Stop making sense
Before getting to this week’s column, I have a confession to make. To everyone’s great surprise, I’m sure, I made a factual error in last week’s column. As it turns out, the F-22 Raptor is only twice the price of the Eurofighter Typhoon, not five times more expensive, as I claimed. With that said, I still stand behind every assertion I made in the column.
As expected, Saturday’s anti-war demonstration found me marching and rallying alongside many people whose motives and reasons for opposing the potential war in the Middle East have little to do with my own. The same can be said of my place on The Daily Campus’ commentary page. As I voice my opposition to the war, I do so for my own reasons, based on my own research and beliefs. Nobody else speaks for me, whether on the street or in print.
The Bush administration’s rhetoric reminds me of President Reagan’s near-obsession with Libya during the 1980s. Mu’ammar Gadaffi, the nation’s dictator, was accused, and was in fact guilty of, sponsoring the murderous activities of terrorist groups worldwide.
In 1986, American planes launched an attack on Libya, bombing not only military facilities but also residential areas of the cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, including Gadaffi’s house. The Libyan military suffered considerable damage, and there were substantial civilian deaths, totaling 101 people, including Gadaffi’s adopted daughter. Several non-Libyans were among the victims of the attack, and the French embassy was also badly hit, though I don’t believe there were any casualties.
The whole affair was referred to by those in Washington as (I am not making this up) “self-defense against future attack,” and was also said to be retaliation against a bombing of a Berlin disco that killed two people, one of them an American serviceman.
Needless to say, this did not make America any safer. Though it seems odd that the American government did not foresee this occurring, bombing Libya only increased anti-American sentiment in the Middle East and elsewhere, with predictably tragic results. Terrorists connected with Libya blew up a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 270 people in what was widely believed to be a retaliatory strike. Gadaffi is still in power, though, much like Saddam Hussein, his dilapidated military is not threatening anybody.
The bombing of Libya was small potatoes compared to what the Bush administration has in store for Iraq. The Libyans were not pummeled with a seemingly endless barrage of cruise missiles in what is now termed a “shock and awe” assault. American forces did not invade Libya, install a similar (but more pliable) man in Gadaffi’s place, and occupy the country for up to ten years (the plan for Iraq.)
A major humanitarian crisis did not arise following the attack, nor did American companies begin to extract Libya’s oil wealth for their own exploitation. The death and devastation inflicted were both fairly small, and yet the bombing went a long way towards provoking more terrorist attacks against Americans and others. Can anyone then imagine the potential repercussions arising from the invasion of Iraq?
The Central Intelligence Agency, hardly a bunch of doves, essentially presented this same argument to the government last fall. According to their findings, attacking Iraq would most likely touch off a wave of terrorist attacks against Americans at home and abroad, and I for one am not confident that these attacks can be entirely prevented, through no fault of our security services. In fact, the CIA went on to say that the only way they foresaw a secular dictator like Hussein lending support to Islamic radicals like al-Qaeda involved feelings of desperation on the part of Hussein.
If combating al-Qaeda were truly a goal of the present administration, it would seem to follow that the proper course to follow would be to keep breaking up terror cells through careful police work, as has been done repeatedly around the world in the months since the Sept. 11 attacks.
As the net gradually tightens around the terror networks, the groundwork could then be laid for dealing with the root causes of terror, which, as it has been noted here and abroad, must be dealt with unless the United States wants an endless war.
Those root causes, and the solutions for them, cannot be adequately discussed in the space I have remaining. What can be said, however, is that in the bombing of Libya we can all see historical evidence for precisely what not to do in order to combat and prevent terrorism.
Why, then, is the Bush administration in such a rush to do just that, putting the Iraqi population in the crosshairs of a military onslaught, and putting the American public at risk for nightmarish terror attacks? As usual, nothing makes sense.
