2003-03-28 - 6:01 p.m.

The Stupid War

I've been resisting writing about the war, feeling that my opinion isn't terribly important or original, but I think that's a sign of my current bad attitude. I've said it before - you have be your own best advocate. Because if you don't believe in yourself, who else will?

As you might guess from the title of this, I don't support the war. It's not that I'm morally opposed to war, it's just I think that this war is a horrible, stupid idea. Run a simple cost-benefit analysis, and the damn thing just doesn't make sense.

The first thing I want to make clear is that while I don't support the war, I do support our troops. In fact that's one of the things that's got me angriest - our soldiers are a valuable resource and this is pissing away their lives. This crap is not worth a single American life.

First, let's examine the "reasons" why this war is being fought.

1. Saddam is a bad, bad man and the Iraqis would be better off without him.

Yes, it's true. He's killed and tortured his own people. But, so what? The last time I checked, Iraq citizens weren't paying U.S. taxes, why should they get the use of our army? That sounds cold, but consider this - if we're supposed to be saving the Iraqis, why are we bombing the crap out of them? A lovely paradox, isn't it?

Something that's hard to face is that America bears a large share of the blame that Iraq is the mess it is. In fact, they should stop calling it Iraq and just start calling it Iwreq, because that what it is, a wreck. We were all about supporting Saddam in the 1980s when he was our catspaw to slap the crap out of Iran. A lot of those nasty weapons he had were probably paid for with American dollars. However, ever since he invaded Kuwait, we've been pretending that we were never his pal. Hypocrites, us?

And then there's the sanctions. With the best of intentions we have been starving the Iraqi people, but it has not had the desired effect. We wanted to force Saddam out, but all it's done is allow him to strengthen his grip on the reigns of power, meanwhile Iraq turns into the ghetto of the Middle East. Oops! Sorry about that, starved Iraqis! Our bad.

The fact is that even though most Iraqis want Saddam gone, they don't want us to send in an army to do it. In the words of Salam Pax a blogger who seems to be an Iraqi writing from Baghdad: "how could �support democracy in Iraq� become to mean �bomb the hell out of Iraq�? why did it end up that democracy won�t happen unless we go thru war? Nobody minded an un-democratic Iraq for a very long time, now people have decided to bomb us to democracy? Well, thank you! how thoughtful."

His point: no Iraqi in his right mind wants war. If we are doing this for the Iraqi people, they are saying "no thank you please."

That's another thing that pisses me off - this imbroglio has been named "Operation: Iraqi Freedom," one of the biggest pieces of bullshit propaganda I've ever seen. A better name would be "Operation: Grab That Oil" or "Operation: My Penis Is Bigger Than Yours" or "Operation: Ignore The Shitty Economy" or "Operation: Deficit Spending."

So, this reason is horseshit.

2. Saddam is in violation of U.N. resolutions

Again, true, but again so what? Do we really care that much? Really, have we suddenly became the enforcement arm of the U.N.? We feel perfectly justified in ignoring the U.N. when it suits our purposes, now suddenly we are all indignant about Iraq doing the same thing?

This reason is bullshit too, and here's the proof - we are not doing this FOR the U.N., we are doing it IN SPITE of them! We never got a mandate from them to attack Iraq! In fact we didn't even try to get one, because we knew it would be voted down.

Since the U.N. doesn't want us in Iraq, we can't claim were fighting this war because of U.N. sanctions.

3. Saddam has (or is building) nasty weapons, which makes him a threat to us.

Now this MAY be true, but once again this seems to be an insufficient reason to go to war. If our goal is to stop him from building and using nuclear weapons, getting the U.N. to sit on him seemed to have been doing the trick. It's sure is hard to finish building that hydrogen bomb with U.N. inspectors ringing your doorbell every ten minutes. Sure, this approach requires some diplomatic wrangling and some patience, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper and easier than going to war.

This reason is obviously bullshit too, because as far as nukes go, North Korea is plainly much closer to actually having the bomb, and they have also said that their willing to use it, and even strike first if they feel threatened. Holy shit! If that doesn't make them a threat, what does? And yet, we are all but ignoring North Korea, saying that this isn't about them. This mess in Iraq is sure making them nervous though.

And speaking of threats, what about all the loose nukes floating around the former Soviet Union? I think that is a much bigger threat to the U.S. than anything Saddam could do. We need to spend more money quietly disarming the former Soviet republics rather than blowing it on this showy war.

Also, I should point out that we've been at war, and we've still seen none of those forbidden weapons that everyone has been babbling about.

4. Saddam is a destabilizing presence in the Middle East.

Yet again, so what? The Middle East is FULL of destabilizing stuff! However, Saddam seems far from the biggest problem there. What about the Israelis and Palestinians, constantly at each other's throats? I'd say that's a much bigger bone of contention than ol' Saddam, but we are allowing that problem to go to hell while we smash Saddam. We seem to be making the problem worse, not better, so this can't be the real reason we're in Iraq.

