Also this issue:

Protection From Abuse?
Are protection orders aggravating the problem they're supposed to combat?
-Esq. Gerald K. McOscar

Letters to the Editor

January 9-15, 2003

loose canon

Why Iraq? Why Not?

by Bruce Schimmel

Why should America wage war on Iraq? Well, why not? seems now to be the response of many Americans.

It appears we've stopped asking for the reasons why we're undertaking a costly and difficult mission to remove Saddam by bombing Iraq. We've stopped asking why because we don't want to hear some of the answers.

As Americans have watched the price of gas jump sharply at the pump, the whys of war have been overshadowed by the why-nots. Manipulated or not, now that the cost of oil is reaching the level just prior to (what's being called) the First Gulf War, indifference has spread across the land. War? What the hell, we figure. Why not?

We've also stopped asking why since war-making appears not to cost as much. Now that some of our financial worries have been eclipsed by Bush's goosing the stock market with the promise of canceling taxes on dividends, we're feeling a little more flush.

Why ask why, when we've been told that attacking Iraq will bring democracy to the Middle East. And remarkably, we've chosen to swallow this wormy chestnut, though no one seriously believes that once Saddam is uprooted, democracy will flower on Iraqi soil.

A more likely scenario is that we'd plant yet another despot who would continue to exploit a deeply divided people.

We'll back yet another tyrant whose real value will be to control Iraq's oil fields, breaking the hegemony of Saudi Arabia -- our current pet monster in the Middle East.

Rebuild democratic Iraq? This administration would rather bomb than build nations, and for proof we need look no further than Afghanistan, which we leveled with little demonstrable result.

So why not? you ask. Here's the big answer:

Because we are paying for war by bartering our own freedoms. Because we're trading our birthrights for barrels of oil.

For as these so-called wars of liberation proliferate abroad, personal repression increases at home. War after war is stripping away our freedoms of expression, of movement and, above all, privacy.

And the right to keep asking why.

The war in Vietnam was stopped, finally, when we brought the war home -- when the media sent home pictures of bodies and blood. In our age, where bombings look like videos and rockets explode like fireworks, bringing the war home now means asking questions that you won't see on a TV screen.

Questions like: Will we have more terrorism or less if we go to war? Are you more secure than you were a year ago? Will you have more of the freedoms for which we are fighting?

Why are we going to war?