29, 2003
Proving a negative is a logical impossibility, and this is why anti-war activists are using it as a measuring stick for a potential American war with Iraq. While they hide behind the reasonable-sounding rhetoric of simply wanting to hold off any action until UN weapons inspectors can finish their job, the job they assign to those inspectors is to prove Iraq does not possess nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Demanding that Hans Blix's team prove the negative is a sly way to take the option of war completely off the table. And lest there are any lingering doubts as to what it will take for Iraq to disarm, no dictator ever backs down in the face of words. It requires action, and the credible threat of action, to change a dictator's mind.
This supposed task of the inspectors is the biggest falsehood perpetrated by most Democrats and Europeans in their attempt to avert war. Indeed, the only decisive action these people appear willing to take is to thwart America's efforts to lead the United Nations in enforcing its own directives. The true role of weapons inspectors is not to find the "smoking gun" that the average American now believes ought to be a prerequisite for going to war. Saddam is too adept at both hiding his WMD programs and stockpiles and obstructing the activities of the inspectors. In a nation far too large and autocratic for a hundred-odd inspectors to scrutinize effectively, the widespread assumption that we need a "smoking gun" is the status-quo crowd's greatest victory. Fortunately, the current American administration is guided by a principle and resolve that eluded the prior one, and it is motivated by threats, facts and principles rather than by popularity contests. The true role of the inspectors is to observe Iraq's own disarmament activities, not to undertake them. Hans Blix is not supposed to find contraband, but is merely supposed to verify that it is being destroyed according to international law. Clearly, that has not taken place.
The consistent preference among some "allies," most notably the ones America was required to save from facsism in World War II and which, through bringing Hitler to power, collaborating through the Vichy regime and now coddling Saddam has a peculiar knack for lining up on the wrong side of fights involving fascist dictators, is to hope threats away rather than confronting them. While Clinton occupied, and did other things in, the Oval Office, American inaction dovetailed nicely with the European proclivity towards cravenness. Indeed, the constant refrain we hear from across the Atlantic ("what has happened that suddenly Saddam is a threat requiring war?") reveals that they do not understand that the threat has not changed, merely the willingness of America to address it.
In the end, President Bush will assemble a coalition of at least a dozen nations to enforce UN resolutions that the Security Council has been unwilling to enforce. This, in turn, will force the Security Council to back the use of force since the alternative is to render the UN entirely irrelevant if America's coalition were to liberate Iraq without the UN's blessing. Ironically, only President Bush's steadfastness will save the UN's credibility.
1/29/2003 11:59:00 AM
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