My hair almost turned white after reading a student quote in the Sept. 4 edition of the Northerner.

“Yes, after what they did to the United States we should blow them away,” is what one student said after being asked the question, “should the United States invade Iraq?”

Now I must ask this student and everyone else here at NKU one question myself. What did Iraq do to the United States?

It really hasn’t done anything. Its government hasn’t attacked us, and we don’t know if they were directly involved in the attacks on Sept. 11.

Sure, Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, but so do we. So do 32 other countries, but we don’t have any plans to “blow them away.” Sure, Iraq may pose a threat to us with its weapons, but does that mean we should go and kill because of something that could or might happen?

We don’t even know if Iraq has nuclear weapons, or if it still has chemical weapons, but we believe it is trying to attain nuclear weapons. In fact, Vice President Dick Cheney claims that the U.S. has evidence that Saddam has nuclear weapons and is working closely with al Qaeda.

Great! We have “evidence.” So why won’t they show us some evidence instead of telling us that they have “major evidence” against Saddam and Iraq?

If I see some hard evidence showing that Iraq is planning to using weapons of mass destruction against us, then I believe we have a reason to talk war, but assumption alone or unseen evidence isn’t enough to gain my support.

Instead of planning a war, we should negotiate a United Nations resolution, which will prevent the loss of lives.

Ok, so anyway, Saddam Hussein is an “evil” man, uh huh, so we should go and destroy him. Whatever. We are a democracy. We don’t impose our will on other nations. That is not what we are about. We are about peace. But I guess that means nothing to us, especially during elections years.

Yes, it is an election year, so of course the president has to do whatever he can to deter us from thinking about our struggling economy and keep him from having to talk about it. Why? He wants a high approval rating. It is all about numbers.

The bottom line is we have no legitimate cause to attack Iraq. If we do attack, I think it will be one of the biggest mistakes in U.S. history. The world will never look at us the same again. What we stand for as a country will be forgotten. Thousands and thousands of lives will be lost.

Attacks like Sept. 11 can only be prevented with a change of our country’s foreign policy. We will not make any friends by attacking Iraq, just enemies. It will only make the Middle East more irate with us, which may cause concern for more possible attacks on us in the future.