There is no such thing as a war without anything to lose. What about a war with too much to lose? As President Bush follows his father's footsteps into another Gulf War, he may want to double-check his opportunity costs and trade-offs. There are 125,000 troops near Kuwait and close to 45,000 British soldiers ready for a war that we are sure to win. Saddam Hussein has troubled the United States for many years, so what is it that leads the United States to believe that Saddam and his loyalists will go down without a fight? Numerous consequences will result from an attack on Iraq; consequences that all anti-war protesters need to keep locked in their minds when arguing the assault on Iraq.
One result of an Iraqi attack includes Saddam's power to release a natural weapon: chemical and biological arsenals. U.S. News & World Report suggests \U.S. military planners are working to confound Iraq's ability to use"" its biological arsenal. The ""U.S. forces are conducting psychological operations to persuade local commanders to ignore orders to use weapons of mass destruction."" However, U.S. forces forget that the people they are attempting to influence are those under control of an agency led by one of Saddam's sons. Iraqi soldiers have plans to shoot chemical agents encased in artillery shells. Uranium, botulinum, anthrax--these agents are just a few out of a periodic table's worth of choices within the reach of the Iraqi regime. Not only does Iraq have the potential to use these natural weapons, but nothing is keeping the regime from delivering this arsenal to neighboring countries, or even worse, terrorists.
Officials worry that Baghdad is a capitol that is hard to conquer, and Saddam will do anything to resist, including endangering the lives of innocent civilians. The U.S. forces would start the war with an air campaign over major cities and the capitol hoping to suppress a large amount of Saddam's control. U.S. News & World Report quotes Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers, ""This could be a very dangerous situation,"" because Saddam may use U.N. weapons inspectors or civilians as targets. U.S. planners fear Saddam will lead a ""scorched earth campaign"" seen in previous wars, or he would destroy Iraqi buildings in order to blame the United States and gain Iraqi support. Or he could explode the dams controlling the water supply and flood the cities with the hope of slowing the advancement of enemy troops. There are no rules in this war, or at least none that Saddam must follow in his dirty campaign.
Although many more immediate and long-term effects will result from the attack, one major domestic threat is the decrease in the quantity of oil imported and the continuing recession of the U.S. economy. During the first Gulf War in 1991, Iraqi troops kept oil-fighters on duty for nine months as they torched oil wells and destroyed Kuwait's landscape.
There is nothing that will stop Saddam from destroying his own oil fields that are twice as many and double the pressure of Kuwait. The petroleum industry aspires for the United States to have ""20 million-barrel-a-day oil habit"" of which 58 percent is imported. Bush had an intelligent comment last week, ""sometimes we import from countries that don't particularly like us; it jeopardizes our national security.""
During his State of the Union address he pledged $1.2 billion to support hydrogen fuel cell cars with the hope of paralleling Japan's goal to put a large number of ""eco-friendly"" cars on the streets. As history has shown, war boosts the economy; although the war could bring the United States out of the continued recession the elevation in the ""oil threat"" could lead us all to a net economic loss.
Anti-war protests in New York, Washington D.C. and UW-Madison are due to the consequences of a war with Iraq. The country may not see an anti-war protest by Beatles followers or a ""hippie"" movement like the many seen during the late 1960s, but even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld needs to listen to ""Imagine"" and conjure a way to quench the multiple negative consequences of the war. Of course, there is an abundance of fortunate opportunities and results from an attack against Saddam's insane regime, against the ""axis of evil,"" against those who oppose the United States. But officials must do so with its allies on our side.
We are a superpower, but we are one in hundreds of countries--until we have support from France, Germany and other U.N. allies our power might not be so super. We cannot live in fear, and we cannot let those who have committed injustice run without punishment, but before we chase them we must exceed every obstacle in our way.
These are just some consequences of an attack on Iraqi land. Also, what is all this I hear about North Korea having nuclear weapons?
