Gov’t Has No Case For Iraq War

To the Editors:

The ongoing debate on Iraq perhaps has tended to be silent on one important aspect: Mr. Bush, since his installation as president of the U.S., has sought aggressively to alter, and often undo, policies of the preceding administration. In matters of foreign policy he has worked to minimize any U.S. submission to rules and interests of the international community; for example: the denunciation of the Kyoto accords, the refusal to sign a Treaty banning biochemical weapons, the strenuous efforts to counter the constitution of a viable International Court of Law, etc.

What happens with Iraq follows that pattern. Our own government admits that it has no hard evidence on what has happened in Iraq since 1998 (when inspectors were forced out of Iraq) – only suppositions. However, it has decided to drastically change U.S. reaction to Saddam’s refusal to allow foreign inspectors in Iraq. In a word, the decision to attack Iraq is closely tied to our present government, i.e., to the domestic politics of the U.S.
It is repugnant to one’s conscience that peace or war in another country (moreover, a small and defenseless one in the face of the mighty U.S.) and the life or death of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of its innocent citizens may depend on our own domestic politics.

The arguments pressed by the government to justify an attack on Iraq are just that – arguments towards “case building” before the American public opinion. In fact, they impress you as hypocritical. Why should Iraq’s probable intention of pursuing nuclear weapons be a casus belli, and not the fact that over a dozen other countries actively pursue or already have them? Why does Saddam’s lack of compliance with U.N. injunctions pose such deathly risk to the international community, and not the lack of compliance from other countries? The case of Israel comes to mind, and indeed both Iraq and Israel will have weighty reasons for their failed compliance.
There is no compelling argument that Saddam is just waiting to nuke the U.S. Although he possessed biochemical weapons, he did not use them against the allied troops even when they invaded Iraq at the end of the Gulf War. Plus he knows that such a type of attack on the U.S. would be tantamount to Iraq’s annihilation. The reaction to Mr. Bush’s threats on the part of the leaders and the peoples of the bordering countries with Iraq should be sobering and enlightening to our government. So far they have shown much less fear of Iraq than of a U.S. waged war in that part of the world at their doorsteps.

Let us peacefully but firmly raise our voices so that our nation does not follow rhetoric over reason, does not put immediate self-interest and political pride above moral and legal considerations, as well as over loyalty to the international community to which it undoubtedly belongs.

–Gil Miranda
Professor Emeritus, Music Theory