Howard Roth: The point missed

I beg to differ with Mr. Bancroft-Hinchey's opinion regarding President Bush and Prime Minister Blair (Dynamic Duo miss the point – April 17).  The point with Iraq was to remove one of the many threats to global stability.  Saddam Hussein was a threat to global stability. He may not have been an imminent threat to the US, but he could certainly have been an entity that caused the US great harm in the near future.  Remember that he did attempt to assassinate a President. 

September 11th provided the US with the understanding that one should not wait to try to prevent an attack. That tragedy provided a new philosophy that entails knocking out the potential attackers up front and early on.  One would have thought the US would have learned that lesson from Pear Harbor.

Now, Saddam may not have had an arsenal of massively destructive weapons when the coalition attacked him and his supporters last year.  Nevertheless, the world community was clearly under the impression he did possess such weapons and he certainly had them in the past.  So to use this angle to attack Bush and Blair is pointless. 

The point that they made clear is that all terrorism must be stopped and one cannot pick and choose what terrorist group to support.  That is a point most people should listen to.  Whether it’s the FLQ in Quebec, Hamas in Gaza, IRA in Northern Ireland or the Basques in Spain, all terrorist actions are wrong and should be dealt with in the harshest of fashions.  To legitimize any terror group destroys the possibility of a peaceful world for some future generation.  This is a wonderful point that the two leaders made. 

The sad point of it all is that there is so much discussion about Iraq because of economic impact, rather than the true humanitarian aspects of the situation. Why are there not more opinion pieces about the failure of Kofi Anan to have avoided the Rwanda genocide ten years ago?  Because that country has little economic impact on Russia, the US or the European Union.  Now that’s a point that is being missed by all.

By the way my sources show Sadr as having only a couple of thousand militants following him. I'd be curious to know where Mr. Bancroft-Hinchey's number of a million came from.

Howard Roth
11 Airport Blvd., #200
S. San Francisco CA  94080 USA