Pros, cons of war hotly debated at CSUSM

| Wednesday, April 9, 2003 10:00 PM PDT ∞

BRUCE KAUFFMAN
Staff Writer

SAN MARCOS ---- A noontime crowd at Cal State San Marcos was told Wednesday that it was both a day to celebrate the liberation of the tyrannized Iraqi people and a day to drop naive notions and recognize that war is mainly waged to boost American corporate profits.

The contrasting views came from Shawn Steel, immediate past chairman of the California Republican Party, and Sean Bell, a former Marine and Vice President of San Diego Veterans for Peace. The College Republicans and the campus Progressive Activists Network sponsored the event.

Side by side at lecterns adorned with ribbons of red, white and blue, and with a giant-sized Old Glory hanging from a guard rail on the Academic Hall walkway to their left, Steel and Bell addressed questions posed by the two sponsors and submitted in writing by an audience of mainly students that at times swelled to about 300.

As the event wore on toward 1:30 p.m. under the bright sun, Bell doffed his jacket, tie and dress shirt to reveal an "Axis of Evil" tee shirt, with the "E" being a representation of the logo of bankrupt Texas energy giant Enron. Steel, who wore jeans and no tie, kept his blue-gray shirt on throughout. "It's a great day to be an American," said Steel, who described himself in opening remarks as a "fortress" kind of Republican. "The Iraqis are beginning to get a taste of the promise and opportunity that America has .... (And it's time that not only Iraq is liberated, but that the rest of the Middle East is liberated as well."

He said Baghdad at last is free of Saddam's Stalinist-type regime of "innate evil," one that lasted so long that Iraqis, knowing nothing else, got used to it. And so, he said, it's also a great day to be an Iraqi citizen.

"It's a day to be thankful for, grateful for," Steel said. "We have given something very precious in the lives of 25 million (Iraqi) people that we should be very proud of. We have given them another chance."

When his turn came, Bell said he agreed, but only in part. "It's great to be an American, yes," he said, "but how do we use our might? We're the mightiest country in the world."

He said his concern was "how we got there." The United States flaunted its own laws and its own Constitution in the march toward Baghdad, he said, not to mention mandates the American government signed on to at the United Nations.

He further urged people to realize that the war is connected to the thirst for oil. He said the democracy to be installed in Iraq could mirror the worst flaws of the democracy that has evolved stateside: That money plays a massive role in deciding who gets into office.

When, later in the event, Bell asked the crowd to think of the war as a matter of dropping bombs on children, Steel turned to him and said, "Mr. Bell, you make me sick."

He said Bell and others who protest the war are the "inheritors" of a tradition that "spat on veterans" as they returned from Vietnam and before that stalled on attacking Hitler, thus causing millions of senseless deaths. "Sir," said Steel, referring to the anti-war movement, "there is blood on your community's hands."

Bell insisted that the focus be on "profit from killing ... it's about control of resources and power." He added, "There are certain people that don't mind profiting from war. America is in business and the best business is war."

Steel, predicting that the restiveness of the people of Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia will eventually bring revolution and democracy there, said the war is just and justly fought. The U.S. military is been so precise, he said, that fewer than 100 American lives and those of some 1,200 civilians had been lost. He said Iraqis continued to shop for groceries as the Americans and British made accurate hits on pinpointed strategic targets.

Some in the audience said they could have done without some of the bombast, but appreciated hearing people who had passionate commitments to each side of the question.

Didi Lund, an activist network member, said the session, one of the largest political events yet on campus, served to educate people and raise their levels of awareness. "They're getting passionate," she said of Bell and Steel, "but there's nothing wrong with that."

And though he said he was not swayed from his pacifism, freshman Steven Rivera said, "I think it's good to have both sides debating."

Contact staff writer Bruce Kauffman at (760) 761-4410 or bkauffman@nctimes.com.

4/10/03