Marvin Olberding
April 29, 2004
Thomas Maertens started off his lecture in Ostrander Auditorium Wednesday night by holding up an FBI fugitive poster with the face of Osama Bin Laden on it. Maertens used the photo and a simple motto to express his feelings about how the Bush administration should be handling the war on terror. Maertens' motto: "Don't drop the ball."
Maertens, a Minnesota State University alumnus and a former director of non-proliferation for the National Security Council, spoke about the events surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks as well as the current involvement of American troops in Iraq.
Maertens said that Bin Laden was the man that President Bush should have been focusing on, not Saddam Hussein, and pointed out that Bush had been quoted as saying that Hussein was not involved in the 9/11 attacks.
A supporter of Richard Clarke's testimony, Maertens agreed that the Bush administration had overlooked al Qaeda, but was not willing to place blame on the administration for the attacks happening.
"It's hard to say that any steps could have been taken to prevent 9/11," Maertens said.
Maertens went on to discuss the war in Iraq, and how he believes that the war is a diversion from the 9/11 attacks, a diversion that is ultimately counter-productive to the United States cause, citing American lives lost, the cost of war at home, and the bitterness building in Iraq due to more than 10,000 civilian deaths.
"We will pay a heavy price for what we've done in Iraq," Maertens said.
Maertens spoke strongly against how the Bush administration handled the war and how they view certain aspects of the war. He felt that Bush combined the idea of insurgence with terrorism (referring to some of the forces American troops are facing in Iraq), and that Bush ignored a basic principle of fighting a just war: the idea of using war as a last resort.
"Iraq is a war of choice," Maertens said.
As a result of this choice, as well as American troops' continued presence in Iraq, Maertens said that groups within Iraq that had been fighting each other are now uniting -- against Americans.
To illustrate this point, Maertens talked about the April 7 bombing by American forces on a mosque in Fallujah. In addition to killing many Iraqis civilians, Maertens argued that Iraqis fighters could see this as an attack on their religion, which would only fuel the Iraqis' proverbial fire.
Maertens went on to answer a variety of questions from the audience, from similarities between the Vietnam and Iraq wars (which he recognized) to the Patriot Act, the 9/11 Commission and what former President Clinton could have done.
There had been discussion of an invasion of Afghanistan in 1998, during Clinton's presidency. At that point, according to Maertens, only 18 Americans had been killed by al Qaeda, and an invasion was unnecessary.
"You'd be reading history backwards," Maertens said.
Maertens acted as the National Security Council director for nonproliferation from 2001-2002 and was part of the team that organized the invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. He has also served as deputy director of Arms Transfer and Export Control Policy (1995-1998) and senior political-military adviser for the U.S. Arms Control Delegation in Vienna (1991-1995).
