Iraq: Where do you stand?

RYAN NORRIS STAFF WRITER

There is no peace in the nation ofiraq. With his attacks on Iran and Kuwait, Hussein has caused the deaths of over one million people during his reign.Everyweek Husseintorturesandmurdershis own citizens and every week he funds suicide bombers who target the people of Israel.

To those who would hesitate because the madman and his terrorist colleagues might strike back, I would refer to the metaphor of the schoolyard bully. The thug is going to bloody your nose whether you give him.your lunch money or not. Hussein believes in conquest, not coexistence. After him, Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah carve up a million or so Jews, America will be next on the to-do list. Hitler and Stalin and other criminals of history have proven conclusively that evil must be confronted sooner than later.

In defending freedom, the United States is under no obligation to surrender its sovereignty to the United Nations. The President takes an oath to protect the Constitution, which was written by men who despised and warned against this country of entangling itself with foreign governments. The Founding Fathers established a system of government that would set its own course.

The U.N. pays lip service to the notion of rescuing the innocent. In the last decade, over one and a half million people were killed in and around the Congo while Nelson Mandela and other Third World leftists at the U.N. spent their time criticizing Israel. Did the U.N. surround Kim Jung Il and demand his people be fed instead of wasting money on nuclear weapons? Hardly. Did the U.N. step in to engage Islamic aggression in the Sudan, where human slavery was reintroduced? No. Did the brave French and Germans come to the quick assistance of the people of Bosnia, who were being slaughtered by the latest European fascists? No, they waited for almost two years as innocent people were gunned down daily on the streets of Sarajevo.

Critics of Mr. Bush accuse him of being a cowboy. Those poor souls floating face down in the Congo River, the helpless kids looking for bread in Korea, the old grandmother dropping to her knees as her head exploded from a Serb bullet, none would have rejected a cowboy riding to the rescue.

The U.N. was preceded in history by the League of Nations. That organization was disbanded because the world recognized it as a failure. Soon, many nations will understand that the present framework of this multinational organization is again not working.

Because the leftist media wants to strengthen the image of multilateralism and weaken the sovereign power of their own country, they keep quiet about the true nature of the U.N. The Americcl.IlS who obey the U.N. couldn't give you ten seconds of information about the organization. For example, this year Libya chairs the U.N. committee on human rights. Having them in charge of human rights is like naming a child molester to run a kindergarten.

The concept of restraint and negotiation has already been tried and failed. Islamic fascists attacked the World Trade Center in 1993.

- They said they would return. America did nothing. Their bloodlust grew as they bombed embassies in Africa and the USS Cole. Bill Clinton sat around the Oval Office and had his horn played. Too bad 3,000 of our countrymen paid for his popularity with their lives.

There are more points that could be brought up. The far left in this country don't like the evidence to get in the way of their opinion.

RYAN MALLOY A&E EDITOR

War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Ok, now, we know that's not entirely true. Sometimes war is needed, and sometimes war is justified. Take a look at our two World Wars. Ifwe didn't jump from the sidelines and play the game, we could all be living quite differently and speaking German or Japanese.

In 2003, we don't necessarily have a world at war this time. This time it's more that we have nothing to do, and we can't catch the one guy we're after, so we'll just go for the one we can find. Osama bin Laden could be dead or be somewhere planning something. But we don't know where his "somewhere" is. Saddam Hussein is in Iraq, and any genius with a map can find that. Why not take him out?

I'm not going to lie; I know little to some politics and what's going on with this war. I'm sure I'll hear about how I have no idea what I'm talking about and maybe I'll get a response. But quite frankly, I cannot in good conscience support a war that I wouldn't be on the front line for.

This war makes very little sense to me, but who among us can honestly say that "Junior" wasn't going to go for the guy who tried to take out "Daddy," and better yet, the guy who "Daddy" couldn't take out. Hussein is one of the worst people on this planet, and we always talk about how he's doing about a million bad things. But, when it's game time and we need proof, we stick our hands in our pockets.

Norris used a bully metaphor. But I have one as well, and it's a personal story. Imagine my parents are the U.N., I'm America and my sister is Iraq. When I was little, and I wanted to get her in trouble in the car or something, I screamed and said she hit me. I didn't exactly get away with it though, seeing as I had no proof. Sound familiar? We have no hard evidence for a war with Iraq and the stuff we do have is old. That's like showing Desert Storm footage and claiming it's new.

And with no evidence, whose support do we have? We have England, and that's about it. The world is a pretty big place and if Hussein was so damn evil, don't you think more than two countries would have stepped up and said something?

The American people will not support a war without solid evidence. Now, this is what I learned from Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather through polls and things, not from actually talking to people. From talking to people, I've learned that there are more people who don't support the war than people who do.

Unilateralism simply cannot work because we're going to end up spreading ourselves too thin. The reason I don't support this war is because I'm very confused. We're butting into business that's not ours to begin with against the wishes of the U.N. I'm still a little mad we haven't tarred and feathered bin Laden, now we're off making enemies with a guy who, let's face it, isn't about to launch an all out attack on our soil. And quite frankly, when you can't get the rest of the world behind your cause, you could have trouble with your own country. There are far worse things people have to worry about other than Iraq. I don't know much about nuclear arms, but I know North Korea has them, and I've got a friend moving to California in a few months. California is right on the coast last time I looked. If we can try to talk to North Korea about things peacefully without calling people up and sending them somewhere, why can't we simply do that with Iraq? Maybe it's oil, maybe it's for Bush's daddy, but maybe it's just that we 're nosy and Bush has no idea what he's doing.