bellwether | (no subject)

Do you remember where you were when we last declared war on Iraq and Hussein? I was in 8th grade, and was skiing down Buck Hill in Burnsville, MN with the ski club from my junior high. It was exhilarating to think that we were at war--I was worried that we'd never have a war again after Vietnam.... apparently things like Grenada, and all the other smaller conflicts in the 80s passed underneath my radar. I think I screamed "We're at war!" and sped down the hill fueled by an adrenaline surge.

Iraq was bad of course, because they invaded Kuwait--to steal their oil. Of course, we should be protecting Kuwait from the invaders! That just made sense--we were powerful and had troops. It was a mission of goodwill--and if we got some oil out of it, well, that only made sense.

This was Kevin in 8th grade. A diehard young Republican, born and bred.

Flash forward twelve years.

Today, I'm scared.

I'm scared that we are entering into a situation where the government of the most powerful nation on the planet will shortly be undetaking a "military operation" without the mandate of it's people. We are not an empire, and the business of empire-building is not what the United States is supposed to be built on. It seems like the administration is forgetting that. The refusal to build consensus and work with the international community is aggravating, and ultimately will prove harmful to our relations.

The protests yesterday in Westwood, last week at UCLA, and across the country are the one ray of light in this whole situation. People are talking about the ethics of war and whether one nation has the right to throw it's weight around and attempt to make international policy. However, every day that passes it becomes clearer and clearer that the current adminstration is not interested in the opinions of it's populace, nor even their well-being.

We lack a mandate. We are going to attack a nation that has done nothing to directly provoke us. Is Hussein a "bad guy?" Yes. He's done horrible things. Does that give us the right to drop bombs on innocent Iraqis? Not in my book.

This daily chant of "weapons of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction" is beginning to sound like Peter's cry of "Wolf!" Hussein in all likelihood does have anthrax, VX gas, smallpox, or who knows what other biological or chemical weapons. He'd be a fool not to--this morning on NPR, Gore Vidal asked if you could really expect a nation not to protect itself when the US is on such an agressive stance? Will he use them? He hasn't in twelve years. However we certainly are giving him every provocation to do so now. This situation can only get much worse before it gets better.

It's still a battle for oil--with our oil supply predicted to be exhausted by 2020, we need more fuel. Anyone who says that the war in Iraq isn't about oil isn't thinking.

I'm scared. Today, I'm much more quiet than I was twelve years ago. Perhaps that's part of the problem.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I wish that I could articulate an opinion one way or another in this situation, but I don't think that my say is accurately represented by saying I'm anti-war or pro-war. The situation is just not clear enough as to who's holding what in their hand. It certainly seems to me that the current administration is war-mongering, but it's a little hard for me to know that they are when they claim there are legitimate concerns to international welfare. And it's especially tricky to claim to be anti-war because, in general, I don't believe that it's possible to be anti-war as a nation without making shady political deals. And being anti-war now would lump me in with most of the US protesters (I make no claims about the rest of the world) who are using this as an excuse to protest a lot more things than just American bully tactics.

What I feel is really happening, is that governments are still being run in an out-dated fashion. One in which communication is believed to be slow. Most governments know that information is not slow, though, so they cannot divulge sensitive information because news travels too quickly. I'm also unsure of the status of a "nation" in terms of modern communication. We are not separated by more than a few minutes from any other person in the entire world. Thus nations no longer appear to act as governments as much as political associates entailing mostly business and armory transactions. This, in turn, leads to the belief that the war is strictly over oil, which I would warrant is a large concern but not the primary reason that the Bush administration is pushing for action and a gross over-exaggeration. We are still at peace with most of the other oil-producing nations and certainly will protect these "assets" to the best of our ability. This argument reminds me of the protests that the Afghanistan purge of the Taliban was only for oil.

All of this is complicated by the agendas of media agents around the world. The biases in each of these outlets are just as bad as any bias found in the American media thus the "facts" being uncovered by foreign press can be as ludicrously misleading. As such, I do find it odd that foreign press is believed more trust-worthy when it comes to delivering dirty information about America than American media. Naturally, this is because as Americans most people believe that unless we are hated by a region of the world, the coverage of our doings will be more even-handed.

Anyway, I don't want to get too preachy about what's wrong with politics and media. I still find it hard to take a side on the current war because I feel we are being left in the dark and almost any argument on either side of the issue can be countered with conjectures because that's all we have. There are very few facts to go off and I have no idea how trust-worthy are any of the characters involved in this whole debacle. The one I would like to believe the most would be Hans Blix, but then again I have no idea the history of this man and what his past actions and beliefs have been. Even as such, he hasn't really provided any information to either side of the debate because he's found very little (which the anti-war group latches onto) but believes that there is something hidden (which the pro-war group latches onto).

Thus, I am caught at a road where I do not feel that I could choose either side. I'd like peace, I predict war. I don't like the oppressiveness and out-and-out lies of Saddam, I don't know of a resolution to the situation without violence (either by an outside force like the US, which I don't necessarily agree with, or an internal revolution). I don't want to put my own life on the line to settle an international dispute whose details are intangible, I don't want to be involved with a country which stays away from foreign contact. Mostly, I'm just ready for this quarter to be over.

Hmm. I never meant to imply that I thought that oil was the only cause for the current situation; I think the situation is extraordinarily complex, and has manifold causes including oil, Bush's desire to follow through on his father's war and gigantic inferiority complex, the current state of the economy, as well as our inability to capture Bin Laden and Iraq's history of human rights abuses.

However, the fact that Iraq is the world's second largest producer of oil (11%) is undeniable. The majority of Iraq has yet to be explored for oil, and current projections indicate that Iraq might have twice it's discovered capacity--pushing it up to tie with Saudi Arabia for the largest oil supply. Is that something Bush would like to have in the hands of a US-controlled government? Yes.

Your concerns and your predictions are valid--I don't like Saddam's lies anymore than I like Bush's. I'd like a true dialogue between Saddam and Bush--the debates that Saddam suggested would have certainly been interesting!