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WELLESLEY, Mass. -- Six months after the liberation of
Baghdad on April 9, America is still facing instability
in Iraq, and a debate is raging in the country: Has American
policy succeeded in ridding the world of a tyrant, bolstering
human rights in Iraq and making America more secure? Or
has the Iraq war become a fiasco -- a prolonged occupation
in a hostile country, leading to regional instability and
greater threats to America? Wellesley College has invited
four leading experts to explore these questions on the
half-year anniversary of the entry of American soldiers
into the Iraqi capital.
Wellesley College history professor William Hitchcock,
author of The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History
of a Divided Continent (Doubleday, 2002), will moderate
the panel of experts on Thursday, Oct. 2, at 7:30
pm in Jewett Auditorium on the Wellesley College campus. "Iraq:
Assessing American Policy Six Months After the Liberation
of Baghdad" will be followed by questions from the
audience. The event is free and open to the public.
Two Wellesley professors, Katherine Moon, an expert on
U.S.-Korean relations, and Thomas Cushman, a sociologist
with a keen interest in human rights, will join Michael
O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and
a popular commentator on television news programs, and
Paul Kennedy, a historian from Yale who's also a Los Angeles
Times columnist.
“This is a chance to take an overall view of America’s
Iraq policy, and the wider position of the United States
in today’s world,” Hitchcock says. “In
the run up to war, there was a great debate about the impact
of a war in Iraq. Some suggested a war would make America
safer from terrorism, liberate a grateful nation and start
the democratic transformation of the Middle East. But others
said the war would harm U.S. interests, trigger retaliation,
and anger America’s allies. So here we are, six months
later, and it is time to start assessing who got it right,
and why.”
Moon will address the connections between U.S. policy
in Iraq and the growing threat posed by North Korea. Cushman
will discuss the human-rights perspective of the war, and
make a case for the moral imperative of using American
power to unseat tyrannical leaders like Saddam Hussein.
O'Hanlon, an expert on American military and strategic
issues, will assess the challenges the U.S. military now
faces on the ground in Iraq. Kennedy will look at the big
picture, reflecting on what the Iraq war tells us about
America’s global ambitions, and whether it has the
power to sustain them.
Since 1875, Wellesley College has been a leader in providing
an excellent liberal-arts education for women who will
make a difference in the world. Its 500-acre campus near
Boston is home to 2,300 undergraduate students from all
50 states and 68 countries. For more information, contact
the Wellesley College Office for Public Information at
781-283-3321.
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