Why War

10 Pages 2566 Words

Why we shouldn't go to war
with Iraq

By

With the publication of a report in last week's New York
Times about the Bush administration's plans for the
invasion of Iraq, it seems that war with that country is
fairly certain. Previous rhetoric from the president or one
or another of his surrogates could always be explained as
some kind of politically driven chest-thumping, but it's hard
to see the political advantage of the kind of secret and
detailed war plan the Times disclosed.

The details in fact sound pretty ferocious. "The document
envisions tens of thousands of marines and soldiers
probably invading from Kuwait. Hundreds of warplanes
based in as many as eight countries, possibly including
Turkey and Qatar, would unleash a huge air assault against
thousands of targets, including airfields, roadways and
fiber-optics communications sites." The Times' description
makes it sound like the biggest war flick since The Sands of
Iwo Jima. Indeed, it sounds bigger and far more violent
than anything the United States has carried out since at
least the "liberation" of Kuwait (i.e., the restoration of the
despotic emirate that the Iraqi armed conquest had
toppled) and perhaps since well before that. What the
document discloses is not a "police action," and not a
"rescue mission"; this is full-scale war.

Since the American Republic has now evolved to the point
...