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Don’t Attack Iraq

here are many good reasons to oppose a U.S. attack on Iraq. At the very least, the inspections should be allowed to run their course before any attack, and any action should be carried out through the United Nations, not unilaterally by the United States.

The War Resisters League, however, opposes an attack on Iraq whether or not Iraq passes the inspection test and whether or not such an attack is approved by the United Nations.

As to the inspections, we could argue that the test is one Iraq can’t pass, since it involves proving a negative, which is impossible. We could argue that establishing such a test is doubly disingenuous, for the aforementioned reason and because the test is being applied only to Iraq while we have no guarantee that France, Britain, China, and Russia—or, for that matter, the United States—are abiding by agreements involving curbs on chemical, bacteriological, biological or nuclear research. On the contrary, the United States has refused to sign some essential international agreements, reneged on others and sought to undermine some it has signed.

As to U.N. approval of aggression (let us call it by its correct name) against Iraq, we could argue that the U.N. Security Council finds it extremely hard not to do what the United States wants it to do. It would be wrong to call that body simply a puppet of the U.S. State Department, but it would be equally wrong to think of it as an international body truly independent of the United States.

Blood for Palestine,
Blood for Oil
We could argue that the most dangerous situation in the world today revolves, not around Iraq, but around Israel/ Palestine: Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and the nuclear program that has left Israel the only nuclear power in the Middle East. (We note that the Arab states have done little to help the Palestinians, but the West Bank and Gaza are occupied, not by Egypt or Syria, but by Israel. The human rights violations there are monumental.) Any genuine move to defuse the dangers of war has to start, not with Iraq, but with the Palestinian issue, about which the United States can do a great deal simply by cutting economic and military support to Israel. Such a step would go a long way toward ending terrorism on both sides.

On the matter of Iraq’s efforts to gain weapons of mass destruction, it would be surprising if Iraq had not made at least some efforts to improve its military position after the Gulf War, but as a military power Iraq has been deeply weakened both by the Gulf War and by the war with Iran that preceded it. Iraq’s neighbors may hate Saddam, but they show no evidence of fearing him. Because Israel has nuclear weapons it must be assumed that all Arab states will try to secure nuclear weapons or similar weapons of mass destruction. What is needed is a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, with such a zone including Israel and with strong U.N. inspections of all the countries involved.

Finally, we could argue that from the United States’ point of view, the real issue is oil. It is not human rights within Iraq (that situation is deplorable in many parts of the world, including China, a major American trading partner), much less an alleged “threat” to peace by Iraq. It is oil—and an attack on Iraq now would be blood for oil again, as it was in the 1991 Gulf War.

Having taken note of those political realities, however, we need not adduce them to argue against the proposed attack on Iraq. We are utterly appalled that any political leader in the United States can attempt to justify mounting a “preemptive” strike against any nation. The United States has rightly condemned other wars of aggression—is it now to launch one of its own?

And, of course, we oppose the war because we do not believe war can solve the problems. Iraq is not the root cause of the problems in the Middle East. An attack on Iraq will kill a great many people; it will cause great suffering, with no promise of a useful or humane result. The push for war reflects, rather, the fact that the United States spends seven times as much on its military as all the host of potential enemy states lumped together! Such a vast military is used by the politicians as an easy way to project U.S. power and influence throughout the world.

If any country needs a regime change, it is the United States. There is a grievous arrogance in the United States thinking that it can sort out the problems of the region that was the birthplace of Western civilization. What can we say but echo the old wisdom of the playwright Euripides, who wrote, “Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.”

It was on the day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday 12 years ago that an earlier Bush administration shocked peace lovers around the world by starting the Gulf War with Iraq. This January, on King’s birthday, tens of thousands of antiwar activists will honor the great peacemaker by gathering in Washington, DC, and in communities across the country to attempt to prevent another war.

It is in the name of sanity, as well as compassion for all who will die on both sides, that we oppose utterly Bush’s proposed military adventure. If it is begun, it will be criminal in nature, and those who launch it will fall under international judgment as war criminals.