A war is being waged against the people of Iraq, and the United States is still dedicated to escalating it. The move from an ugly collection of trade sanctions to an uglier bloodletting in the future is underway.

Nearly two decades ago, the United States enhanced the power of Saddam in Iraq in order that Iran’s Ayatollahs be defeated in that decade’s war. Now it is Iraq that is set up for a fall. What lies at the bottom of a PR machine that makes first one, then another, of the Islamic world’s leaders into the greatest international pariah since Adolph and Attila?

You guessed it, fossil fuel. United States interest in the Middle-East would be slight ot non-existent without a desire to control the region’s oil supply.

The fact is, a variety of international deals contrary to the interests of U.S.-based oil giants are being made throughout the Middle East, leaving United States players behind. From France to Russia to China, deals worth billions threaten to allow energy prices to be set by an international market and not by United States companies. Because of the huge potential for oil profits and the power over rivals that the control of oil brings, the United States fully intends to wage war in the interest of maintaining a dominant position.

As a mask for the power struggle over oil, U.S. Government rhetoric is taking on a strongly moralistic tone. Saddam, child of a questionable United States foreign policy, is now a very bad fellow.

Chemical and biological weapons, stockpiled in the United States as in many nations, are now a despicable affront to a peace-loving world, and it’s the United States to the rescue again.

The hypocrisy of this position is ignored by major United States media, always content with parroting the output of the Washington foreign policy establishment. Most importantly, the United States itself refuses to enter into effective treaties to limit chemical and biological weapons.

The Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act of 1997 (the Convention already ratified by the Senate) specifically allows the United States to prevent international inspection of its sites at will, and thus sets the tone for international compliance. The weapons issue, however, retains impeccable credentials as an excuse to crush the life out of a crippled nation.

While being grossly under-reported by the United States media, it is no secret that innocent people are dying and have been since the violent punishment inflicted on Iraq (one can hardly call that carnage a “war”) directly killed in excess of 200,000. Non-military infrastructure (e.g. Baghdad’s water supply) was wantonly destroyed by Western forces in 1991, drastically reducing standards of living.

Severe trade sanctions have continued killing for years by preventing significant rebuilding and general economic recovery. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization attributes a million deaths to the sanctions, making them the most effective weapon of mass destruction in history. The mortality rate of children under the age of five has, according to the World Health Organization, increased six-fold since imposition of the sanctions.

When Secretary of State Madeline Albright was asked by Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes” if the sanctions were worth killing more than a half-million children, “more children than died in Hiroshima,” Albright answered, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price ? we think the price is worth it.” Non-American lives are always a bargain-basement deal when you’re in the business of geopolitical manipulation.

In its most serious lapse of moral judgment, the U.S. government has publicly indicated its desire to prevent any certification of Iraq’s compliance with U.N. Resolution 687, thereby enabling a lifting of the sanctions, as long as Saddam is in power. No amount of weapons disclosure and destruction will be considered adequate. Only the self-destruction of the regime is an “option.”

We must stand with the majority of western peoples against further slaughter of the Iraqi population. Saddam’s cruelty toward his own people needn’t be augmented. When and if the United States ever goes to war with Iraq, SDSU students will take part in the bloodletting, as they took part in the last, and American casualties may not be so light next time.

Christopher Coyle

philosophy graduate student

president of the Committee

Against War in the Middle East

I am shocked at the indifference the American public has displayed lately. People from California to Maine are stating that the personal life of the president of the United States of America is of no concern to us.

Furthermore, no one seems to mind that it was proven that President Clinton lied to the American people (concerning Gennifer Flowers).

The standard answer is the president’s character is of no importance as long as he is doing a good job. Adolf Hitler did a superb job reconstructing Germany, but I really doubt history will overlook his character flaws.

No, I am not comparing Adolf Hitler and Bill Clinton; what I am comparing is the same basic mass ignorance.

President Clinton makes decisions based upon his character, his morals, his ethics and everything else that has shaped his personality over his lifetime. I apologize to those who believe the president simply carries out the will of the people, but that is not reality. What is reality is that a person who believes it is OK to have an affair and to lie to the American public is making decisions that affect the whole world.

The case in point I would like to discuss is Iraq. The United States is on the verge of conducting mass bombings of Iraq, and Clinton will make the final decision as to whether or not we carry this out.

Can a president with an obviously flawed personality make the right decision? Add the following facts, and make your own decision:

First, the United States was not and is not willing to be an occupying force, nor are we willing to upset the balance of power in the Gulf region. So why are we trying so hard to pressure the Iraqi people to do the job we are not willing to do ourselves? The only thing we have accomplished in our efforts is to hurt the populace of Iraq.

