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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.
Being a member of the nuclear club clearly has its privileges. In today's post-9/11 world, every threat made by Pyongyang must be taken seriously. North Korea can manipulate and intimidate American diplomacy with threats of nuclear holocaust.
What would a nuclear Saddam have been able to get away with? Kill a few thousand Kurds? Tough luck. Invade Kuwait? What will America do about it? Place an iron boot on the throat of Israel? Turnabout is fair play.
Weapons of mass destruction in the wrong hands allow our enemies to undermine every policy action we might take.
History has shown the consequences of what happens when the United States hesitates in its moral resolve. Yet if we are not willing to accept minor casualties to prevent the larger ones, then one must wonder whether nuclear proliferation--and the politics of nuclear blackmail--will become the future of world politics.
Will our children live in a world where rogue nations blackmail others into compliance? Rather than the divide between the rich and the poor, will future Security Councils endlessly debate the divide between the armed and the disarmed?
The game of nuclear blackmail, of the mass proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, is a hellish future that cannot be permitted to exist.
To be sure, there will be casualties in the war against Iraq, and American resolve will be tested.
War should naturally be the last option of politics. But as von Clausewitz so carefully observed, "[T]he war of a community--of whole nations and particularly of civilized nations--always starts from a political condition."
Today's political condition was arrived at by Saddam alone.
For 12 years too long, Saddam chose deception, deceit, and misleading evidence over full compliance with U.N. resolutions. He has demonstrated his willingness to place the Iraqi people in harm's way to pursue those aims. We must be willing to endure the small tragedies of conflict to prevent the political nightmare of nuclear blackmail.
SHAUN KENNEY is chairman of the Fredericksburg Republican Committee.