War for Peace? It Worked in My Country

In this opinion article in The New York Times, José Ramos-Horta, East Timor's minister of foreign affairs and cooperation – and a man who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 – supports the possible use of force in removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. East Timor was only liberated from Indonesia, he writes, thanks to an international peacekeeping force. Although he urges the Bush administration to give inspections more time, he worries that denying the possibility of military action will only further human rights abuses inside Iraq. "I am unimpressed by the grandstanding of certain European leaders," he says. "Their actions undermine the only truly effective means of pressure on the Iraqi dictator: the threat of the use of force… History has shown that the use of force is often the necessary price of liberation." – YaleGlobal