TruthNews Commentary, Jan. 29, 2003

The Democratic response to the President’s State of the Union address, delivered by Washington governor Gary Locke, said the United States needs allies in a military action and must convince the world that the Iraqi leader is not America's problem alone. So our question is, how many allies are enough? Great Britain and Australia have already committed forces to the region, and the prime ministers of both countries have called for action against Iraq. Kuwait and Qatar have granted basing rights for conducting military action. Turkey and Saudi Arabia are proving reluctant allies, but a vote from the UN is unlikely to sway their view.

Other countries are likely to come on board once they see that war is inevitable. Even France, one of the staunchest opponents to war with Iraq besides Iraq itself, will likely join us once they see that military action is inevitable. France switched sides twice in World War II in order to stay on the winning side, and they’ll want to stay on the winning side in this war, too.

The point is, we have sufficient support from allies now to prosecute the war. Our allies proved almost useless in the Bill and Monica war against Serbia. Most NATO allies had neither the firepower nor the mobility to contribute significantly to the bombing campaign. To help us in a war against Iraq, our allies need to be able to move firepower to the region and provide precision strike capability. The only country that comes close to the U.S. in this department is the UK, which is already on board. So what more do the Democrats want?

The answer, of course, is that they don’t want allies, they want a declaration of war by the UN. Funny thing, we thought the U.S. constitution gave this authority to Congress (and gee, they’ve already voted for use of force against Iraq). UN Security Council resolution 1441 threatened Hussein with "serious consequences" if Iraq didn’t disarm. What are serious consequences if not war? Sanctions have been in place since 1990 and haven’t accomplished the disarmament of Iraq. Neither have Security Council resolutions 661, 678, 686, 687, 688, 707, 715, 986, and 1284. Why? Because the only "serious consequence" Hussein understands is the use of force. He doesn’t care if his people starve from sanctions. Germany, France, Syria, Jordan, and a host of other countries are regularly flouting the sanctions anyway, so Hussein figures all he has to do is wait until the next Democrat is in the Oval Office, and then he can resume building nukes.

Prior to the president’s speech, Senator Ted Kennedy said he plans to introduce a resolution calling on President Bush to present Congress with what he calls "convincing evidence" of an imminent threat before sending troops off to war with Iraq. The resolution is unlikely to pass, but how does Kennedy define "imminent"? At what point did the Al Qaeda attack on 9/11 become imminent? We knew nothing about the attack until the time the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center, at which point invading Afghanistan could not have prevented the second plane. When did Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait become imminent? Hussein began bullying Kuwait and moving troops around a month before the invasion. It took us six months to move sufficient troops to the Gulf to oppose Hussein.

All these folks calling for proof of an "imminent threat" and a UN mandate didn’t think these were important when Bill Clinton unilaterally embarked on two massive bombing campaigns against Yugoslavia in the 1990s. But now that a Republican president is undertaking military action to deal with a threat far more serious than Slobodan Milosevic, the Democrats are suddenly calling for international consultation and a UN mandate. But we don’t need a new mandate. What we need is the will to enforce the ten Security Council resolutions that have already been passed telling Hussein to disarm.