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Pastimes : The Boxing Ring Revived -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (4580)	2/18/2003 2:31:40 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7720

Stripped to its core, that reasoning says "if you can't solve all of your problems, don't solve any of them." I take your point. That's not where I was coming from although I can see how it seemed that way. If the Administration were to announce a new policy that, as the world's only superpower, we were going to clean up Dodge, that there are a lot of horrible situations in the world and that we were going to start tackling them one or two at a time and that military force was one tool we were going to use, and we were starting with Saddam because, oh, maybe because the timing is right or whatever. I could understand that. But that is not the pitch that the WH is making. Rather, the WH has declared that it's going after terrorists and rogue states with WMD because they threaten us and, besides, they're "evil." There is mention of victims now and again but in the context of further proof that Saddam is evil and a threat to us. Saddam is at the top of the list because he has WMD in defiance of UN resolutions and ties to Al Qaida and we don't want him to nuke NYC or Washington. That's the official rationale. Liberating the Iraqis is just filler in the argument. I am always reluctant to go to war. Seems to me that civilized people save war for a last resort and they never, ever wage an offensive war. I am not persuaded that we are nowhere near a last resort or that the war would be defensive, as billed. Seems to me we need a better reason. As I said earlier, if the international community wanted to punish Saddam's defiance or stop what it considered a world threat, that would be another matter. If we were doing something noble like cleaning up Dodge, that would be another matter. If you don't buy the threat argument, then the argument looks like we're afraid of a relative pipsqueak, or we're after revenge, or we just want to flex our muscles, or we're after oil, or some other less than noble objective. I just think you'd better have a compelling reason for going to war and I haven't heard one yet. If we set out to liberate the Iraqis--and the Colombians and the Somalis, etc., I could get behind that. But that's not how this campaign is being billed. Like the international community, I am not persuaded by the arguments being offered. They just don't ring true and I don't want to be a party to some trumped-up, ill-considered war.