News-Letter

My father, born on Sept. 2, 1939, the day before the outbreak of World War II, was named Neville, probably after the then-prime minister of Great Britain Neville Chamberlain, and with the Hebrew name Shalom, meaning "peace." Chamberlain, like so many of the outspoken leftists of our day, was an appeaser; he was against the very idea of war without direct provocation. My father's parents (both of whom were Jewish) saw the lofty ideal of peace as something that could be attained in their time, and that the cost of war far outweighed the benefits of removing Adolf Hitler from power.

A devastatingly similar situation is developing in the Middle East today, and more specifically, in Iraq. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ha'Aretz, even the dovish former-prime minister of Israel, Shimon Peres, sees the parallels between the United Nations' current policy towards Iraq and the British policy of appeasement. We have already seen the Hitleresque goals and aspirations of Saddam Hussein during his invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent treatment of his own population.

I ask myself, what do we know about Saddam Hussein? Is Saddam Hussein genocidal? The answer, invariably, is yes. He has shown time and again a disregard for not only the lives of those he bombs with long-range Scud Missiles, but also for his own countrymen. Between 1980 and 1988, Hussein launched a campaign that included the first widespread use of chemical weapons by a government against its own citizens; this campaign, documented in detail, is a record of his genocidal war against the Iraqi Kurds. This is a man who has no qualms against killing his own people, let alone killing others on the North American continent.

The United Nations asserts that since 1996, Iraq has spent all of its oil revenues on only three things -- humanitarian programs, Kuwaiti reparations, or U.N. costs. If the U.N. hasn't sent inspectors into Iraq for nearly four years, how could they possibly have accurate figures as to how much and where Iraq's money is going? What about the thousands of dollars that Saddam Hussein admits he gives to the families of suicide bombers? Is that amount included in the United Nations' calculations?

And why would Saddam Hussein not allow U.N. weapons inspectors into his country, if it meant the difference between his people going without needed food and medical supplies? Only a few logical conclusions can be gleaned from Saddam's actions. The first is that he has something to hide, and the second is that he really doesn't care whether or not his population gets needed supplies. Already, the parallels between the last days of Hitler, when he flooded temporary hospitals set up in the subways under Berlin to stem the advance of the Allied powers by a few hours, killing hundreds of his citizens, appear distinctly.

I am not one to comment on the cause of the impending war with Iraq, or the motivations and politicking that President Bush and the Republican party appear to be forming in order to get the war against the concept of terrorism (a silly idea, at best) through Congress. Rather, what seems wrong is to decry a war against Iraq for humanitarian causes. If those people who feel this way truly were humanitarians, they would care for the fate of a people under an undeniably murderous ruler.

We are brothers with the Kurds, who have gone like lambs to the slaughter under Saddam Hussein's regime. What else will we find out after it's too late? We were too late for Rwanda, Somalia, Bosnia, Liberia and Germany. Let us not be too late to save the Iraqi people from the impending doom of a maniacal, genocidal leader.

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