In recent weeks, the anti-war movement has gained momentum like a winter wind over Lake LaSalle. Here in Buffalo, whether scrawling messages across blackboards or gathering in the blowing snow to protest, liberal students have made it clear that opposing Gulf War II has become the first great cause of our generation.
But long before our parents were born, similar protests were held in London streets as another generation faced a brutal threat: Adolf Hitler. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and liberals across Europe called for appeasement, negotiation and collective security long after it was clear that Hitler would not respect the will of the League of Nations.
People feared the price of war. But when the bombs began falling, they quickly learned the price of appeasement.
Of course, today's crisis doesn't parallel that one completely. The late '30s taught us one thing, however; if we appease a dangerous tyrant under the liberal ideal of peace long after he is willing to work with us, that peace amounts to nothing more than delay.
Many of my fellow liberal students oppose the war because they can't believe that in our time diplomacy can fail. President George W. Bush's rhetoric about the United Nations - he has called it, now and then, an "ineffective debating society" - alienates those of us who grew up believing in world peace and the United Nations' ability to keep it.
However, we must cast that illusion aside. Diplomacy has failed. Twelve years ago, they ordered Saddam Hussein to destroy his weapons of mass destruction. Since then, the United Nations has issued 22 more resolutions. Hussein has obeyed none of them fully.
Four months ago, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1441. It offered Iraq a "final opportunity" to "comply fully, immediately and unconditionally with the U.N.'s instruction to disarm." Hussein has not complied.
What if the protesters have their way, and the global community does not back up Resolution 1441 with force? Blair paints a dire picture: "Saddam in charge of Iraq, his weapons of mass destruction intact, the will of the international community set at nothing, the United Nations tricked again, Saddam hugely strengthened and emboldened? Does anyone truly believe that will mean peace?"
A second truth that liberal students find difficult to accept is that Hussein - caricatured in pop culture all our lives - has serious and dangerous weapons of mass destruction. According to the United Nations, Hussein has not provided evidence that he has destroyed all of his weapons, including 8,500 liters of anthrax. He has not indicated a desire to do so.
Furthermore, the people of Iraq have a right to live in a free society under a democratic government, and we, as liberals, ought to support that right. Hussein has exiled four million Iraqis; murdered over 150,000 Kurds and Shiite Muslims, and executed tens of thousands of political prisoners. If American liberals deny the Iraqi people the chance to live under the same liberal government we enjoy, we are the worst kind of hypocrites.
The Vietnam War is never far from the liberal consciousness. Many of us fear that a war to liberate the Iraqi people could prove as dangerous as the Vietnam War, fought to liberate the Vietnamese from communism. But Vietnam was different in critical ways. The regime wasn't as repressive, it didn't have weapons of mass destruction, and it hadn't disobeyed nearly two-dozen U.N. resolutions. We must not let fear of another Vietnam prevent us from confronting Hussein, as fear of another World War I prevented Chamberlain from confronting Hitler.
Walter Lippman, the great journalist, wrote that the liberal philosophy "holds that enduring governments must be accountable to someone besides themselves." Lippman, who wrote this in 1934, meant that a government ought to answer to its citizens.
Yet 70 years later, in a global society, a government must also answer to all citizens of the world. For more than a decade, we have asked Hussein's government to do this, and it has refused. As liberal students - lovers of freedom - we must demand that Hussein be held to account. We need not ask, "Isn't peace important?" We know it is. We must ask, "Isn't freedom more important?"
As Frederick Douglass wrote, "Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, who want rain without thunder and lightning."
As liberals, we must stand for peace. But in the end, our cause must be freedom - not peace at any price.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
