Students presented a range of views, running the gamut from hawkish to pacifist, on how the United States should approach a possible conflict with Iraq during a panel discussion yesterday.
During his presentation, Robert Butts '06, who is also a staff columnist for The Dartmouth, said America should fight Iraq for moral and humanitarian reasons.
The Iraqi government frequently punishes its critics by amputating their tongues or even cutting off their heads with swords, Butts said, adding that other employees of the government are licensed to torture Iraqis and rape women.
He also described the horrors of Iraqi prison camps, noting that prisoners currently live in kennels originally designed for police dogs.
Given this situation, "to stand by and do nothing is unconscionable," he said, describing the proposed war as a "war of liberation."
One audience member commended Butts' vision of a more democratic Iraq, but said that he was "concerned about the current presidential administration's inability" to establish a more democratic regime.
Butts argued in response that America's establishment of a new government in Afghanistan could provide our government with a good model for successful regime change in Iraq.
Another audience member, though, said that the struggle to establish peace in Afghanistan is far from over. He said that he himself, as a member of the Reserve Officer Training Corps, has kept especially close tabs on the number of military personnel in Afghanistan.
A third audience member also said that while human rights watchdog groups like Amnesty International have often expressed concern about human rights violations in Iraq, such organizations have cautioned against using force to bring about change.
Several other panelists, including David Peranteau '04 and Clinton Hendler '05, also said that the Bush government is using the moral and humanitarian reasons to fight Iraq as a pretext for fighting them to assure continued low oil prices.
Hendler wasn't sure how much money he had in his wallet, but he was willing to bet all of it that America wasn't going to take on the world's next foremost violators of human rights after fighting Iraq.
Peranteau also spoke against war during his presentation on the grounds that, while pro-war policymakers have maintained that Hussein is dangerous, he has actually shown himself to be a rational actor, despite certain "eccentricities."
The two wars Hussein has fought -- the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s and the 1990 invasion of Kuwait -- can both be shown to have rational, just causes.
Hussein attacked Iran because of the apparent weakness of its military and government under Ayatollah Khomeini. His invasion of Kuwait can similarly be justified due to failed negotiations about debt, Peranteau said.
Butts maintained, though, that the strategic and ethical reasons for engaging Iraq militarily can and do complement each other.
Throughout the evening, panelist Chien Wen Kung '04 and John Stevenson '05, discussed their goal of fostering more intelligent discourse about the Iraqi situation.
While protesters' slogans like "If you can't pronounce it, don't bomb it," "Smoke weed, not Iraq" and "Fighting for peace is like f--king for virginity" are clever, Stevenson and Kung said, they do not achieve the more important goal of fostering independent, incisive analysis of Iraqi politics.
Kung compared the current anti-war movements to the civil rights protests of the 1960s, who had a clear vision of the kind of society with which they wanted to replace segregated America. By contrast, contemporary anti-war protesters lack a direct sense of how to improve the problems within the current Iraqi regime.
During his presentation, David Kerem '05 spoke about the Kurds' situation within Iraq.
He noted that the right often now cites the Kurds' plight as a reason to attack Iraq, despite their silence about them up until recently. Meanwhile, the left, in its eagerness to keep the United States out of war, tends to ignore them completely.
They have been "tossed around without regard to human life," he said.
The panel discussion was hosted by the Dartmouth Independent Forum.
