Imagine yourself sitting in your living room, watching “Love Boat” reruns. Suddenly the front door is broken down and you are being held at gunpoint. 12 men armed with machine guns destroy everything in your home, and then round up your family in the same living room where you were watching TV just minutes ago. You, your brother, and your father are beaten and forced to your knees. You are forced to watch as all 12 men brutally rape your mother and your sisters, aged nine and 12, and then kill them. They kill your sisters first, and drip the blood from their bodies upon your mother, and then they kill her. They decide to keep you alive for torture.

If this happened here, these 12 men would be wanted by the police – and rightfully so. There would be no one protesting if these men were prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

The story I have told you is true. The only difference is that it happened in Kuwait. It was told on WGN radio by an American schoolteacher who had the displeasure to witness it.

A lot of people have drawn parallels between Hussein and Hitler. Will it take another holocaust to make the American people realize Hussein has to be stopped? Will another million Jews have to die? It is possible. If Hussein had developed an atomic weapon, millions of people could be dead by now.

Sure, the liberation of Kuwait is probably not the only thing on George Bush’s mind, but it is something that has to be done. Hussein has to be stopped before his atrocities on humanity spread any further into the world.

I am all for peace, but all the protests in the world aren’t going to stop a dictator with a nuclear arsenal. Sometimes there is a need for force, to protect that peace. The United Nations’ contingent is doing just that. The allied attacks have been aimed at destroying Hussein’s tools for war; something that must be done to achieve peace in the region.

Protesting in the streets is not helping the anti-war cause. Joe Average Guy who is inconvenienced by the protests isn’t thinking “Gee, they’re right, and I’m darn glad they decided to stop traffic to remind me,” he’s thinking “Get out of my way you damn hippies, I’m late for work!”

There are plenty of better things for those protesting to do if they want to make the world a better place. They could take the time they use protesting and use it to volunteer to work at a homeless shelter, or to teach children how to read, or to help stop the really senseless slaughter of American lives, that which is going on in our cities. Where are the protesters when 13-year-olds are murdered for a pair of Air Jordans, or because they wear the wrong color bandana?

This week marks the birthday of Martin Luther King, a man who lived trying to unite people for peace. The United Nations is trying to achieve peace in the best way it knows possible, and it is up to each of us to support that and be a part of that unity.