Shortly before I began my duties as a social captain for Thon last Friday, CNN informed me that once again there were bombs flying over Baghdad. In the last month, Saddam had stepped up firing missiles at United States' and British planes that have been patrolling the no-fly zones established in 1991. In retaliation for the increase in pot shots at our fighters, our military, in a joint effort with British forces, launched an attack on five key Iraqi radar and communications facilities.

What made these strikes so different than the air strikes that have been occurring on and off for the last decade is that they are the first strikes since Clinton's massive 1998 strikes that have busted up targets outside of the no-fly zone, and therefore, outside of U.S. legal jurisdiction.

So I went into Rec Hall that afternoon hoping that when I came out in a little over 48 hours that the situation would have been resolved and that I wouldn't be exiting the World's-Largest-Student-Run-Philanthropic-Organization to discover that we had been plunged into the World-Largest-Politically-Bungled-Middle-Eastern War.

When I emerged from Thon on Sunday, I was relieved to not see "All Your Base Are Belong To Us!" as the top The New York Times headline.

Instead of a war, however, I found the United States to be in one of the tightest diplomatic positions that it has faced in recent years.

Last weekend's allied bombing of Iraq has been condemned by and large by the rest of the world. Canada and Poland are two of the only countries that have issued statements supporting the U.S. and British retaliatory strikes. Hubert Vedrine, the French foreign minister, has decried the strikes as illegal. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder has said that the current policies concerning Iraq lack any "comprehensive political concept." Pundits in India have derided the attacks as "sterile militarism, indeed ridiculous adventurism." And Scottish columnists are heard crying aloud about President Bush's unfulfilled foreign policy campaign promises: "Wasn't this the hands-off president?"

Foreign criticism of American intervention in post-Persian-Gulf-War Iraq is nothing new. Ever since the first president with the last name of Bush brought American troops home from the Persian Gulf in an apparent victory in 1991, and the United Nations approved sanctions against Iraq, countries slowly have backed out of the heavily U.S.-influenced economic punishments lobbied upon Iraq.

The criticisms stem from the fact that the sanctions, while meant to contain Saddam and ensure that he is not rebuilding his military or constructing weapons of mass destruction, in fact have the effect of denying Iraqis much needed resources for food, medicine and other basic implements of survival.

As his people suffer, Saddam feels nothing. His personal riches grow every day from the revenue of selling oil illegally through a pipeline to the Syrians. And he bolsters his ability to use the U.N. and U.S. as a scapegoat by withholding food and medicine from his people and blaming it on the effect of the sanctions.

Seeing that the U.N. sanctions have done little harm to Saddam himself, but great harm to the Iraqi people, France and Russia have long continued trading with Iraq. Most Arab nations look at the effect of the sanctions on the Iraqi people with disgust and also continue to trade with Iraq. Thus, the U.S., with its strict adherence to the failed U.N. sanctions, looks like the world's No. 1 jerk.

Whenever we bomb Iraq, nations around the world look at us and say, "Great, not only are they starving the people of Iraq, but they are blowing up their stuff." So it's not surprising that last weekend's strikes caused a great uproar.

This uproar is nothing but fuel for the fire of Saddam's propaganda machine. He loves the fact that he can say we are starving and bombing his people. Our actions become great cannon fodder for his political gains — "It's not me that makes your lives bad, it's America!"

Today, Secretary of State Colin Powell begins a diplomatic tour of the Middle East. I do not envy his position.

He somehow must convince the Middle East and the rest of the world that America's devotion to the sanctions is a level-headed approach to ousting Saddam and is not simply the world's premiere superpower pushing around the population of a country that unfortunately is endowed with a crazy leader.

But how can he do this when the sanctions hurt the people of Iraq more than their leader? And how can he justify last week's bombing if the U.S.' actions were out of its legal jurisdiction?

There was a time in my life when U.S. relations with Saddam Hussein seemed simple. It was almost exactly 10 years ago, and I was taking a class called "Economics" at my humble Delaware elementary school of Anna P. Mote.

Once a year, each economics class would create a simulated town marketplace, and the rest of the school would be invited to visit. Every kid involved in the class got something like $6 in investment capital from the teacher and got to set up his or her own booth from which could sell candy, toys, raffle tickets, or whatever else a fourth grader thought his or her peers would buy. I sold "Desert Storm Survival Packs."

The Desert Storm Survival Pack consisted of a tie-dyed brown and tan bandana that my mom helped me make, and a large yellow ribbon that one could hang in support of the American troops fighting in the Persian Gulf.

To me, that's all that fighting Saddam consisted of. Hanging yellow ribbons and showing your patriotic spirit.

Things are more complicated now. Saddam has proven to be a tenacious tyrant and has deflected any U.S., British, or U.N.-imposed hardships from himself and onto his subjects.

Therefore, as George W. Bush ventures into the geographic region that defined his father's presidency, it is imperative that he realizes that current sanctions must be altered to keep the mad man's hand away from weapons of mass destruction while allowing the Iraqi people to place their hands on food and medicine.

Otherwise, the only winner of this game in the sand is Saddam.