[Peace-discuss] Assume they find WMDs

[Jim Buell]

I'd second both your arguments - no amount of hidden weapons could justify 
the US government's engaging in a pre-emptive invasion and war that is 
predicted, and intended, to kill half a million civilians. As even American 
Legion types are fond of saying, "This country doesn't start wars, we 
finish them." (Yeah, I know that isn't the historical reality, but the 
so-called Bush Doctrine yanks away even the pretense in an abhorrent new 
way. Most people, in the US as elsewhere, are repulsed by that, I think.)

Even people who somehow believe that incinerating another half-million 
Iraqis would be "worth it" (re-borrowing Madeline Albright's words) to save 
a few thousand Americans, would have to realize that a massacre of this 
scale is guaranteed to lead to massive retaliatory terrorism for 
generations to come. And even that says nothing of what an even more 
emboldened group of US militarists and profiteers would be itching to 
perpetrate elsewhere around the globe, if this invasion turns out to be as 
much a turkey-shoot as the attackers think it will be - and what the 
responses of billions of infuriated people might be to those further 
spiralings into a brutal, totalitarian global empire. That's not only 
nightmarish - it's utterly unsustainable given how over-armed the nations 
of this planet are. The answer has to revolve around putting the power and 
resources of this nation and the world into furthering real democratic aims 
like those articulated in FDR's Four Freedoms speech and the UN's 1948 
Universal Declaration on Human Rights. That cannot be done at missile 
point, and certainly not by setting up the kind of corporate-friendly 
neo-colonial kleptocracy that is envisioned for a post-apocalyptic, er, 
post-war, Iraq.

Jim

At 11:22 AM 2/6/2003 -0600, John Fettig wrote:
>* Chuck Minne <mincam2 at yahoo.com>:
> >  Put differently, what do we say when the evidence is discovered? And
> >  shouldn't we be saying it now?
>
>What you already said is a good start.  You can be assured that they are
>either going to find WMD's, or at the very least prove that they exist.
>There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Saddam is hiding things
>that he is not supposed to have.  But it doesn't change my feelings
>about turning 10 million Iraqis into refugees (or at least make them
>need humanitarian aid), nor does it change my feelings about killing 1/2
>million civilians (these are UN estimates!).
>
>So that's my main argument.  War is terrible...we should not start one.
>In this situation diplomacy and investigation has not proven (in my
>mind) to be of no use, we should continue to pressure Saddam through
>inspections and diplomatic measures, but we should not resort to war.
>Anybody who is for the war is going to jump on you for this argument,
>though.  Bush and his henchmen are working round the clock to convince
>the American people that inspections and diplomacy have failed, and that
>we have no other choice but war.
>
>So basically I feel as though the people of this country would back a
>war if they thought it would make them safer.  The moral question that
>they need to answer is: does saving the life of a few thousand americans
>justify the slaughter of 1/2 million Iraqis?  I am always surprised when
>people answer this question with a yes; well maybe more saddened than
>surprised.
>
>John
>
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