Diplomacy was not in president’s plan
The time for diplomacy has ended. President Bush on Monday gave Saddam Hussein an ultimatum: Leave Iraq or face war. For several months we sincerely hoped that diplomacy would work, that Iraq would take seriously the United Nation’s resolution to lead weapons inspectors to his cache and to disarm.
We had also hoped that President Bush would have worked with other nations and exercised more patience and restraint. The president instead has come across to the world as a cowboy, positioning troops in the region waiting for any excuse to begin dropping bombs.
Setting a March 17 deadline for Saddam to comply held no significant meaning, other than our president had run out of patience. Rather than risk an assured veto vote, the president decided to bypass the U.N. Security Council and issue a firm ultimatum.
If this was to be the outcome, we must wonder why the president went through the charade these past months in seeking the resolution to disarm Iraq. It was clear from the outset that Bush had little faith in the process, so it was inevitable that military force would be used.
Many Americans believe as Bush does, and a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll released Monday found, Americans by a 2-to-1 margin support military action against Iraq.
Count us in the minority. We had hoped that it wouldn’t come to that. Bishop Anthony Bosco, the spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Greensburg, put it well when he said, “Sometimes, you say the situation is so sticky that the only thing you can do is get on your knees and pray.
“Will the war on Iraq be a just war? I have to tell you that some days I say yes, and some days I say no. I don’t have enough information.
“I would like to see the situation resolved diplomatically, but disputes between nations are like disputes between individuals. When a husband and wife have problems, you like to see them reconcile, but if one party doesn’t want reconciliation, forget it. You’re not going to get anywhere, and is that where we are?”
Yes, that is where we are. Neither President Bush nor Saddam showed any interest in resolving this peacefully.
To carry the bishop’s analogy a bit further, we are concerned now that this dispute, similar to the most rancorous of divorces, will pull in relatives, neighbors and children as it crashes and burns and forces all to draw sides.
There is little doubt that America can whip Iraq in a matter of days. We did it before. Ousting Saddam isn’t the problem. It is the ripples of discord that have the potential to swell well beyond the borders of Iraq that trouble us.