George W. Ahab's crusade

Some look for love their entire lives and never find it. Others look for stability, freedom, intellectual advancement or a dream once deferred. For the past couple of years, George W. Bush has led a quixotic quest to ferret out weapons, allegedly hidden in the twisting sands of Mesopotamia, only to hear his inspectors cry out Wednesday: They ain't got 'em, Dubya! \nAccording to The Washington Post, the search for Iraq's spectral weapons of mass destruction has been concluded, while the White House expresses "disappointment that no weapons or weapons programs were found."\nNo, no. You are "disappointed" because you don't get a mint on your pillow, or if the cab driver is rude to you. You aren't just "disappointed" when the sole reason for invading a country is completely disproved!\nThe hunt is finished, and now, after urinating into the wind for the past two years in Iraq, all we have to show for it is pee and blood on our shirts. \nSome would call the war and the now ended search for weapons insane -- a fruitless quest. In Moby Dick, Melville quoted Captain Ahab saying, "He think me mad; but I'm demoniac, possessed, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself." \nWhat calm, I wonder, does George W. Ahab find at night, knowing he was wrong to cross the seas like Ahab, only to find destruction? I argue that it is quite irrational, if not insane, of this administration to throw away the world's support and sympathy after Sept. 11 in order to invade Iraq. \nBut, as the President sang over the airwaves, according to Australia's ABC News: "Saddam had the intention to produce weapons." \nThe difference, then, is between prevention and preemption. For example, Israel's decision in 1967 was to preempt the Arab attack by destroying Arab forces completing deployment; however, Israel's air attack on Iraq's flowering nuclear reactor in 1981 aimed to prevent weapons from being created.\nThe war in Iraq was preventative against a "grave and gathering threat," as George W. Ahab proposes, but was certainly not a preemptive measure to stop an Iraqi assault on America. With the case for preemption now officially fantasy, America will take a tremendous blow internationally. \nBecause of the announcement Wednesday, we all must come to grips with seven deadly facts: President Bush did nothing to prevent the events of Sept. 11, Iraq wasn't a grave threat to the United States, Rumsfeld sent a fraction of the troops needed to occupy Iraq, there were no weapons of mass destruction, there was no plan to win the peace, there is no evidence to link al-Qaida and Iraq and the administration intended to go into Iraq even before Sept. 11.\nAnd so our military swims on with its arms tied behind its back, remaining vigilant, undaunted and implacable -- in spite of, not because of, the administration's policies. Watch the news or ask your ROTC friends from high school about soldiers' supplies in Iraq. The wretched conditions -- compounded with a lack of individual supplies -- have forced many soldiers to buy their own materials. But with the weapons search over, soldiers will inevitably ask themselves: Why are we in Iraq? \nThe sailors aboard Ahab's ship, no doubt, furrowed their brows and scratched their heads as their captain pointed the helm towards the phantom whale's spout. Will the lives of our "sailors" and ground troops be sacrificed to appease the botched crusade of George W. Ahab? According to terrorist expert and Washington insider Richard Clarke, al-Qaida has "morphed into a hydra" -- the many-headed monster able to grow new heads after decapitation. Invading an Iraq without weapons has been the biggest recruiting catalyst ever for terrorist groups. \nSo I ask again: Why are we in Iraq?