Why We're Spending Valentine's Weekend at an Anti-War Rally (Op-Ed)

RareHeintz writes, "My wife and I like to take "mini-vacations" - our term for long weekend getaways to nearby cities. This year, since Valentine's Day coincided with President's Day (thus creating a convenient 3-day weekend), we considered a romantic getaway to Portland, Maine or Newport, Rhode Island, but eventually settled on a bed and breakfast in New Haven, Connecticut - which is where we'll catch the commuter train into New York City for an anti-war protest on Saturday."

"It's the first time I can ever remember my wife putting politics before romance."

Wed Feb 12th, 2003 at 10:05:36 AM EST

It will also be my first foray, at least since college, into any form of political activisim heavier than writing my elected officials or the occasional opinion essay.

So why are we so moved For my part, I'm not a pacifist, communist, or anyone with any sort of anti-war religious leanings. In fact, I'm a thirty-one year old, white, male technocrat pulling down six figures a year. I'm the guy you would expect to be gung-ho for the establishment, or at least the guy you'd expect to quietly take his capital gains tax cut and disappear into the political woodwork. So - why

It's very simple: I don't like it when people lie to me. If someone has to lie to me to convince me to do something, then it logically follows that this thing must not be in my best interests. If it were in my best interests, it would be simple enough to point that out - and at that point, I won't need much convincing.

Extend this principle to the U.S. rhetoric on Iraq. On the matter of Iraq, the Bush administration persistently lies about their reasons for going to war. Not a one of them holds water.

Human Rights

As a human myself, this would be among one of the more convincing arguments for me. Saddam Hussein really is a butcher, and while there are conflicting views about whether or not he actually did use chemical weapons against his own citizens (an anecdote trotted out almost daily by one member or another of the Bush administration), he certainly used them in Iran - with American assistance, of course. By all accounts, he brutally represses political dissent, makes life hell for religious and ethnic minorities, and generally behaves in a manner consistent with all the worst things you hear about Third World dictators.

This is not why the Bush administration wants to go to war in Iraq.

The human rights problem is not new - it's been going on as long as Hussein has been in power. When the U.K. released a dossier on human rights in Iraq late last year as part of their P.R. campaign for the war, Amnesty International - whose press releases were freely cribbed for the dossier - cried foul, noting that some of the information in the document was well known by its publishers to be over a decade old, and they didn't care then.

Neither do they care now. If human rights were the reason, the time to do something was twenty years ago. I don't buy the idea that anyone in the Bush family suddenly grew a heart and decided to go topple Saddam Hussein for the benefit of the Iraqi people.

Of course, it's not actually clear that a war would benefit the Iraqi people. A variety of groups have taken a crack at guessing the likely humanitarian outcome of Gulf War II, and best estimates are consistently that thousands of civilians will die and hundreds of thousands will be made refugees. The Bush administration has been, as far as I've read, completely silent on the matter of dead and displaced (but "liberated") Iraqi citizens.

Terror Links

If you read anything that goes deeper than CNN Headline News, you've seen this debunked already. The BBC has received a leaked British intelligence document that claims there are no current ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. The intelligence agency of France - a country that has long-standing economic and political ties to the region - says likewise. The specific incidents of al Qaeda-Iraq meetings brought up by Rumsfeld and others - such as the infamous meeting in Prague - have been consistently debunked.

And yet, for some reason, the U.S. government wants us to have the impression that the war on Iraq is a natural extension of the failing war on terror. It has succeeded to some extent - a majority of Americans believe one or more of the September 11th hijackers was Iraqi, and a significant number believe that Saddam Hussein was behind the events of September 11th, 2001. (Both statements are false, if there was any doubt in your mind.)

Above and beyond its dishonesty, the tacit racism of this tactic is truly appalling. The U.S. government has largely succeeded in creating a vague connection in the minds of American citizens between two bad, Arab, Muslim men - Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein - despite the fact that there is no credible evidence that the two have ever colluded, and despite the fact that they're ideologically incompatible - one being a religious zealot whose ultimate goal is worldwide Islamic fundamentalist theocracy, and the other is a secular dictator interested mainly in the maintenance of his own power. But still, the Bush administration takes this cheap, racist tug at our September 11th heart-strings for all it's worth.

