Commentary

by Ephraim Caangay.
Written 3/5/03

This is a retort back to David.

First of all, I think that it will be impossible to rid Iraq of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WoMD) without a regime change. If we take them away, and leave the current government in place, in another 12 years we will go back to do the same thing. Remember, this regime has been telling the world for 12 years – 144 months, 4380 days, or 105,120 hours; however you wish to measure it – that they don’t have them. In international discourse, a disagreement is one thing. An outright lie is something else. If you cannot believe the words of the country, no kind of intercourse is possible.

America is a country that can be believed. In 1991, our stated objective was to remove the Iraqi army from Kuwait. Even though, as we continued and discovered that elimination of the head of the government was the correct policy, we remained faithful with our goals and did not flatten Baghdad. And today, we said that we would give Iraq one chance to comply and cooperate with inspectors, or else. Since that has not happened, the world can and should expect America to show Iraq the “or else.”

I don’t think that the transition to democracy will be easy (just look at the democracies in South America), but democracy is based on the simple premise that the majority of people will be right the majority of the time. Errors are an expected part of the system.

If America feels threatened by another country, we should be able to, first, attempt diplomatically to diffuse the situation. Should that fail, we will eliminate the danger to us. It is they who should exercise more intelligence when they choose their enemies.

If France receives threats from Algeria to the point that you have nation-wide warnings of attacks, France should not just react to the warnings, but rather solve the source of the problem.

We cannot afford to wait until there is ample international justification. There are over 3,000 bodies to remind the United States that international complacency is a mistake. Remember, there is a smoking gun only after it has been shot. Are you going to just pray that it was not aimed at you when it was fired?

With regards to the other rogue nations, I think I covered that in the last email. They must be handled differently now that they have nuclear weapons. This is the very situation we are trying to avoid in the Middle East (in America, it is called the Middle East, not the Middle Orient).

Oil is only an issue for the rest of the world. We buy our oil from South America.