Volume CXXXIII, Number 6 October 19, 2001 f

Compassionate colonialism
TODD BUELL
opinion05_job

Recently I was on my way back to Quinby House after a long night of studying and I noticed a friend talking to a woman who was sitting beneath a tree. I wondered what was going on but as I approached I realized that the woman was a homeless person in need of a place to stay. Apparently, the local shelter was full and she needed a hotel. While we went into the house to call a taxi, she vanished back into the night fog. We can only hope that she found safety and shelter.

As I was reflecting on that unusually graphic dose of reality I couldn't help but think of it as an obvious connection to the current situation in Afghanistan as our government ponders its goals for our new kind of war: do we seek only Osama Bin Laden, or do we not end our aggressive presence in the middle east until both the Taliban and Saddam Hussein are out of power? Two recent pieces illumine a perspective on this issue that is often ignored not only on this campus but in the mainstream media itself.

Firstly, National Review Online editor Jonah Goldberg has an excellent piece on townhall.com that suggests that the attack on the World Trade Center was not a result of too great a presence in world affairs, but rather too passive a presence. He suggests that it is time for America to consider a "new colonialism." When I read this article for the first time, I was shocked at this utterance of what could be called the "c-word" in the politically correct lexicon of verboten Wörter.

However, upon a deeper analysis, there is little doubt that Goldberg is correct. One of Goldberg's most cited sources was a recent article in The Weekly Standard by The Wall Street Journal's Opinion Features Editor Max Boot. Mr. Boot's piece not only proves that America needs a new kind of "colonialism" but that this new foreign policy would be beneficial not only for our country but for the denizens of the countries that we inhabit. In his article, Mr. Boot draws on two often discussed examples: the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1980s and the Gulf War of 1991. Both analyses reach entirely different conclusions than most of the opinions in both the print and broadcast media.

One common explanation of the September 11th attacks is that we should feel some semblance of responsibility because we supplied the Afghans with arms during its fight against the Soviets. Mr. Boot suggests that our supplying of arms was not the mistake. Rather our mistake was that we did not stay in the region to ensure that a peaceful and democratic government was in place.

The discussion of Iraq is probably more recognizable to most political observers. It suggests that we should not have ended the Gulf War until Saddam Hussein was removed from power. Even though NATO Secretary General George Robertson has supposedly concluded that there is little evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the World Trade Center attacks, I suspect Saddam was shedding few tears as the twin towers crumbled. There is also ample evidence going back to the time of the Gulf War that Hussein constructs biological weapons. This leads some experts to believe that he may be behind the slew of Anthrax attacks that have frightened our country in recent days. These reasons alone should justify vigilance in the Middle East until he is removed from power.

Many pundits have expressed concern at the practicality of such intervention in the Middle East. Boot suggests, and I agree, that the sort of rebuilding presence that will be required must be bilateral. Once the Taliban and Hussein are removed from their respective offices, an ad hoc organization similar to the allied occupation of Germany after the Second World War should remain in Central Asia until the region is stabilized.

President Bush should employ the same speechwriters that put him in the Oval Office as he crafts his defense of "compassionate colonialism." As he has pointed out, millions of Afghani children are starving under the repressive rule of the Taliban. The same can be said of Iraq where Saddam has used biological weapons against his own citizens. The repressed peoples of these regimes are sitting outside in the rain waiting for us to help them by removing from power those that deny them food, clothing, shelter, and opportunity. Is it not our duty to see that they are safe and taken care of before they disappear into the fog? CoMpAsSiOnATE CoLoNiAlIsm