Bush's war

...It should not be forgotten that the document known as the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, which provided the Bush administration with its rationale for the war (perpetual war for perpetual peace, to paraphrase Gore Vidal), is very much a blueprint for what has happened in Iraq...

...This administration's policy, however, seems to be in the tradition of machismo, with an emphasis on swaggering bravado...

...He repeated what he had said prior to hostilities: that Saddam Hussein had been contained and that, in the event of anything overt, he could have been dealt with perfunctorily (and not unilaterally) "somewhere down the road...

...Other wars may soon be initiated in which the citizenry has little if any say...

...After all, it was acquiescence that got us into this mess, and mere acquiescence will not free us of it...

...I for one say no...

...Oil has been given as another, and it is now an intriguing matter of record that the oil fields in Iraq were the first installations to be seized and "protected...

...The fact remains that those who were in a position to influence events at the time did not do so, especially the Congress...

...The Central Bank of Baghdad has been placed under the directorship of a former secretary of the U.S...

...Franks's claim that the Iraqis could be killed but not counted was just another way of saying that their deaths did not count at all...

...It may be small consolation to recall one author's statement: "Those who have dared to brave mockery have conquered the world...

...The Bush administration's support for Israel's current prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and his Likud party is no secret...

...Zinni also questioned the folly of placing ourselves at odds with the United Nations and with international law, and, above all, the sacrifice of American lives in an unnecessary (though militarily adept) war by advocates who had little understanding of the culture of Iraq or of the Middle East in general...

...treasury named Peter McPherson...

...At last count there are more than eighty despotic, dictatorial, or otherwise nondemocratic governments in the world, and yet the president focused purposefully on just one...

...It should not be forgotten that the most outspoken advocates of our go-it-alone war in Iraq were those who supported the Vietnam War but never served in it though they were of age to do so, men such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, and other armchair warriors...

...It should also be added that the Iraqi deaths in the war ("We don't do body counts of these people," said Army General Tommy Franks), from combat and disease caused by impure water, malnutrition, and faulty sanitation, may eventually exceed sixty thousand people, both military and civilian...

...The $13 billion for the Oil-for-Food Program, plus the anticipated annual income of $20 billion from future sales of Iraqi oil, will be for McPherson to disburse...

...Is it appropriate behavior for us as citizens simply to say that what has happened has happened and that we should, in the euphemistic language of former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, "move on...

...Dissent will become more and more difficult in a society where now the government can, on the basis of suspicion alone, search an American's home without his permission or presence, examine private bank accounts, telephone calls, computers, and mail, and place him or her under arrest (without charge) for a time without access to legal counsel...

...The question to be asked is why...

...We "won" the war because we had the undisputed power to win it over a country that had fallen from 50th in 1991 on the scale of national viability kept by the United Nations to 126th when the war began...

...But if the alternative is a servile silence, what other choice is there...

...In our case it is the braggadocio of older men (mostly civilians with limited or no military experience but with undeniably messianic world visions) being brave with young men's lives...

...The despotic Hussein has been toppled though he is still at large with a bounty on his head...

...These might seem convincing claims for a country whose people are regarded not as citizens but as subjects and whose ideal is the ethic of Sparta, which won every war and lost every peace...

...Filial loyalty has been cited as one reason...

...it is well known that Israel, itself a nuclear power in the region, had long regarded Iraq as a major threat...

...Formerly President George W. Bush's special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and before that a regional military commander in chief in the Middle East and Central Asia, Zinni has extensive experience and numerous contacts in the Arab world...

...The case put forth by Zinni stood in marked contrast to statements from the White House from the time of the State of the Union distortions to the recent "Bring 'em on" challenge to the Iraqi insurgents...

...Because almost all religious leaders, most legal scholars, and some congressmen thought preemptive war unjustified by the original reasons provided by the government, one cannot but wonder why there was and still is no outraged response to this last and least compelling reason-particularly in light of the less than hospitable response by many Iraqis to the occupation of their country...

...It seems that what we are left with is justification by power and by power alone...

...This is where we are at the moment and how we are perceived while the daily death count increases among marines and soldiers ill-trained or totally untrained for occupation- one by one by one...

...Indeed, Attorney General John Ashcroft is already on record as saying that dissenters aid and abet the enemy, despite the fact that this places him at odds with the Constitution, and despite the additional fact that history has long since vindicated dissenters who thirty years ago were similarly denigrated...

...Some may still believe, as many in our government insist, that our reason for invading Iraq (putting aside the nuclear, chemical, and biological "threat" and ignoring the unproven and even discredited links between the secular Hussein and the zealotry of Osama bin Laden) was to liberate it...

...Since these reasons have been scorned by the administration as contributing factors, we are being asked to accept the residual justification of "liberation," which was only marginally included in the list of justifications for the war...

...There we listened to an address by retired general Anthony Zinni...

...He reviewed his early opposition to the war in Iraq and his present concerns about the situation...

...Widespread opposition from the churches has been ineffectual at best...

...The justifications for preemption have been called into serious question both in the United States and in England, where Prime Minister Tony Blair has been accused of falsifying the threat Hussein posed...

...Samuel Hazo is director of the International Poetry Forum, McNulty Distinguished Professor Emeritus from Duquesne University, and was appointed Pennsylvania's first state poet in 1993...

...Israel's security has been cited as another...

...What has resulted from the fait accompli of the war itself...

...It is certainly foreign to the mainstream of American foreign policy, which has always been guided, as the late Senator William Fulbright stressed, by intelligent military restraint...

...In the current climate, where intellectual conformity is the rule, contrariness may more frequently be regarded as betrayal...

...Since Bechtel, Halliburton, and other American companies chosen through non-competitive bidding have already been approved to reconstruct Iraq, it can be assumed that the costs will be paid by the aforementioned funds on deposit in the Central Bank of Baghdad...

...Moreover, 12 million people, half of Iraq's total population, are children, most under fifteen...

...He was a captain in the Marine Corps in the 1950s...

...In the meantime, the American public has to endure the equivalent of Chinese water torture by waiting for the next announced death of an American marine or infantryman in "liberated" Iraq...

...Zinni questioned, as he did prior to the war, whether Iraq had any nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons, and, more important, the means to deliver them...

...We were committed to war because the president presumed that he had the power, authority, and pretext for ordering it...