Date published: 3/23/2003

NOW THAT the endgame in Iraq is at hand, the five months of deliberation over the status of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction can finally be brought to an end.

Yet despite the increasing mass support for the "coalition of the willing" and the growing evidence against Saddam, pacifists are still chomping at the bit.

Doomsayers until the bitter end, antiwar demonstrators continue to rail against the Bush administration's decision to remove Saddam from power. Labeled "cowboy politics," the president's actions are cynically discarded as destabilizing and in contravention of ill-defined concepts of international law.

But what the antiwar activists have failed to account for is the true cost of inaction. We have all heard this challenge to pacifism before, but the ramifications of refusing to actively prevent rogue nations such as Iraq from acquiring nuclear weapons are worth reconsidering.

The pacifist solution of inspections without the backing of force allows Iraq to clandestinely pursue weapons of mass destruction. Yet the politics of nuclear blackmail, which we are receiving a taste of from North Korea, must not be allowed to become a reality in the Middle East.

But what becomes the difference between our foreign policies concerning non-nuclear Iraq and nuclear-armed North Korea?

Consider when Saddam Hussein threatened to "burn the soil under the feet of the Zionist and American aggressors." The American public scoffed at the idea. But when Kim Jong Il threatens to nuke New York or Los Angeles, we Americans get a bit uneasy.

The difference isn't energy reserves, money, or cowboy politics. It's the nuclear card and its use as a deterrent to action.

Some might perceive this to be a lack of resolve on America's part to take on the true mavericks of the world. Perhaps so. But think about the limitations on how America could have dealt with a Saddam empowered by nuclear weapons, and how important it was for that scenario never to occur.

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Date published: 3/23/2003