Not only that, but an attack on Iraq makes terrorist attacks on America and its allies more likely, not less - at least according to documents released by the FBI, CIA, and their foreign counterparts. By pursuing a pre-emptive war in Iraq, Bush and Company will knowingly be radicalizing the Muslim fringe against the U.S.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

So what do you do with an insular, paranoid dictatorship that you believe might have a nuclear warhead or two and the capability to deliver them to some of your major cities, that has threatened a pre-emptive strike on your troops, and that consistently proliferates ballistic missile and WMD technology to unfriendly states

In the case of North Korea, you go back to the bargaining table. That makes the Bush administration's Iraq policy that much more inscrutable. Except for the part about being an insular, paranoid dictatorship, none of the rest applies to Iraq. They are not believed to have any nuclear bombs, and may not even be able to land a missile in Israel anymore. While they haven't been exactly bending over backwards, positive progress reports from UNMOVIC head Hans Blix and IAEA head Mohammed elBaradei have made clear that Iraq is willing to make significant concessions to avoid war.

There is no credible intelligence that Iraq has developed any new WMD capability. A recent British intelligence report that Colin Powell used to try to make that argument to the U.N. security council turns out to have been plagiarized from multiple publicly available sources, all referring to Iraq's actions before U.N. inspectors were removed in 1998.

To be sure, there are gaps in Iraq's compliance. There exist numerous stocks of biological and chemical agents for which Iraq has still not accounted. However, Blix and elBaradei continue to come back with encouraging reports of progress. Again, this is not to say that Iraq is cooperating completely, or that the threat of force still isn't needed, but while the inspections appear to be making substantial progress, doesn't it make sense to continue them

Instead, the U.S. not only prefers to commit the lives of American troops to a conflict with no clear exit strategy, but actively hampers inspections by witholding intelligence the inspectors could use - assuming that they even have the intelligence they claim to have. It has occurred to me that the intelligence is being witheld not because it would compromise sources, but because it might not withstand the light of day - or it might not exist at all. If we're going to remove Iraq's government in any event, these precious sources are going to be useless in any secret capacity anyway. Would our allies not be better convinced by a case made in the light of day than one made in secret Could the current fractious atmosphere in NATO and the U.N. Security Council not be smoothed over by giving the parties involved actual evidence that the course of action we propose is correct Do we not trust our own allies with this information

Between the inconsistent stance on North Korea and the lies the Bush administration has to tell to support this case, it's clear that weapons of mass destruction are not the reason either.

Why, then

I don't know the real reason Bush and Company wants to go to war with Iraq, only that the reasons they claim are flimsy lies. It might well be about oil, as some say, although there exist rational-sounding, data-based arguments against that. Frankly, I hope it is as simple as oil - because the most plausible alternative, in my view, is the furtherance of the power of the executive branch of the American government, already a proven priority of this administration and one at which they continue to work. As if the USA PATRIOT Act wasn't bad enough, the recently and secretly drafted Domestic Security Enhancement Act calls for more secret arrests, creates a prerogative for the Attorney General to declare individual American citizens to be enemy combatants (which leaves them without the right to legal counsel, a speedy trial, etc.), contains still more abrogation of the Fourth and Fifth amendments, and generally dismantles the liberal democracy established on humanist principles over 200 years ago.

I worry that an extended war overseas will help the Bush administration continue that evil work. They know that populations tend to rally around their governments during a war (offering them the freedom to dictate policy with a "blank check" mandate). They know that they are increasing the risk of a terrorist attack on American soil by pursuing this war - but terrorist attacks, as we have seen, are great excuses to impose ever more draconian "security" measures that make nobody more secure from external threats but are great for establishing a police state.

The attitude of the Bush administration is consistent with this goal, as well. John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney call domestic dissent treason. Rumsfeld and Powell assault the character of formerly stalwart allies who take a principled stand against what they see as an unnecessary war of aggression. Bush's State of the Union address trumpeted America's status as the divinely-ordained liberator of the world. These people have an obscene sense of entitlement to power, and don't seem willing to stop at anything - not lying to anyone who will listen, not killing civilians across the globe - to maintain and extend that power.

The people in charge right now want very badly to destroy America as I know it.

We're going to New York on Saturday to exercise our right to free speech while we still have it. For my part, all I wanted from my government was the truth. If they won't give it to me, I will oppose them proudly, knowing that a real American is not afraid of political dissent and that a true servant of the public in America would never seek to deceive and control the American public as this government does.

I'll be the guy in the blue overcoat with the sign that reads "Patriots Against Bush" on one side and "Not Convinced" on the other. Look for me on the news, if anyone besides NPR covers it.

Posted by glenn at February 12, 2003 06:49 PM | TrackBack