I was in Cairo during the 2000 presidential elections, that tense time when no one knew who was going to be the president of the United States. What I remember most about that November is not the graphs and maps on CNN, but the teasing of Egyptian cab drivers and waiters. They loved that the world’s only superpower and loudest champion of democracy couldn’t fairly elect its own president.

When the jokes died down, I was surprised to learn that many of these cab drivers and waiters preferred George W. Bush over Al Gore (especially considering how much they loved Bill Clinton). Their reason was even more surprising: they thought his father, the commander in chief during Desert Storm, was a hero. For most of them, the objectionable aspects of Desert Storm were far outweighed by the political imperative of stopping Saddam Hussein’s colonial aspirations in the Persian Gulf. Although they were unhappy about the political division of the Arab world and the use of Saudi Arabia (a Muslim holy land) as a staging area for the United States Armed Forces (a Christian army), they thought Saddam Hussein should be punished for invading Kuwait.

A war in Iraq now would be entirely different. Although our current Bush is using the same slogan as his father ("Saddam Hussein must be stopped"), there is no immediate, tangible thing that the United States military can stop Hussein from doing. Without this immediacy, it is hard to justify supporting a war. I seriously doubt that the cab drivers and waiters who once teased me would support the son’s "first strike" in the way they supported the father’s "strike back."

Although Arab governments have lined up behind UN Resolution 1441, we should realize that a war in Iraq would probably swell the ranks of those sympathetic to the objectives of Osama bin Laden. I don’t mean to suggest that all the cab drivers and waiters in Cairo will join Al Qaeda if the United States attacks Iraq. But we should take them into account. Although we can count on the support of Arab governments that rely on our foreign aid and trade agreements, we cannot rely on the support of their citizens.

A more thoughtful government would stop to consider the reaction of an unsettled Arab population increasingly bombarded with the call of militant Islamism. A more thoughtful government would also assess the wisdom of attacking a country for producing weapons it hasn’t used. But our government probably won’t.

Back to the Thoughts on going to war index.