5. Saddam is a supporter of terrorism.

This is one reason that we can't even be sure is true. One of the most common bleats I hear from pro-war people is "Do you want another September 11th?" Of course I don�t, no one does. However, so far there has been no proof that Saddam has aided Al Qaida or any other Islamic terrorists we know about. In spite of being an Islamic country, Saddam is pretty much of a secular leader. While he seems perfectly willing to invoke Islam to get the world mad at us, he probably views the fundamentalists as rivals for power, so he doesn't want to give them a foothold in Iraq.

It's also been suggested that Saddam might sell nukes to terrorists. This is crap: if he had the bomb he'd want to keep it for himself, not give it away.

There are plenty of other countries that seem to be much more willing to aid terrorists than Saddam. What about Libya? Haven't heard from them in a while.

As far as I can see this might even be a negative reason. I think this war is probably more likely to INSPIRE another September 11, not prevent one.

6. Iraq has a ton of oil.

FINALLY! A reason that isn't bullshit! Iraq has potentially one of the world's largest oil fields.

You see this slogan a lot at the anti-War demonstrations: NO BLOOD FOR OIL. Well, what these people don't seem to understand is that oil IS blood, at least the way our society is structured now. Without it, everything grinds to a halt. So, my comeback is that if we are going to be sticking our hands in this hornet's next we goddamn well BETTER be getting some oil out of it!

But the Bush administration denies that this is all about oil. Okay, I choose to believe them. However I think it sure is odd that there are other countries that are a bigger threat (North Korea) or who have been friendlier to terrorists (some Islamic African countries) and yet we're not smacking them.

Also, as it has been pointed out in the media, there is no free oil in Iraq. The Iraqi infrastructure is so degraded after over a decade of sanctions that their oil fields are a mess. I heard an estimate that it's going to take 10 years and 70 billion dollars for them to get back to full capacity. So if we're going to get any benefits from this it's going to be in the long, long term.

All kidding aside, the reason that the anti-war people are shouting "No Blood For Oil!" and the pro-war people are hotly denying it is that oil alone is no justification for starting a war.

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I could go on, but you get the idea. Give the stated reasons, there really is not enough justification for us to attack Iraq, and yet there we are! I have to assume that there are other reasons other than the stated ones. I've read an analysis that states that this war is part of a "new world order" theory put forward by a bunch of right-wing thinkers. The idea is that America is now the only real superpower and it is our job to act like the Roman Empire and set up a "Pax Americana," no matter what the rest of the world thinks.

This theory does not seem to playing out too well, at least so far. It seems to be making the world a more dangerous place, not a safer one. Well, it wouldn't be the first time that these knotheads have been wrong.

You want to read their manifesto yourself? Read it here. Scary stuff. Especially sobering - look at the list of names at the bottom of this document. These chuckleheads want us to spend MORE of defense?!?! Are they crazy?

The plain fact is that we spend as much on defense as the rest of the world put together. Yes, it's true! The our military budget equals what the other 191 countries spend. Isn't that utterly insane? Maybe, but what might be even crazier is the idea that we've have such a large and sophisticated army and not deign to use it.

There are a lot of reasons for us NOT to go to war, and I will list them briefly. First, it is expensive, in cost of both men and money. Second, war is a chancy undertaking - you can't predict with 100% certainly WHAT is going to happen. We are seeing this already, with the military pundits constantly revising upward their estimates of how long this war is going to take. Do we really need the humbling experience of another Vietnam?

Third, supposedly war is good for an economy, but that may not be the case here. That's because, considering our huge military budget, we are ALWAYS at war! All this war is going to do is just put us deeper in debt. The stock market bounded up for the first week of the war, now it seems to be drifting back down again. There is also some talk that it could cause a collapse of the dollar abroad. In fact one of the unstated reasons for the war: the American public needs to be distracted from how bad their economy is.

Fourth, there is the international reaction. I didn't think it was possible, but the United States is becoming even MORE unpopular than ever in the community of nations. We seem to have totally tapped out all the sympathy points we got after 9/11. While we are clearly the strongest nation on the planet and could whip anybody with one hand tied behind our back, we aren't stronger than EVERYBODY. It would probably be smart to not give our enemies a rallying cause, while at the same time alienating our allies.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the REAL reason for this war may be a lot dirtier than any of the reasons given above. The Bush administration may be looking for something to district the American public from the steady erosion of their civil rights while the economy goes into the toilet. There is also some talk that Bush and some of his corporate friends are going to get rich off this war and the rebuilding afterward. I really hope this isn't so. I strongly dislike George W. Bush, but I pray he isn't capable of so cynical a ploy.

I've read a lot of history: empires have crumbled and dynasties have toppled because of countries exhausting themselves with far-flung wars. Will historians of the future look back on this debacle as the beginning of the end of the United States of America? I hope not.

Sigh. I've spent a lot of time writing this, and I'm still not happy with it, but I don't have the time to fuss over it any more. If you want to read a really well-written, heartfelt statement against the war, go here.

A great quote from that entry:

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." ~ Theodore Roosevelt