On Oct. 15, The New York Times reported on the Bush administration's policy shift toward publicly encouraging a coup inside Iraq. The administration is hoping Iraqi generals, when faced with the threat of being brought up on war crimes charges, will overthrow Saddam Hussein in an attempt to save themselves. Ari Fleisher, President Bush's Press Secretary, said a single bullet would be a quick way for Iraqi citizens to avoid a confrontation with the United States and its allies.
While this single bullet would take care of Hussein, it would not necessarily make the situation in Iraq any better. Publicly supporting a military coup or the assassination of the leader of a sovereign country is not the message the United States should be sending right now, especially as it tries to garner support for a U.N. resolution to invade.
Fleisher's remark was inappropriate and offensive. Openly being flippant about the assassination of a country's elected leader - no matter how frivolous that leader's election actually was - makes the United States seem like a bully.
Hussein is clearly a despicable man. He openly admits to killing Iraqi citizens that oppose his regime's control. He killed almost 150,000 Kurds in Northern Iraq with chemical weapons in the 1980s and later razed the Shiite lands in Southern Iraq to force them out of the country.
The Iraqi people have been executed, mass murdered, tortured, raped, starved and forcibly displaced, according to the Washington Post.
However, the only acceptable way for the United States to get him out of power is in a diplomatic manner, with world support behind it. Hussein should be brought to trial in a world court for the appalling things he has done to the Iraqi people. After 23 years of living in fear, the Iraqi people deserve to see him condemned for his actions.
Coups are violent, destructive and they have an irritating tendency to fail. According to CNN, more than 60 people died in April during the removal of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez from power, only to have Chavez reinstated as the country's leader 48 hours later.
The New York Times reports that during the 1990s, military coups were tried and failed at least six times in Iraq. Last spring, senior officials dismissed the hope of a rebellion, but now they are hopeful that some Iraqi generals are becoming scared enough that they may switch sides. They know Hussein is going down and they don't want to go with him, even if they deserve to.
Hussein is a world menace, and he should consequently have to answer to the world for his actions, not to some military general or other Iraqi administration official who is just trying to skirt his own culpability. Hussein's entire regime should be held accountable for the deaths and terror it put the Iraqi people through.
Hussein must be replaced by a leader who will truly attend to the needs of Iraq and not just some guy who does not want to face responsibility for what he has done while supporting Hussein.
Hussein is highly paranoid, and, in the New York Times article, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfield pointed out that those he is closest to are just as guilty as Hussein himself for the oppression of the Iraqi people and development of his programs. Hussein being assassinated and then replaced by one of these men would not signal any progress for Iraq.
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