Wait On a War In Iraq

In a week, when students return for the spring semester, we may be at war. President Bush has consistently suggested that the end of this month might signal the beginning of an invasion of Iraq, as inspectors are due to report Jan. 27 on their progress in searching for weapons of mass destruction. The U.N. Security Council tentatively plans to meet two days later—the first day of shopping period.

This past Sunday, in an outcry of opposition, a handful of peace protesters from Harvard (including Adams House Masters Judith and Sean Palfrey) joined an estimated 100,000 people in Washington, D.C. to rally at the White House for more patience. Unfortunately, their cries appear to be falling on deaf ears.

War has practically become a foregone conclusion, but the inspectors’ recent discovery of empty warheads designed for carrying chemical weapons certainly does not constitute a “smoking gun.” The weapons may have been omitted in Iraq’s 12,000-page declaration Dec. 8, but this is not the material breach the United States needs to convince the world that war is justified. If the war is to be fought with an international mandate, the U.S. must not be overly hasty to start it.

The White House would be better served to give inspectors the time they need to do their job. Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has declared there remain many outstanding questions regarding Iraq’s weapons programs. If the U.S. puts its intelligence resources behind inspections, as others on the Security Council are urging, the U.N. may be successful in disarming Iraq peacefully. If a peaceful solution is not possible, then finding a smoking gun during an inspection is still the only way the U.S. can legitimize its calls for war to the rest of the world. We understand the CIA’s reluctance to release sensitive information that could endanger informants in Iraq, but the U.S. must give inspections a real opportunity to work.

This past month, the Bush administration continued sending tens of thousands of troops to the region in preparation for war. News reports have estimated the number may eventually climb as high as 250,000; it seems that Bush is set on going to war, no matter the outcome of the inspections. Yet vocal protests—on this campus and others across the nation—to what is seemingly an inevitable war have been quiet compared to protests of the 1960s. Admittedly, this is not Vietnam, and a war on the other side of the world without a draft does not rile up students in quite the same way.

Still, a preemptive war with Iraq—before all peaceful alternatives have truly been exhausted—not only sets a bad precedent of unilateralism for the 21st century, but it will seriously damage the world’s opinion of America for decades to come. Next week, as we shop for classes and consider the shape of our schedules next semester, we must not forget to consider the shape of the world after graduation. We have just as much at stake in that world as our parents. We must make our pleas louder, and our president ought to listen.

Dissent: Don't Hesitate To Attack

The Staff errs in its assessment that the empty chemical weapons warheads found in Iraq do not constitute a “material breach.” Per U.N. Resolution 1441 itself, the mere existence of any undeclared “delivery systems” for illegal weapons necessarily constitutes a violation of the resolution. Thus, it is fundamentally irrelevant whether the United States chooses to wait for the inspectors’ full report, since we already have enough evidence of Iraqi malfeasance to justify military action.

Many European leaders, save British Prime Minister Tony Blair, continue to insist that the inspectors be given several more months to “finish” their work. Yet as President Bush asked yesterday, “How much time do we need to see clearly that he’s not disarming?” Saddam Hussein has demonstrated unmistakably that he is committed to sabotaging the inspection teams.

The president should feel no obligation to hesitate in the face of U.N. hand-wringing. If the Bush administration has the intelligence to warrant a military campaign, it need only wait for our forces to be mobilized.

—Duncan M. Currie ’04 and Travis R. Kavulla ’06