Wrong Target

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Wrong Target
by James Hall, Senior Associate Editor

September 22, 2003

"Leaning Left"

James Hall The president risked the lives of American soldiers on the likely premise that a nation halfway across the world posed a significant threat to America. There are nations that threaten us, but Iraq, crumbling under the thumb of economic and political sanctions, was never one of them. We have more to fear from 'axis of evil' nations North Korea and Iran than we ever had to fear to from Saddam Hussein's regime.

Americans were sold on the war with Iraq chiefly because Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that could threaten us and had ties to terrorist connections. Saddam denied having either the weapons or the connections, and we've yet to find them. But North Korea brags about its new weapons-the nuclear kind, mind you, far more serious than the gas and biological weapons we haven't been able to recover from the deserts of Iraq. And Iran maintains powerful terrorist connections with a variety of anti-American and anti-Israeli terror groups.

Yes, Saddam was an evil dictator who gassed his own people and needed removing for their sake. But what about Kim Jong Il, then? This North Korean dictator has killed thousands of his own people too, and imprisoned thousands more in concentration and work camps. To support Kim's huge army, millions more North Koreans live close to starvation, eating leaves and bark for food, and have been temporarily rescued only through extensive international relief. In Iran, conservative clerical forces in charge of the police and judiciary beat student demonstrators in public.

We are told that Iraq was a threat to us because it might have shared its weapons with terrorists, though no evidence exists of Saddam ever sharing anything with anyone. Iran, on the other hand, has exported terrorism and supports terrorist camps in Syria and Lebanon. It supports Hezbollah attacks on the north of Israel. It's been caught trying to shop weapons to Yasser Arafat. There's evidence that it harbors al Qaeda terrorists within its borders and refuses to turn them over.

We know that North Korea sells its weapons, including high-tech products like advanced ballistic missiles, to rogue nations. It's sold technology to states like Yemen, Libya, and Iran. Now North Korea brags about being able to mass-producing nuclear weapons and says it needs cash desperately. If it didn't hold back on selling ballistic missiles, why should it hold back on selling nuclear weapons to the highest bidder?

Okay, Saddam is gone and the Iraqi people are better off. But it now seems that huge numbers of our troops will be tied up in an Iraqi occupation lasting for years. This occupation might have been well worth it if we'd found numerous terrorist camps and programs of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons that could be used against us, as we did when we invaded Afghanistan. But we've found nothing of the kind in Iraq yet, and may never find anything there. It seems increasingly clear that the original Gulf War waged by President Bush's father and the UN sanctions that followed it for over a decade had destroyed Saddam Hussein's ability to make war on his neighbors and create weapons of mass destruction. Of the three "axis of evil nations" identified by President Bush in his State of the Union message, Iraq was by far the weakest.

So while we occupy and try to rebuild a crumbled Iraq, North Korea threatens to test and produce nuclear weapons, and an unfriendly Iran is moving forward with a nuclear program of its own. North Korea has already tested a ballistic missile capable of reaching western North America with a nuclear bomb, and Iran is working on one that will reach Israel. Iran is threatening to withdraw from the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, as North Korea has already done.

Because of our involvement in Iraq, we're in no position to do much of anything military to prevent either North Korea or Iran from developing their weapons programs further. Was this the best use of our limited military resources and precious American lives? You may decide differently, but it seems to me that when President Bush went after Saddam's Iraq, he picked the wrong target. ***

James Hall
Orlando, FL USA

Photo of the author courtesy of staff files