By Russell Working
The
Facing a skeptical and sometimes
sharp-tongued audience at the
Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy and one of the architects
of the campaign in Iraq, said the invasion was a necessary response to the
Sept. 11 attacks--even if there is no direct evidence of Iraqi involvement in
those attacks or that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed chemical or nuclear
weapons.
"Given that our aim is to preserve our
society's liberty, we have no alternative to a strategy of offense," Feith
said.
Feith is the third-ranking official in the Pentagon, and his comments
demonstrated a resolve by the Bush administration, in a month of bitter
fighting and high casualties, to cast the war as a response to global terrorism
and Hussein's past willingness to use chemical weapons. The risk that
"The terrorists who destroyed the
Feith's statements drew dissent--and sometimes
lengthy tongue-lashings--from many students who lined up at a microphone to
question him.
One student suggested that the invasion of
"As we see in
Feith answered that the anti-American Iraqi cleric whose militia is fighting
coalition forces has little support even among Shiites.
"There is no uprising among the Shia," he
said. "There is a Shia gangster, named Moqtada Sadr, who has a force of
a few hundred people and who is making a power play. This is a man who is under
indictment by an Iraqi judicial tribunal for the murder of Ayatollah [Said
Abdul Majid] al-Khoei, and Sadr does not have substantial support. On the contrary, he
is opposed by virtually the entire Shia leadership in
Pressing arguments made by Bush, Feith said the war on terrorism has led to a
new constitution for
"This point, by the way, is not negated by our not having found Iraqi
stockpiles of WMD, or by the possibility that Saddam destroyed all the
stockpiles before the war," Feith said.
One student who said he supported the war posed a question that came with a
barb. Why not attack other nations that support terrorism, he asked, such as
Reaction was sharpest when a student asked how many people have died in the war
on terrorism. When Feith did not directly answer, someone called out, "He
asked you how many people have died?"
Several students said later that Feith didn't convince them the invasion of
"It didn't change my mind on the necessity of the war as opposed to the
connections the administration is trying to draw to Al Qaeda,"
said Chris Shybut.
But Chris Chitty said he better understood the war's rationale: "He gave
me some more respect for the Bush administration as far as logic and actual
ability to articulate policy."Return to Chicago Political Union