War with Iraq: A bear in the woods, part two

"There is a bear in the woods. For some people, the bear is easy to see. Others don't see it at all. Some people say the bear is tame; others say it's vicious, and dangerous. Since no one can really be sure, isn't it smart to be as strong as the bear, if there is a bear?"

Almost two decades after this campaign commercial was used to portray the Soviet Union as a potentially dangerous adversary, America is now focused on another bear — this one in the desert. Saddam Hussein has a long history of aggressive actions and abuses of his power, including the use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq War, the invading Kuwait, and brutalizing the Iraqi Kurdish minority with chemical weapons.

More recently, Hussein has expelled UN inspectors charged with ensuring that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction, the lynchpin in the ceasefire that ended the Gulf War. Despite all the efforts of the United States to keep Hussein on the defensive through sanctions and air strikes, Iraqi power is still considerable, perhaps even on the rise. As the Iraqi leadership is openly hostile to the United States, President Bush has decided (with help from some in his administration) that Hussein's past aggressive behavior and continuing pursuit of weapons of mass destruction warrants a "preemptive war" to remove him from power.

However, at this time there is not sufficient evidence regarding Hussein's intentions to warrant military action. In fact, Saddam's fixation on the preservation of his own power is the best indication that his current intentions are not aggressive, and that he will not act aggressively unl-ess that power is threatened.

Even more troubling is the prospect of more "preemptive wars" prompted by American anxiety towards hostile nations. Setting such a terrible precedent for American world leadership is far more dangerous than Hussein will ever be, and could possibly rally the world against American leadership.

The biggest worry of the Bush administration is a nuclear armed state that either acts in an irrationally aggressive manner or supplies nuclear weapons to terrorists. Several hawks in Bush's administration have referred to Hussein as a "madman" and a demagogue. Although there is little question of Hussein's megalomania, his sanity should not be in question.

Before the United States engaged Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, a Pentagon intelligence report described Hussein as a "rational actor," who only invaded Kuwait because he thought he could do so without provoking a swift military response from the United States.

Likewise, Hus-sein did not use chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels out of genocidal lust; he did it because the rebels posed a real threat to his power.

As Hussein has proven time and time again, his greatest objective is the preservation of his own power. Yet Dick Cheney described Iraq as a "mortal threat" to the United States. Coming from a country that has liberated a "Fortress Europe" and defeated the Iron Curtain, declaring Iraq a "mortal threat" seems rather absurd. It would be logically inconsistent, not to mention suicidal, for Hussein to use (or supply terrorists with) nuclear weapons against the United States or its allies.

As William Blakely of the Washington Times noted, if Hussein started a nuclear war against the United States, he would quickly lose all the "perks" of rule that he currently enjoys. Ironically, the more President Bush makes Hussein's regime the main target of the war, the more likely Hussein is to use extreme measures to counter us.

The doomsday scenario is that a desperate Hussein would use his weapons of mass destruction — which he has had since the 1980's — in a vengeful strike against American allies, especially Israel. Likewise he would be given great incentive to help terrorists attack the United States, as he would have nothing to lose by doing so. Hussein should die with a whimper, not with a bang — especially not one that is started by us.

Perhaps the worst part about the proposed war with Iraq is that there has been no recent provocation directly against the United States. It runs directly counter to a fundamental principle of U.S. foreign policy since our founding, which is that we do not go to war unless attacked. We have indeed been recently attacked, but not by Saddam.

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The slow accumulation of dissatisfaction towards a country has never been good enough cause to go to war, nor has simple hostility towards the United States.

We have unfinished business in Afghanistan and with al-Qaeda, two issues that will go much farther towards winning the war against terrorism than a war with Iraq. Bush has repeatedly stated that he has evidence that Iraq has helped terrorists, yet this evidence has not been made public.

If the United States is to invade Iraq in self-defense, we need to ensure that this evidence is openly debated and is convincing enough for Congress to agree that military action is the only solution. The United States cannot plunge into a war without Congressional support, or without the support of other responsible countries around the world.

Fortunately, the cold reception that Bush and the hawks have gotten from our allies in Europe and the Middle East has slowed the war march to a crawl, and it appears for now that there will indeed need to be a watershed event before any shots are fired. Until then, it is critical to keep examining the evidence of Hussein's intentions, especially whether there is any indication that he actually wishes to use the weapons that he possesses to attack the United States.

Given evidence, a war with Hussein might be just as important as a war with Osama Bin-Laden and his terrorist allies, perhaps even more so. Without evidence, it is better to keep Saddam Hussein marginalized and allow him to slip away into the back pages of our history books, as so many previous dictators have done. David Sillers is from Potomac, Md. He can be reached at dsillers@princeton.edu.