Code Yellow

On March 3, Julius Strauss of the British Broadcasting Corporation reported that 37-year-old Nazif Mamik Tofik, an Iraqi Kurd, attempted to cross into the Kurdish section of Iraq with canisters of fuel. Her goal was to sell the gasoline to buy food for her eight children.\nAs she reached an Iraqi checkpoint, an Iraqi soldier sliced open both of her canisters, splashing fuel everywhere. Then, Strauss said, "the head of the Iraqi border guard casually walked up to her (Nazif), pulled a lighter from his pocket and set her ablaze … soaked in fuel, she began to burn like a torch."\nCurrently, Nazif Mamik Tofik is recovering from third degree burns. Her arms are burnt so badly that the IV drip had to be inserted into her neck. Doctors predict that she will survive, but recovery will be slow. \nHow can we as students not pity Nazif? We frequently complain about having to go to class on Fridays. We are upset when our number of basketball tickets drops to seven per season. We have a standard of living so high that we actually believe these are serious "burdens." \nHowever, we do have a unique burden. More specifically, the United States must be responsible for spreading the flames of liberty to the areas of the world who haven't yet felt their warmth.\nMany anti-war/pro-Saddam demonstrators would say that these reports of brutality are propaganda spread by the Republican Party in order to Americanize Iraqi oil fields for President Bush's redneck bumpkin friends back in Texas, or merely isolated incidents by rogue guards. Well, here's what the British Foreign Office's Dec. 2, 2002, report on Iraq has to say about the abuses: "These grave violations of human rights are not the work of a number of overzealous individuals but the deliberate policy of the regime … fear is the chosen method of staying power."\nThe idea that Iraq is a sovereign state is laughable. A government exists for the people. This government destroys its people. It destroys them by "eye-gouging, piercing of hands with an electric drill, suspension from a ceiling, electric shock, rape and other forms of sexual abuse, beating of the soles of feet, mock executions, extinguishing cigarettes on the body and acid baths." \nAnd we protest the idea of liberating the people of Iraq from these horrors because being anti-war makes us feel cool. Honestly, is there some other reason for all these protests? The pro-peace group Code Pink says "the White House is definitely afraid of women in pink and the power of love." Wow, that's deep. \nWe are going to eliminate these barbarities. We are going to establish a new government for the Iraqis. The only reigning argument against Iraqi liberation is "American imperialism." If freeing people from a life of death is "imperialism," we need more of it. If it takes a war to stop the acid baths and the rapes, bring it on. \nWe do have a burden. It is the economic power that makes our high-tech lifestyle possible. This economic power also currently makes us the only nation on earth strong enough to stop the evil that lives in the heart of Baghdad. This evil will be stopped. It is a task President Bush is about to honorably undertake. Nazif Mamik Tofik and the millions like her will not be forgotten by this nation.\nAs political philosopher Edmund Burke once said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Let us define ourselves through Burke's challenge.