Barnard Professor Kimberly Marten Zisk Appears on From the Heartland on Fox News in a Debate About the Possible War Against Iraq, Jan. 18

New York, NY, Jan. 20, 2003— Professor Kimberly Marten Zisk appeared on From the Heartland show on Fox News Channel, hosted by anchor John Kasich, on Saturday, January 18.

Zisk, Associate Professor of Political Science, who frequently comments on peacekeeping issues and U.S. foreign and defense policy, engaged in a debate with ret. Colonel David Hunt, Fox News military analyst, on whether the United States should take preventive action against Iraq.

According to Zisk, the U.S. should be careful about taking any preventive action as long as it does not appear that Iraq is going to do anything aggressive. "Saddam is a bad man who’s a liar, but if we go into war with Iraq, I’m very worried about the post-war reconstruction era. The war doesn’t end when the fighting stops. And if there are weapons of mass destruction around on the ground in a situation of high conflict, Al Qaeda will want to go in and get control of them. The dangers are immense, and without clear evidence that Saddam is about to attack anyone, I don’t think we should go in preventively," Zisk said.

Fox’s military advisor argued that since September 11th the Bush administration view has changed to favor a preventive approach. "I think if you go down to Wall Street and look at that terrible hole, and with the change in the administration, we have declared the ability to do a preventive strike…You don’t want to wait for Houston to be a pile of rubble before you go and attack somebody who has been a terrorist state, who’s attacked Kuwait, attacked Iran, attacked Israel," Hunt said.

The anchor John Kasich was siding with Hunt as he addressed Zisk. "Preemption is a change in policy, but in a nuclear world, I don’t want to be guessing. Our intelligence is not always on the dime, and I know you don’t want your family and I don’t want mine exposed to an attack anywhere in the country. With your concerns about the 51st state, about the need to bring democracy or the need to stabilize things after a war, don’t you think we have a great opportunity to democratize part of that region and perhaps bring a sweeping change to a lot of the other Arab countries that are run by tyrants?"

Zisk answered that this type of thinking was a "pipe dream." She also opposed Kasich’s remark that the U.S. had really helped to improve the situation in Afghanistan and said that Afghanistan is still a very unstable country where U.S. military troops are constantly being attacked by the terrorists.
Zisk also said that it was very risky to get rid of Saddam Hussein at this time because Al Qaeda will potentially get an opportunity to penetrate Iraq and get access to its biological and chemical weapons, which, Zisk said, could be used against U.S. troops.

Contact: Petra Tuomi, Barnard Public Affairs, 212-854-7907, ptuomi@barnard.edu