Mr. Speaker, to invade Iraq or not to invade Iraq. That is the question we are dealing with today. It is a very delicate situation. Saddam Hussein is evil, pure and simple, beginning and end but is that grounds for invasion at this point in time? That is what we are grappling with today.
It would be prudent for us to look at objectives. What are our objectives and those of Saddam Hussein? Our objectives are twofold: stability in the Middle East and the war against terrorism. It is not at this point in time a regime change. According to the UN resolutions that we support, it is the identification and destruction of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Saddam Hussein's objectives are a little different. He wants to be the dominant player in the Persian Gulf. By all intelligence accounts, he was not involved in the attacks of September 11. In fact his goals are somewhat different from those of the terrorists. Their goals would be an attack against corrupt Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia. It is also an objective for them to change modern Islamic states into ones that are more fundamental. It is a war between Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic moderation.
Let us assume for a moment that Saddam Hussein does have weapons of mass destruction, both chemical and biological weapons. To date all intelligence, including the very eloquent British analysis, states that he does not have nuclear weapons at this time. There are certainly indications that he has been pursuing this through uranium tubing he has been trying to get in Africa. I might add there is a connection with Robert Mugabe and Mugabe's actions in the Congo where there are vast stores of uranium. Saddam Hussein is evil but he is not stupid.
Why does Saddam Hussein want weapons of mass destruction? To be the big bully in the Middle East, to scare off potential attacks by the United States, to inflict penalties and punishment against people within his own country, as he has done with the Kurds in northern Iraq, and also for larger aggressive interventions in the region which he demonstrated in Kuwait.
We may need to remove him from power, absolutely. The question is do we need to do it tomorrow? I would argue that we have some time. We have to exhaust all diplomatic possibilities before we look at the military option because we have to think of the consequences.
An attack on Iraq would do a number of things. It would jeopardize our primary objective which is the war on terrorism. If there was an attack on Iraq we could be sure Saddam Hussein would use his weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological weapons, against our troops and those of our allies.
He would also fire them off against Israel because Israel is doing intelligence operations in Iraq right now according to Jane's monthly reports. He would also attack nations that comply with the United States and us. Israel of course would respond in kind, probably with nuclear weapons, setting off an armageddon in the Middle East with massive numbers of casualties.
Also, invading Iraq would open up a third front in a very unstable region. Afghanistan is in turmoil and the situation between Palestine and Israel is also very unstable.
We have to look at other options. We have to look at some of the political solutions that need to be applied in conjunction with pushing Saddam Hussein to adopt the ultimate resolution which is a no notice, no holds barred weapons inspection anyplace, anywhere, anytime and give him a temporal end point for all this to happen, not now, but soon. The reason I say this is that we have to adopt a number of other initiatives at the same time.
First, and I say this particularly to our American friends down south, we have to be seen as a fair player in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. We have to push for a Palestinian Authority that is democratic, that is not corrupt, and will work for the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people need a free and secure state. Israel needs a free and secure state. Their security must be assured.
Jerusalem is a city for all people. Not only is it important to Jews and Muslims but it is also important to Christians. Israeli settlements have to get out of the West Bank.
Second, the United States and its allies cannot be seen to be blindly supporting Saudi Arabia. In fact it is Saudi Arabia that is the number one threat to Middle East security. It is ruled by the House of Ibn Saud. There are 5,000 princes. They have been draining the public coffers in an undemocratic way and they have been leaving their fellow countrymen in a state of poverty. The number of people becoming restless is growing and their poverty is enlarging, creating a fertile ground for a cataclysmic event along the lines of what we saw in Iran. Saudi Arabia is the major threat to regional security in the Middle East at this time.
America must be seen to be engaging in not only political but economic emancipation in Saudi Arabia as well as in other countries, and it must get and curry favour with other Arab nations to pursue this because if it does not there will be massive regional instability in the region. Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia will pay a heavy penalty.
We also have to pursue a line in the sand for Saddam Hussein and his regime and engage the Arab states to do the same. The Arab states have a vested interest in supporting us to get weapons inspectors into Iraq. As my colleagues mentioned, Saddam Hussein has used weapons of mass destruction against his own people in Kurdistan. He fired off rockets against Riyadh, he has invaded Kuwait and the list goes on.
If we do pursue a military option down the road, which may be entirely possible and feasible, those are the preconditions. Those other actions must be addressed. We must address the Palestinian-Israeli situation. We must be seen to be a fair player in Saudi Arabia. We cannot blindly support Saudi Arabia for the oil that is there. We have to look at political and economic emancipation in that country and work with other Arab nations to that end. We must engage Arab countries to do that.
If we do go into Iraq we have to understand that it will be for the long haul. We cannot simply go in, invade and leave as we usually do, because if we do we will be leaving a power vacuum that will enable that country to descend into a perilous state. We usually go in, engage and leave without following up with the democratic institutional building blocks that have to be put in place. We are seeing that now in Afghanistan, where failure to actually engage in the political and economic development of the country is fostering the warlords, the natural state of affairs in Afghanistan. If we do not continue to engage actively in political and economic emancipation in Afghanistan, we will see the warlords fight it out and Afghanistan will go back to being the backwater that it has been for decades. It too will be a failed state along the lines of Somalia.
In the end, if we were to go into Iraq it would set an interesting precedent for a number of other profound tragedies that exist in our world today. I mentioned to my hon. friend from Davenport that in Zimbabwe six million people, the same number of people who died in the Holocaust, will potentially die in the next six months from a famine politically engineered by Robert Mugabe, who is using food as a weapon to kill half his population. The people who did not and do not support him will be killed by their leader depriving them of food. Will we intervene to help those people?
Are we going to intervene in the Congo, where two million people have died in the last two years and no one has said anything? Will we intervene in Liberia, where a man by the name of Charles Taylor, with impunity, supports regional instability in the area and thugs such as Foday Sanko, who has been involved with the chopping off of the limbs of innocent men, women and children, not to kill them but to terrorize them. Charles Taylor is a criminal like Robert Mugabe is a criminal like Mobutu Sese Seko was a criminal. Are we going to intervene?
My time is up, Mr. Speaker, but I hope that our country engages the Americans to take a larger, broader look at regional stability, not only in the Middle East but in other countries. We have an exciting opportunity to use this. The military is one option which we may have to use and we will support it if necessary after we exhaust all diplomatic possibilities.
A firm line in the sand has to be drawn with Saddam Hussein. We must be firm in our resolve to keep it that way in the interests of security, not only for us and the United States but also for the security of all people in the Middle East, especially the Iraqi people.