To the Editor:
Graham Roth's op-ed "A Humanitarian Side to War?" (The Dartmouth, Feb. 5) was very interesting and drove home what is a really important point as we hurtle towards war: the United States didn't care about the Iraqi people until Americans died. The United States wasn't interested in human rights in Iraq until we were directly threatened by the lack thereof.
The United States is interested in the safety of its own people and all this trumpeting about human rights and the dignity of the Iraqi people is just a little too late. Who are we kidding?
Protecting the safety of Americans is all well and good, but let's not kid ourselves that we're doing this for the benefit of the Iraqi people. We are doing this for our own benefit, for good or ill, and all of our pseudo-humanitarian cries of "liberate Iraq!" aren't fooling anyone but ourselves.
