BYU professors compare Iraq realities, forecasts

EPHRAIM — A Brigham Young University professor who helped write a guest editorial in the Deseret Morning News in 2003 warning about the consequences of invading Iraq said recently that she has never in her life "wanted so badly to be wrong."

Unfortunately, Donna Lee Bowen, a Middle East expert, told a convocation at Snow College that most of the outcomes she and five other colleagues in BYU's political science department predicted have materialized.

Bowen and two other authors of the op-editorial piece, Darren Hawkins, a specialist in international relations and human rights, and Bryon Daynes, whose specialty is the American presidency, reflected on the controversial article and the predicament America now faces. About 200 students and local community members attended the retrospective. And the picture the professor painted wasn't pretty.

Bowen, who has a doctorate from the department of Near Eastern languages and civilizations at the University of Chicago, recalled that as Congress debated whether to invade Iraq, she became consumed with her concerns about the folly of such an action.

Finally, she said, she started knocking on doors in the political science department and talking to colleagues. Later, several professors met for lunch, and ultimately, six of them joined in writing a letter to Utah members of Congress explaining their concerns based on their scholarly perspectives.

On Jan. 23, 2003, the substance of the letter was published in the Deseret Morning News. There wasn't much response, Bowen said. But when the op-editorial was reprinted in the Daily Universe at BYU, readers attacked the professors as being unpatriotic.

Besides the three who spoke at Snow, other signers were Gary Bryner, whose specialty is public policy; Eric Hyer, who focuses on international relations theory and conflict; and Wade Jacoby, who specializes in international security. All are still on the BYU faculty. They have repeatedly said they speak for themselves and not for the university or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In their article the professors warned that:

• While the Iraqi people would welcome removal of Saddam, they wouldn't necessarily welcome the United States as an occupying force. American forces, they said, could become targets of terrorism.

• A weak government replacing Saddam's regime might invite civil war and widespread human suffering.

• America would not be able to impose democracy on Iraq.