Posted 4:27 p.m. Feb. 19

By Alex Kingsbury
U-WIRE (DC BUREAU)

(U-WIRE) WASHINGTON – If there were ever any doubts about the Bush administration’s resolve to end Saddam Hussein’s rule, the rhetoric from Washington this past week should have buried them all. President George W. Bush has made clear that the next phase of the war on terror will include attempts to remove the Iraqi leader. But what remains unclear is the wider strategy of the war on terror and how far our European and other allies are willing to follow.

Recently Richard Perle, a senior U.S. defense advisor, gave an interview on British television laying out the plans to remove the Iraqi leader. Countering the American rhetoric was a statement from Chris Patten, the European Union’s external affairs commissioner, calling the U.S. tendency to unilateralism misguided and a “dangerous instinct.” While Europe stands by in mute protest, the United States is preparing for action in Iraq.

The reality of the Sept. 11 attacks is now being realized. The war on terrorism is not a one-battle campaign. Had the president claimed that the war on terrorism was won with the Afghan rout, he would have sounded like Neville Chamberlain proclaiming “peace in our time” before Hitler’s armies ran over western Europe. The reality is, that despite what your teachers told you, war is sometimes necessary to resolve problems.

As the United States was once opposed to fighting “Europe’s wars” in the two World Wars, now it is our European allies who are hunkering behind the barricades of appeasement and isolationist policy. The United States appears ready for war. The situation in Iraq needs changing, and this is probably the one thing that Bush and Osama bin Laden agree on. The president wants to finish the job of removing the dictator that his father began, while bin Laden and his Islamic fundamentalist followers want the removal of sanctions.

The resolution of the Iraqi question, should it become a military conflict, will not be the same as Afghanistan. There is no credible insurgency movement to back the military — the United States will have to go at it alone. Asking the people of Iraq to overthrow their militarily entrenched leader is unfair. Imagine Hussein to asking the people of the United States to overthrow their government. The question of military action in Iraq will be answered soon enough, but the larger situation still applies.

What is the strategy in the war on terrorism? The United States is perhaps in most ideal situation to resolve lingering conflicts, which have dragged on in the vacuum of a strong power. Fears abound that a conflict in Iraq will lead to the explosion of the Middle East, but in all fairness to this line of thinking, haven’t we reached that point already?

There has long been some much-needed house cleaning in the Middle East. The creation of a Palestinian state and the rights of refugees, for example, amid the resolution of the larger Israeli-Palestinian conflict are all lingering issues that need a settlement. The region is mired in conflict by three factors: longstanding religious and cultural differences, the collective inability of the region to modernize and the cycle of lies and violence that have plagued the region for so long that they take on a cause of their own. A regime change in Iraq will doubtless effect the rest of the region, but is that a bad thing?

As attention was focused on the Taliban’s treatment of women and dissenters within Afghanistan, some observers also began to look at our less-tolerant allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (which incidentally banned Harry Potter as heretical). Surely a call to liberate Iraqi people from their tyrannical oppressor will prompt similar calls from Iraq’s neighbors. Surely the goal of this house cleaning in Iraq is designed to eliminate both areas where terrorists are recruited and trained and the states that sponsor them. One cannot overlook Saudi Arabia in this case, where a large number of the suspected hijackers hailed from.

What the Bush administration needs is a comprehensive Middle East policy that applies to the region fairly and uniformly in addition to perhaps a “terror doctrine” that defines terrorism and freedom fighting and how to deal with these issues. Such a policy statement will go a long way to allaying European and Russian fears of an endless war on terrorism without and cement allies we will doubtless need in the future. It will also attach a measure of credibility to U.S. action that might be construed to look like a global bullying.

Though there is a need for swift and decisive action, unilateralism is not the easy answer. While it is important to spur our reticent allies to action when it is needed, there is too much to risk among our relations with these nations for unilateral action.