For the week of February 5 - 11, 2003

‘Just say, No’ is lousy foreign policy

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Now that the Blaine County Commission has taken the unprecedented step of opposing military action against Iraq, its three members need to advise the nation on what to do next.

For example, what should the nation do about U.N. resolution No. 1441 that called upon Iraq to disarm or face serious consequences? What should the nation do about the fact that a decade has passed since Iraq invaded Kuwait, was defeated, and agreed as a condition of peace to demonstrate that it had disarmed?

Should the United Nations and the United States send the message that peace treaties and U.N. resolutions are meaningless?

Should the U.N. be rendered a toothless tiger?

The county commission said it was opposed to military intervention because the American people have not been presented adequate proof of Iraq’s development of weapons of mass destruction.

Perhaps, but as foreign policy, this stance could be disastrous.

The commission endorsed a cat-and-mouse policy in which the peaceful nations of the world are forced to find chemical or biological weapons in a nation that has promised the world it will disarm. Under the commission’s policy, Ira--the country that has invaded its neighbors, gassed its own citizens, and threatened to destabilize the Middle East--would get to keep any weapons it could hide.

The commission offered no advice on what the nation should do about the fact the U.S. military still protects Kuwait in the south and the Kurds in the north--the people Saddam Hussein loves to gas.

Should the United States remove its air patrols from those areas and leave the Kurds to Saddam’s tender mercies?

The commission offered no options to the public it represents. It just said, "No."

"Just say, No" may be an effective anti-drug policy, but it is fatally flawed as foreign policy in a world populated with brutal dictators, terrorists, and weapons of unimaginable fury.

Blaine County addresses zoning changes with more seriousness than it addressed the looming question of war in Iraq.

Like all Americans, the Blaine County Commission must answer the question, if not war with Iraq, then what?

We can hardly wait for the commission’s resolution on North Korea.

 

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