Letter: Iraqi leader’s behavior makes war inevitable

Thursday, Feb. 13, 2003 | 9 a.m.

Pride in America for its principled and undaunted position on Iraq motivates me to request my less proud fellow citizens to shed their cloaks of assumed nobility.

Relieved of the weight of the world from their shoulders, hopefully they will regain the strength of body and mind to appreciate and accept the fact that those Americans who believe in the Bush administration's approach to resolving the threat posed by Iraq also want peace. The issue is how to secure peace in as meaningful and permanent a way as possible.

As frightening as is war, far more frightening is the threat presented by a nation whose leadership continues to develop, and displays willingness to use, weapons of mass destruction. Denying that a threat exists is self-destructive. The posture of the Bush administration, while heart-wrenching by nature, is appropriate.

Sadly, the primitive behavior of the Iraqi leadership requires a response that eliminates the destructive potential of that behavior. Although history must be replete with similar sentiments, hopefully future generations will develop to the degree that the behavior that provokes war will be relegated to descriptions of the past in the history books of the future.

JORDAN BODENSTEIN