President George W. Bush says he is “sick and tired of
games and deception” from Iraq. Unfortunately, the American
people can say the same about him.
In his relations with and policy decisions on Iraq, Bush has
done his best to coax, cajole and manipulate the American people so
his approval rating will not suffer once the inevitable war begins.
Bush escalated American military presence in the Middle East with
two seven-ship armadas carrying thousands of Marines to the Persian
Gulf. And although he gives speeches that suggest cooperation with
U.N. weapons inspectors, Bush’s actions reek of pure
aggression.
In the past few months, Bush has artificially inflated Iraq as a
viable threat to the United States. To compensate for vulnerability
revealed by Sept. 11, 2001, Bush has linked Iraq with terrorism,
saying the country harbors known terrorists, even though the same
could be said of the United States. Iraq does not pose a greater
terrorist threat to the United States than Iran or the aggressors
in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a fact which Bush has
conveniently ignored during his all-out assault on Saddam
Hussein.
Iraq is by no means a model nation, but they have not done
anything visibly atrocious since the Gulf War to make them a worthy
object of U.S. military action. After Sept. 11, 2001, Afghanistan
was our most imminent threat. After the United States formally
removed the Taliban from power, heated relations between Israelis
and Palestinians became the most pressing issue in the Middle East.
Iraq did not do anything to distinguish themselves from other
members of Bush’s “axis of evil,” especially
North Korea.
According to the Federation of American Scientists, North Korea
has missiles with a range of over 2,000 miles. Iraq has nothing of
the sort. North Korea is reputed to have nuclear capabilities.
Iraq’s known nuclear capabilities are scant at best. Yet Bush
has bamboozled voters to believe Iraq is the greater threat. He has
made Iraq a villain because he had “not seen any evidence the
Iraqi president was disarming.” But he has not waited for
U.N. weapons inspectors to complete their investigation and find
anything to disarm.
Bush has been two-faced, threatening Iraq with war and appeasing
North Korea with the possibility of aid because he knows Iraq is
the easier target. He knows Americans have a history of hating
Hussein, and he is pandering to the electorate. His administration
has been incapable of resuscitating the economy, and they have
ravaged the environment. Bush is maintaining the large disparity in
wealth and helping the rich get richer with the elimination of
dividend taxes and opposition to affirmative action. The best way
Bush can draw attention away from those problems is by focusing the
nation on destroying Iraq.
The biggest problem with Bush’s actions is that he has
made war inevitable. If U.N. inspectors find so much as a truckload
of fertilizer, Bush will have enough “evidence” to go
to war. If weapons inspectors come up empty, Bush can accuse
Hussein of being deceptive as an excuse for war. Bush has committed
himself to a war where the United States will be the aggressor, and
he has little chance of being reelected in 2004 if he fails to come
through with his war against “terror.” Lives will be
lost because Bush needs to compensate for his domestic
shortcomings.
Maybe the Democrats’ slogan in 2004 should be
“it’s the economy again, stupid junior.”