'Dying in' or merely sunbathing for Saddam?

The rather comfortable looking antiwar protestors staging "die-ins" on the grass in front of the Frist Campus Center earlier this week should have called their event "Sunbathing for Saddam." It seems that some students are so caught up in their self-righteous opposition to Operation Iraqi Freedom that they have lost touch with basic realities about the war.

The sunbathers are right, of course, that war is a tragedy. All wars are. Yet the second war in the Persian Gulf is a struggle that Americans on the home front should be deeply proud of, even more so, in fact, than was the case with the first Gulf War. The United States is making a determined effort to disarm one of the most sadistic and aggressive dictators of modern history, a man who could easily pass nuclear, chemical or biological weapons into the hands of terrorists. America is bringing the light of democracy to a people long held in darkest despotism. Not least of all, the United States is demonstrating the courage and determination to do all this despite the scorn and callousness of appeasement-minded allies.

...In Tuesday's 'Prince', Katherine Reilly '05 wrote that by going to war in Iraq: "We have proven to ourselves and to the world that our nation is more than willing to act alone on shaky evidence, to install a new government in any country that positions itself against ours and to use terrorism as an excuse to shape the world in our own image."

This is a grossly distorted view of events. Firstly, the United States is emphatically not alone in its campaign against Saddam Hussein's regime. Great Britain, Australia, Poland, the Czech Republic and more than forty other countries have contributed troops, material, and diplomatic support. Most importantly, the United States has allies among many of the people of Iraq themselves. Kurds and Shiites who have for decades been persecuted and slaughtered in their own homes now have a hope for freedom. If this does not lend legitimacy to the coalition's efforts, then I defy anyone to say what would.

The evidence that Saddam Hussein is trying to develop weapons of mass destruction is anything but shaky. Years of Iraqi evasion of international weapons inspectors, defectors' accounts, and our own intelligence make a grim case that is only reinforced by Saddam's historical willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against his enemies and in genocidal campaigns against his own people.

To suggest that there is something wrong or illegitimate about the United States installing democratic regimes in place of hostile dictatorships that sponsor terrorism is to demonstrate a wildly warped sense of priorities. By any measure, our system is better than Iraq's system, or for that matter, North Korea's or Iran's. Similarly, while smooth relations are always preferable, the security interests of the United States must always in the end outweigh the obstructionist whims of Russia, China, France and Turkey.

Of course, the United States has not always acted from the purest motives. Our abandonment of the Kurds and Shiites after we had urged them to revolt during the first Gulf War was one of America's greatest errors and a shattering breach of trust. From a humanitarian standpoint, our decades of diplomatic efforts to disarm Saddam through diplomacy and inspections would have done nothing to help the suffering people of Iraq. And yes, the United States did arm Iraq as part of its anti-Iran policy in the 1980s. Tellingly, only the United States seems motivated to clean up its mess — in stark contrast to Russia or France, both of whom contributed far more to the Iraqi war machine.

Finally, an important question: How should Princetonians respond to the war in Iraq? The moral self-pleasuring of sunbathing for Saddam is not the answer. Of course, protesting feels good, and it is only human to want to defy authority for a noble-sounding cause like "peace." The trouble is that there is nothing noble about "peace" in these circumstances. Indeed, if by "peace" the protestors mean permitting the survival of Saddam's regime, there isn't even anything safe about it. Rather, as students we should show our reasoned and patriotic support for our troops in the field and for their mission. By presenting an America united behind their efforts to protect against the spread of weapons of mass destruction and bring freedom to Iraq, we can make a small contribution towards vindicating their sacrifice.