Column Comparing President to Mobster Is 'Ridiculous'

I am writing in response to the column published in the Feb. 18 issue of The Spectrum titled "Wartime President."

George Zornick portrays the President of the United States as a mob leader. This is ridiculous. In it, he claims that George Bush is "fooling" people into fearing "vaguely-defined evils."

I sat in my Spaulding dormitory on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 and watched the World Trade Center, as well as the thousands of innocent people inside, crumble to the ground. I was scared, and justly so.

Shortly after that incident came the attacks against the current administration charging that the attacks could have, and should have been prevented. In the midst of all these accusations, President George W. Bush promised the American people that he would do "everything in (his) power" to make certain this would never happen again.

In my opinion he has stuck by his promise. Had we been as "scared" and as vigilant as we are now, these attacks could have been prevented.

As far as "keeping people scared," I think Zornick severely underestimates the intelligence of the American public. By saying Bush is fooling people into being scared or using that to his advantage is a very unfair charge and infers that there is nothing to be scared of anymore. Once we return to the 'no worries' mindset, we will be just as vulnerable as we were on Sept. 11.

The next accusation in Zornick's column was that the president "ignored international standards" and rushed to war under false pretenses. May I ask what false pretenses?

First and foremost, Saddam Hussein used these weapons of mass destruction on his own people. We knew he had them and had no evidence whatsoever to think he had destroyed them. Many Democratic politicians who analyzed the same intelligence as the president came to the same conclusion.

Even John Kerry, who now claims the president misled us, agreed that Iraq represented a major threat, which needed to be dealt with.

U.N. intelligence suggested the Iraq regime had thousands of liters of chemical and biological weapons. No one questioned any of this intelligence. The world gave Hussein countless chances to cooperate with the global community.

In 1998, a United Nations spokesman said, "Once again, they are repudiating the Security Council Resolution. They are repudiating the agreement they made with the Secretary General, they are blustering, they are going out of their way to be defiant and they are playing games."

Then, several months later, former President Bill Clinton declared that Iraq was given "one last chance," which they didn't take and he therefore ordered the beginning of Operation Desert Fox.

This was the second time in less than a decade that military reaction was needed. I don't recall one person demanding investigations into where Clinton received his intelligence. Had we finished the job the first or second time, we wouldn't be there now.

It is also charged that we acted alone in removing the Iraqi regime. No one ever seems to mention the 40 plus nations around the world who are members of the "Coalition of the Willing." France used its' veto power in the United Nations to block any international effort.

We're all college students here. Do you think France was so opposed to the war because they thought it was the wrong thing to do? Or do you think they were opposed to the war because France had the largest amount of secret contracts with Iraq, in fact twice as many as Iraq's second largest business partner, Germany? We can only wonder.

I, however, think that 14 resolutions are more than enough. Having to use military force two times in less than a decade in a country that obviously is ruled by an evil dictator is enough of an indicator of the dangers that might face us.

If there is one thing I admire about Bush, it is that he is a principled man who believes what he is doing is helping protect his country. There are many other issues to criticize the president on: economy, civil rights or education - the list goes on. I'd rather have a president who takes a stance and stands by it than someone who changes their stance on issues about as often as I change my socks.

At least now the United States has terrorists hiding in caves in Afghanistan instead of learning to fly planes in Florida, as they were under the Clinton administration. We are safer as a country and shouldn't let terrorists rule our life. However, there still is a massive threat to this country, and once the American people stop fearing the threat, that is when the threat becomes reality.