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Editorials
Tuesday, February 20, 2001Bush’s order on Iraq
signals his resolveThe issue: President Bush ordered air strikes against targets near Baghdad.
THERE was an unavoidable sense of deja vu in President Bush's authorization of air attacks on targets near Baghdad. Ten years ago his father led Operation Desert Storm, which forced Saddam Hussein to disgorge Kuwait and resulted in the sanctions against Iraq that the United States has been trying to enforce ever since.
The sense that we had been through this before was heightened by the presence in high positions in the new Bush administration of Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, all of whom figured prominently in the events of 1991.
Ten years and two U.S. presidents later, Saddam Hussein is still the dictator of Iraq, still shouting defiance of the West. His survival represents a failure of U.S. policy and a frustration to American policymakers.
A low point came in 1998 when Saddam expelled United Nations weapons inspectors. They have never returned.
Since then Iraq has been free to develop weapons of mass destruction without direct international interference. Saddam has also made progress in enlisting the support of other nations to end the U.N. economic sanctions imposed after the Gulf War.
During the presidential election campaign, the younger Bush criticized the Clinton administration's policy on Iraq as weak. Last Friday he put his own stamp on U.S. policy, authorizing the first air strike in two years north of the 33rd parallel, which lies 30 miles south of Baghdad and marks the border of the southern "no-fly" zone patrolled by U.S. and British planes since 1991.
Bush described the flights as a routine mission, and indeed there have been hundreds of such strikes in the last decade. But this was the largest attack in months, and its proximity to Baghdad was unusual.
The president seemed to be going out of his way to say that a new man is in charge in the United States now and he is going to demand that Saddam comply with his commitments.
If Saddam has been trying to test the will of President Bush to enforce U.S. policy to restrain Iraq and prevent a renewal of his aggression, he got his answer.
This president served notice that he isn't about to back off even though much of the international support that Operation Desert Storm received has dissipated.
Nor should he. Saddam is still a menace, and in the absence of U.S. deterrence is likely to resume his efforts to destabilize the Middle East.
Opportunistic governments such as the French and Russian are willing to appease Saddam for the sake of doing business with Iraq, which is still a major oil producer. Washington must oppose normalization of relations with Iraq until Saddam is deposed and a government that can live in peace with its neighbors is installed in Baghdad.
Harassment decision
SCHOOL boards all over the country, including Hawaii, may be forced to reconsider their anti-harassment policies in the wake of a federal appeals court decision overturning a Pennsylvania board's policy. The decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals applies only to federal courts in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and the Virgin Islands, but could be extended if upheld by the Supreme Court or followed by other appeals courts.
The issue was freedom of speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment. The court ruled that a school district's anti-harassment guidelines violated the free-speech rights of students.
The decision came in a suit brought by David Warren Saxe, a Penn State University assistant professor and member of the state Board of Education, on behalf of two students. He is their legal guardian.
The suit said the students believe that homosexuality is a sin and that they have a right to speak out "about the sinful nature and harmful effects of homosexuality."
The appeals court ruled that the State College Area School District's anti-harassment policy "appears to cover substantially more speech than could be prohibited" under existing U.S. Supreme Court precedents.
Judge Samuel Alito wrote that a school may categorically ban lewd, vulgar or profane language and may regulate speech to meet "a legitimate pedagogical concern." But other speech may be limited "only if it would substantially disrupt school operations or interfere with the rights of others."
Saxe argued that rules were in place that prohibited violence and physical harassment. "What this policy was about is the content of somebody's speech," he said, "and it chilled the First Amendment rights of every child in that school, every teacher, every visitor."
Free speech has come under attack in recent years from attempts to impose standards of political correctness on speech on school and college campuses.
The First Amendment protection does not discriminate between polite and impolite speech, between popular and unpopular speech, between factually correct and incorrect statements. Applying the guarantee to the school environment is a challenge.
Hawaii became more deeply involved in the issue of harassment of homosexuals in the schools when the state Board of Education was drawn into a heated controversy over the proposed inclusion of "sexual orientation" in a list of categories protected from harassment, eventually adopting the change.
Although the 3rd Circuit Court decision does not directly affect Hawaii, it deserves attention. At some point the Hawaii Board of Education's anti-harassment policy may also be challenged on First Amendment grounds. The American Civil Liberties Union should be weighing whether such a challenge is warranted.
Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited PartnershipRupert E. Phillips, CEO
Frank Bridgewater, Acting Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
