Our nation is in the early stages of mourning over the tragedy of the Space Shuttle Columbia. The student body here at Dartmouth is too young to remember the Challenger explosion in 1986, so most of us have always taken the safety of space travel for granted. I for one had no idea that we even had a shuttle in orbit for the past two weeks. I doubt that most of us gave much thought at all to our space program before this disaster. The same could be said for airline security before Sept. 11 or mail delivery before the anthrax scares in the following months. As a country we are incredibly devastated by these massive breakdowns in our institutions, mostly because we are accustomed to having them work so well. The fact that we never become desensitized to these tragedies is a sign of just how great America is.
Inevitably, Americans will do what they have always done and move on from the shuttle explosion. We will watch intently as the investigation unfolds but our attention will eventually be diverted, at least in part, to other things going on in our country and around the world. The first major diversion is sure to come tomorrow when Secretary of State Colin Powell presents evidence to the United Nations Security Council that Iraq is in material breach of several resolutions calling for its disarmament. The Bush administration is promising to use the occasion to divulge specific information it has collected from intelligence sources, something it has been reluctant to do thus far. Proponents of using military force will consider these new disclosures to be the final straw in the war debate, while the lack of a "smoking gun" will likely leave those reluctant to invade demanding more concrete proof that Saddam possesses weapons of mass destruction.
It seems to me that the debate over WMDs is secondary, because virtually anyone who looks at the question seriously would be happy to see this tyrant thrown out regardless of whether or not he has chemical weapons. The important division among the decision-makers concerns how America should behave as the world's only superpower. The Cheney-Rumsfeld coalition sees America as a nation that must be willing to topple regimes militarily to ensure the safety of its citizens. The Powell group seeks the same degree of security for the American people, but it is more emphatic about exhausting all diplomatic options to achieve its ends before it uses force.
The first group believes that America's greatness will be best preserved when we take strong and independent actions internationally that are fueled by a sense of moral clarity. This may involve unilaterally ridding the earth of its most oppressive dictators and liberating those people who at present possess few if any individual freedoms. The second group believes that our greatness will show through most clearly when we stand at the head of a coalition of all the freedom-loving nations of the world against the forces of evil and oppression.
The relatively small but significant gap between these two ideologies is essentially where the debate on Iraq has taken place. It seems to me that last week's public declaration by the leaders of eight European nations including Great Britain, Spain and Italy in support of the Bush administration's position on Iraq has bridged the gap between the Rumsfelds of the world and the Powells. No one can say now that we are alone, and those who continue to insist that we need broader support to legitimize our action have implicitly endorsed a policy that requires world unanimity for America to take any actions it deems to be in its self-interest.
There are good arguments against the war that have nothing to do with America's role in the world. No one in the Bush administration has addressed the issue of what an invasion of Iraq would do to our fragile relationship with the governments and the people living in the region. We obviously have much to fear from extremists in the Middle East and one might question how bombing an Arab state would help us in the war for the hearts and minds of the Arab people. In addition, no definitive plan has been put forward that deals with the rebuilding of the country we mean to attack. A war against Iraq could spark the very acts of terror we are trying to stop. It seems therefore that any action we might take, while legitimate, would perhaps be ill-advised.
War is not a measure to be used lightly, not even when we possess overwhelming military superiority over those we mean to fight. No nation can survive long when it is in a state of constant war, America least of all. War should shock us, just as the Sept. 11 attacks shocked us. It should upset us, just as the Shuttle Columbia tragedy has upset us. It should terrify us, just as the anthrax attacks terrified us. God help us all if we begin to become accustomed to the horror of war. Here in the early years of the 21st century we are engaged in a crucial debate, one that goes far beyond Iraq. The debate is about how America should conduct itself as the leader of the free world. It would be wise for us to pay attention. Our greatness is at stake.