Celebrate the Victory of Diplomacy
By Mike Hersh, Sep 16, 2002

Monday, September 16, 2002 The New York Times reported "Iraq unconditionally accepted the return of U.N. weapons inspectors. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said:

"I can confirm to you that I have received a letter from the Iraqi authorities conveying its decision to allow the return of inspectors without conditions to continue their work." ( see: NY Times: Iraq Agrees to Readmit Inspectors, U.N. Says http://www.nytimes.com/?8na )

There is no longer any pretext for a military attack on Iraq. Our treaty obligations, the United States Constitution, and international law require reliance on renewed weapons inspections.

The international community supports our efforts to render Iraq harmless short of unprovoked and now clearly unnecessary, invasion. US policies have already achieved every legitimate, logical objective in this matter.

Recent arrests of suspected terrorists outside Buffalo, New York, and in the Middle East prove our war on terror requires vigilance as well as help from our allies around the world. While desirable, we have no real justification to engineer a "regime change" in Iraq via full scale attack.

There is no evidence Iraq was behind the September 11th attacks on the United States, much less that dividing our anti-terror coalition and diverting our armed forces would promote the War Against Terrorism. In fact, the opposite appears true.

Inspections during the 1990s eliminated Iraq's capacity to use weapons of mass destruction. Renewed inspections will identify and eliminate any remaining Iraqi threat. This is a triumph for US and UN diplomacy. Bush should embrace this victory as an opportunity to win the war without having to fight the battle.

The Bush administration has earned the right to declare victory on this front, and should begin to refocus on the Al Queda terrorist threat as well as address our growing domestic and economic problems.

Many believe the contrived timing of this discussion is pure partisan politics, something even Bush spokesperson Ari Fleischer deplores. There is only one way Bush and his people can assure American voters that this has not been a cynical effort to manipulate upcoming elections.

The Bush Administration is at a crossroads. Either they can accept this triumph -- forcing Iraq to back down from confrontation without resort to US invasion -- and address our legitimate national security and profound domestic needs. Or else they can remain fixated on aggressive, highly risky and unwarranted militarist "solutions" in search of a problem.

The latter would betray a hidden agenda based on oil, personal enrichment, partisan manipulation of elections and other shameful aims. Bluntly, any further attempts by the Bush administration to foment warfare would confirm bad faith and ulterior motivations.

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