The maiming or killing of a single Iraqi civilian in an attack by
the United States would constitute a war crime, as well as a
profound violation of the Christian notion of just war. That is
because the recent report of the U.N. inspectors has made indelibly
clear that disarmament is working and that Iraq at this time poses
no direct threat to the well-being of the American people.
Of course, we are not talking about one or two casualties. In
seriously considering such war strategies as bringing a city-
destroying firestorm down upon a population half made up of
children, the U.S. is planning to disarm a nation of its weapons of
mass destruction by using weapons that cause mass destruction.
Brutal, preemptive and unilateral war under such circumstances is
-- by the standards of any great civilization or religion -- morally
indefensible and also seriously damages the reputation of free
societies, the principles of which we are trying to market to the
rest of the world.
To distract us from this essential truth, the president has
shamefully frightened the American people, first with his baseless
attempt to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11 and then with unproven claims
that Iraq's government and weapons pose an immediate danger to
Americans.
The real story is that U.N. inspectors are reporting substantial
progress in terms of Iraqi cooperation and the destruction of
weapons in Iraq.
George Bush and the 200,000-plus troops he has sent to the
Persian Gulf could take some credit for this, but he continues to
isolate the U.S. as other leading nations request that the U.N.
inspectors be given four more months to complete their work.
Why the unseemly rush to war when the chief U.N. weapons
inspector stated: "One can hardly avoid the impression that, after a
period of somewhat reluctant cooperation, there has been an
acceleration of initiatives from the Iraqi side since the end of
January."
Hans Blix went on to cite increased air surveillance using U.S.,
French, German and Russian planes, the unfettered ability "to
perform professional no-notice inspections all over Iraq," rising
cooperation on private interviews with scientists, inspections of
"mobile units," destruction of 40% of the Al-Samoud 2 missile cache
and excavation and analysis of a major weapons disposal site.
Most important, Blix noted that for the U.N. to finish its survey
of sites, documents and relevant people, it "will not take years,
nor weeks, but months." In the meantime, he emphasized, "we are not
watching the breaking of toothpicks. Lethal weapons are being
destroyed."
And as for the most lethal of weapons -- the one that could end
all life on this planet -- the news from Iraq is even more
promising.
"After three months of intrusive inspections, we have, to date,
found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a
nuclear weapons program in Iraq," the chief atomic weapons inspector
told the U.N. Security Council on Friday.
After 218 inspections of 141 sites over three months by the
International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei charged that
the U.S. had used faked and erroneous evidence to support the claims
that Iraq was importing enriched uranium and other material for the
manufacture of nuclear weapons.
So why, considering all this good news, is the White House afraid
to allow the inspections to continue?
Is Bush worried that the weapons may not exist and that his real
goal, stated blatantly in his last press conference, of taking over
Iraq might be undermined? How else to explain the president's
indifference to the fact that the evidence of weapons locations
supplied by his own intelligence agencies has not checked out on the
ground?
Terrifyingly, we are hours away from doing irreparable harm to
our democratic heritage by launching a risky, arrogant crusade that
most of the world opposes, all at the behest of a small coterie of
neoconservative ideologues plotting to remake the world in their
image and who unfortunately have the ear of our accidental
president.
All this in the name of the victims of 9/11, an attack carried
out by Muslim fanatics originally embraced and trained by the U.S.
during the Cold War and whose proven ties have been with Pakistan
and Saudi Arabia, not Iraq.
If we pursue this unjust war in the coming weeks, we can surely
add the desecration of the victims' memory to the list of outrages
we will perpetrate.
Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times
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