Saddam Hussein’s monstrous statue falls along with his government. The United States military now occupies an Arab capital for the first time in history. The criminal regime responsible for mass suffering gives way to American military occupation.

Images of initial celebrations find their way to our television screens but the frantic surgeons in Baghdad’s hospitals working often without electricity, regular water or proper medicines are not interviewed quite as often.

The disfigured Iraqi children don’t haunt our screens much either. Perhaps, it is because these children were born without limbs or organs because our nuclear waste (specifically depleted uranium) happens to be included in our tank-buster bombs, creating a hell to last a radioactive half-life of 4.5 billion years. These radioactive munitions have been dropped for years and continue to rain down on Iraq.

And now Iraq is to become the gleaming beacon of freedom and democracy envisioned by the current administration. Two recent talks on our campus provided us some context with which to view this topic.

Karen Armstrong, an internationally renowned religious scholar, told us a little about our history of democracy this week.

A study of Western democracy’s beginnings produces a long and very bloody 300-plus year picture in which our democracy was born in the streets of the United States and Britain.

Today’s ‘democracies-r-us’ style and its three-or four-year timetable for Iraq look a little skimpy next to the way our system was born. Armstrong argued that even mildly effective national democracy cannot be imposed, but must be born organically by its people.

Armstrong also stressed the need for people of faith to respond to the currently fashionable fundamentalism in Christianity, Judaism and Islam with an emphasis on compassion and pluralism, the basis of the three faiths, according to her.

Molly Ivins, three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and proud Texan, also graced our campus last week. She warned that after war, “It’s then that we face the peace from hell. [American soldiers who occupy Iraq] will become a magnet for every terrorist in the Middle East.”

Fresh back from her talk at Iowa State last week, she served up a healthy dose of that lethal wit in her latest column.

She said that some candidates for U.S.-introduced ‘democratic’ leadership have less than stellar credentials. For example, Ahmed Chalabi of Iraqi National Congress fame escaped Jordan in a car trunk because he is wanted for embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars in a bankruptcy. We also have Gen. Jay Garner (Ret.), whose company SY Coleman engineered much of the technology being used in the Middle East. He was Ronald Reagan’s main man on Star Wars and has been accused by other military leaders of receiving $100 million in war contracts.

Both speakers spoke to the need for multinational efforts to repair the damage done by war.

Whether or not you agree with war on Iraq, it is clear that we have strained relations with Europe and many other nations, enraged the Muslim and Arab worlds, undermined the role of the United Nations and managed to squander the widespread support for Americans following Sept. 11.

In addition, examples of demonstrations and attacks on American interests abroad have been plentiful in recent months.

A McDonald’s was bombed Saturday in the Beirut, Lebanon neighborhood of Doura injuring three people, and it was the fourth attack on an American fast-food outlet since early March.

South Korean activists have been regularly demonstrating and defacing the country’s McDonald’s restaurants among others in addition to the near daily-rallies against war on Iraq.

We cannot dismiss this rapidly growing sentiment whether or not we believe it is warranted. Furthermore, the national security strategy employed by the current administration likely includes a continuation of our Iraq efforts in other parts of the Middle East.

Friends, no matter your feelings on the Iraq war, we must demand three things of our representatives in coming weeks: (1) international human rights must be followed and enforced strictly, (2) weapons makers and embezzlers ushered in to lead the ‘reconstruction’ of Iraq must be replaced by Arabic-speaking Iraqi experts chosen by the international community, and (3) a transition to multinational peacekeeping in Iraq and mending of international relations must begin immediately.

Without a more humble foreign policy and diplomatic pressure for real justice and freedom in other parts of the Middle East and world, we can likely look forward to a regretted occupation of Iraq, destabilized region and an increasingly violent world.