Have we not learned from the fact that (Fidel) Castro has outlasted seven U.S. presidents, despite sanctions? If you wanted to influence someone or control him or her, what would you do? Would you become their enemy or their friend? I am not saying we need to befriend Saddam Hussein, but we need to stop making the Iraqi people our enemy.

Whom would you support: the dictator of your country or the foreign nation that keeps bombing and killing your people? In World War II, Germany taught us the answer to this question 50 years ago, and with great loss of life.

Second, what can we possibly hope to gain through military action against Iraq? Experts already have stated we have no idea where Iraq keeps its chemical and biological weapons. The appeal of chemical and biological weapons is they are cheap, easy and quick to make. Even if we destroy his stockpile of weapons, it will be a relatively short time before he has replaced them.

In addition, what are we going to do about the chemical and biological weapons that Libya, Turkey and Indonesia have? A ruthless tyrant, who has killed more people than Saddam Hussein, rules Indonesia, but his punishment is our securing him a loan through the International Monetary Fund.

Third, on the international level, the overwhelming sentiment is for us not to take military action. Great Britain and Germany are the only major powers who support us, but I would speculate we had to pull many strings just for that. The president is claiming we are only enforcing U.N. resolutions. Why, then, is the majority of the Security Council against military action? Let us put this issue to a vote in the United Nations. That is the democratic way. Or are we afraid the majority will not find merit in our proposa
l?

The fact is, the rest of the world is not concerned with Iraq because Iraq is not an imminent threat to anyone. Is not the saving of only one life (American or Iraqi) justification for the pursuit of a peaceful-diplomatic resolution?

Chemical weapons, biological weapons, starvation and mass bombings all produce the same effect: the loss of life.

The sad thing is Saddam Hussein does not care about the loss of life of his people; what is sadder is that it appears neither do we.

Ted Carlson

history junior

I just finished reading the editorial titled “Senate fears ring false,” in the Feb. 25 issue of your newspaper. As chairman of the (University) Senate, I am startled that your newspaper would publish such a nonsensical piece questioning the practice of a policy-making body evaluating the results of a newly implemented practice.

I truly can’t figure out why the editorial was written or what the piece is attempting to accomplish. There is also a clear absence of significant facts in it. And lastly, the closing, “Let’s get back to learning” is entirely misleading, as that’s exactly what the senate was trying to do when it directed two of its standing committees to learn more about the effects of this new policy.

First of all, the senate received the results of the disqualification policy after the Fall 1997 Semester and at its Jan. 27 Senate Executive Committee meeting. Without any comparison data with which to evaluate the results, the Senate membership was struck by the disparate way in which the disqualification process affected various groups and, therefore, directed its Academic Policy and Planning Committee and its Diversity, Equity and Outreach Committee to investigate further.

In an attempt to find out if it was an effect of the new policy, it requested comparative data from Admissions and Records from the last two periods of disqualification. With that data in, the committees could easily see that the statistics are similar in nature to those of the past and, therefore, not an effect caused by this new policy (both of these committees gave initial reports to the SEC yesterday).

One could not have made that judgment without the comparative data, and now that the two committees have reviewed the data, the senate will see that the new policy has had little or no effect on past practice (note that the two committees have not reported back to the senate but that they are scheduled to do so at its March 10 meeting).

I should note that a review of the data has raised concerns related to the disqualification of students in general and I, as one, am hopeful that the senate will pursue the broader issue of student retention at this university. I do not consider it a waste of either time or money, nor do I consider it a case of paranoia, but rather a useful process of learning. Specifically, learning more about what we can do as a university to help each and every student succeed and what the reasons are for students doing poorly academically and eventually being disqualified from SDSU.

I know The Daily Aztec would be interested in the facts, particularly ones that could be used in well written feature and news stories and editorials; facts that are so obviously missing from this editorial. The senate did not pursue this topic out of fear of lawsuits but rather as a legitimate concern for disqualified students in all ethnic populations, even white students who are disqualified as the greatest percentage.

I look forward to reading the “Boos & Bravos” on Friday in The Daily Aztec, as I will draw great comfort from a Bravo for the senate for its evaluation of the effects of its newly implemented policy on disqualification, and a Boo for the Opinion and Editorial staff of The Daily Aztec for their erroneous, misleading and poorly developed editorial on the “Senate fears ring false.” I strongly suggest that your editorial staff “get back to learning.”

Gene G. Lamke

University Senate chairman