[present tense]

2002.03.31: Should we go to war?

A week ago, I was against war with Iraq. Now I am not. What happened? (Note: I started writing this post before President Bush made his speech last night. I have now rewritten it in light of that speech.)

[Feb 26, 2003 - Update: I have change my position. See this post.]

For seemingly endless months now, President Bush has made clear his desire to go to war with Iraq. His rationale has been that Saddam Hussein is somehow connected to the terrorist attacks and/or to al-Qaeda/bin Laden. He made a speech last night to that effect. As this article points out, Mr. Bush has failed to connect the war with Iraq with the war on terrorism.

I disagree with the president's stated rationale for war.

The cynic in me points out that the stated rationale is most likely not the real rationale. That would most likely have something to do with oil, political expediency, power plays for himself and for the office of the presidency, and an odd sense of filial piety.

Suffice it to say that I disagree with these suspected rationales as well.

Recently, President Bush unveiled a new foreign policy of "taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act pre-emptively." For a lack of an offical name, I will refer to this policy as "pre-emptive self-defense". As I have noted in my previous post, I think that this approach is ethically impoverished. When you parse out "pre-emptive self-defense", you end up with "offense" (kind of like the strangly pervasive practice of dumping a girlfriend before she has a chance to dump you).

I disagree with the president's policy towards war.

In his speech last night, the president said "The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program...If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be crossed. Saddam Hussein would be in a position to blackmail anyone who opposes his aggression. He would be in a position to dominate the Middle East. He would be in a position to threaten America. And Saddam Hussein would be in a position to pass nuclear technology to terrorists." His words reference a document released by Tony Blair a few weeks ago. The president contends that the current situation requires immediate action.

I agree with the urgency; I disagree with the fear-mongering.

So why have I changed my anti-war stance? I sat down and thought about what I considered to be acceptable reasons to go to war. Besides being invaded, the most compelling acceptable reason, in my opinion, is to stop human rights abuse.

Saddam Hussein is no stranger to practicing human rights abuse. What President Bush calls "practice[ing] terror against its own people" and "using murder as a tool of terror and control", I call human rights abuse. And it is a darn good reason for going to war.

Should we act soon? Yes. There are few good reasons to hesitate when human rights are being trampled. And, as Mr. Bush points out, Saddam Hussein may be very close to aquiring nuclear weapons. He will be much harder to take care of if we wait until then.

I believe that President Bush is going about making the case for war in the wrong ways. He states that we should go to war because "we have every reason to assume the worst, and we have an urgent duty to prevent the worst from occurring." I.e. We should go to war because of what may happen. I say that we should go to war because of what already has happened and is still happening.

He also states that "We refuse to live in fear". Every line in his speech is designed to generate more fear in our hearts. Read it again, you'll see what I mean. His statement "We refuse to live in fear" is not referring to us refusing to be afraid. It is a statement that we are plenty scared right now and are willing to go to war to make the fear go away.

In contrast to this, I think we should go to war out to defend, protect and liberate those who are suffering inhumanely under Saddam Hussein's rule. I do not look kindly on going to war out of fear. In fact, I doubt whether any action performed out of fear is good.

So, to sum up, I think we should go to war for what has been done, not what might be done. I think we should act out of compassion and justice, not out of fear. And I think we should act soon.

Now I have an interesting dilemma: how do I go about supporting war with Iraq while completely disagreeing with why we shohuld be at war?

[Feb 26, 2003 - Update: I have change my position. See this post.]

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