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1. America invading Iraq would be the best thing that ever happened to Bin Laden. 
Sending Christians to kill Iraqis and take over their country would be a great step forward for Bin Laden's campaign to convince the Moslem world that the US is an aggressor nation.  And best of all for Bin Laden, America is doing this by eliminating his sworn enemy: Saddam Hussein, the anti-fundamentalist dictator of the future "Islamic nation of Iraq".  It's your basic win/win for Bin Laden. 

2. Bush's war would unite most of the Moslem world against us.
In the Moslem world, it is almost universally believed that American funding of Israel is what enables its military expansion into Arab lands. They know America refuses to enforce UN sanctions against this land grab and has done nothing to stop Israel's acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, most of the Moslem people fear self-righteous religious fanatics as much as we do, and few objected to our overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan.  But now Bush has single handedly squandered the good will the world felt towards us after the World Trade Center massacre.  Instead of going after Bin Laden and his terrorists, America is now seen as going after an Islamic nation that had nothing to do with 9-11. To quote from an Algerian journalist who successfully infiltrated an Al Qaeda recruiting cell, "The Americans are about to do the stupidest thing imaginable.  An attack on Iraq will nourish terrorism."  (LATimes, March 2, '03)

3. Bush's war would unite most of the rest of the world against us. 
America is 1/20th of the world's population.  The vast majority of the world's people are seeing America as a bully, instead of an enlightened leader.  Most Europeans are already strongly against this war, and they have more experience with fighting Moslem terrorists than we do.  Arguments that Europeans have an "obligation" to support Bush and are only opposing his war because "they hate us and prefer Saddam Hussein", are just more attempts by America's punditocracy to stifle real debate.

4. America attacking a country that has not attacked us sets the worst possible precedent. 
Is this America's new message to other nations: Next time you find your neighbor has a serious weapons program, you can attack them first, start a war and slaughter their inhabitants, then put somebody you want in charge there?  Even against the wishes of the United Nations?   In Germany I once interviewed a WWII survivor who wanted me to understand that Hitler had done the world "a favor" by starting that war.  Germany knew they would "have to" fight Poland and Russia "eventually", so they had "no choice" but to attack "pre-emptively", before Stalin got any stronger.  Now Bush is using this same argument.  If he gets away with it, "Pre-emptive strike" could become the most frightening, and common, military euphemism of the 21st Century.

5. America's own support for this war is extremely thin. 
Public opinion polls show that little more than half the American public support the war at all, and even this figure drops in half again when the pollsters ask if our country should go it alone.  And this is without anything bad happening yet, just the banal rhetoric of "regime change", "liberation", and "high tech precision".  Soon it will switch to "body bags", "atrocities", "expressions of regret", and "retaliations against Americans".  Where will the public mood go then?  War is the hardest thing a country can do, the most extreme thing, yet where is the deep support for this long haul of death and disaster?  Where are the pro-war rallies? Quite simply, you can't fight a war based on tepid support at home.

6. One of the greatest un-argued assumptions of this war is that the Iraqis won't fight back in any meaningful way. 
Why has there been so little discussion about the killing?  Pundits on TV talk about war as blithely as they do the deficit or their outrage over airline delays. Of course, the U. S. media is not unusual in this respect, since nearly every country in history has gone to war without a debate about what war really is about, which is killing.  Nobody on the pro-war side seems very concerned about the Iraqis, but what if they start killing us?  When the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s turned against Iraq, and it appeared that Iran might successfully overrun their country, the Iraqis fought back with a ferocity that killed over half a million people on both sides.  And they used chemical weapons (which America knew about and didn't oppose).  What if that Army shows up, instead of the quick-to-surrender Iraqi army that we expect?  Remember that in the 1990 Gulf War the Iraqi Army never really fought back, never even maneuvered in the face of the Coalition ground offensive.  We learned after the war that Saddam, while misleading Schwartzkopf by bragging about "the mother of all battles", was secretly abandoning his troops in Kuwait and withdrawing his best men into the interior of Iraq, fully intending to fight it out inside the cities.

7. To wage aggressive war without a Declaration of War is clearly unconstitutional. 
What part of  "congress shall have the power to make war" don't you understand?  It's supposed to be hard to get 2/3 of America's legislators to vote for war, and that's exactly the way the Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, meant it to be.  The creators of our Constitution further clarified this in their own writings, particularly those of George Washington, because they felt non-democratic countries got into war all too easily.  Our Founding Fathers wanted war to be debated in the Congress and publicly voted on.  Bush has had two years to do this.

8. This war will sink our already battered economy, both at home and abroad.
Bush is obviously counting on war as a short-term stimulant for our economy.  But the bill has to be paid eventually or the economy will nose-dive again. In World War II the tax rates on America's richest were 3 times what they are now---yet in 2003 instead of personal sacrifice, while our servicemen are being asked to give their very lives, Bush wants the rich to get a huge tax cut!  Our budget will return to gigantic deficits that your children will have to pay for.   Bush is making history here.  If anyone out there reading this can come up with any example in human history, with the thousands of wars fought, of a country starting one by cutting taxes, please let this author know.  We are entering a long-term gamble of epic proportions, and the fact that George Bush is not asking for true sacrifice makes one question his sanity. And if the Pentagon's latest estimate is for the war to cost Americans $100 Billion, you can be reasonably sure it's going to be twice that. Finally, just imagine the consequences if a large part of the world starts boycotting American goods.

9. War is always a grand crapshoot---and every country that has ever started one did so with the firm belief that it would triumph in a brief war. 
With Bush's plan, Americans will be the ones who actually initiate the killing.  Throughout the world the Iraqis are going to be seen as the victims.   In the 19th Century, civilians generally made up 15% of war's casualties.  In the 20th Century, that rose to 75%.  This was true in even in the 1990 Gulf War, where 95% of the bombs were not "smart", and where the Pentagon admits of the 5% that were, over half missed their targets. Civilians were also the majority of casualties in Kosovo and Afghanistan, though the Pentagon has gone to great lengths to make sure accurate civilian casualty counts are no longer made. Americans, because we live in one of the few countries that has never been bombed, have always told ourselves that when our Air Force kills thousands of women and children its OK because "we weren't directly aiming at them".  But somehow that excuse doesn't go over very well outside our own borders.   Why has no one answered the question of how many casualties we are willing to cause, and to take?  And if Iraq truly does have chemical and bio weapons, won't this invasion guarantee their use against Americans?

10. Even our supposed allies are not to be relied on.
Look closely at our only internationally important "ally": England.  With friends like these ? Tony Blair is out on a limb in his support for this one, and unfortunately for him England is a democracy where 75% of the people, and the leaders of his own party, oppose this war.  The recent anti-war demonstrations they had were the largest peacetime rallies in the history of England.  And this is our best supporter!  The others are either unimportant, like Bulgaria or Spain (because they're not committing their own troops), or even more dubious "bribed" nations like Turkey.  Even after paying the government the astounding sum of $15 billion, Turkey's largely Moslem population is unlikely to stay quiet once the families crushed to death by US bombs begin showing up on their TVs.

11. A quick march into Baghdad will just be the beginning of Bush's war.  
America seems to be dealing with this huge issue of post-war Iraq by ignoring it.  I ask constantly, "How does America intend to implement its plan (whatever that is) in this complicated, totally foreign society?"  What if the country begins to fragment?  What if Saddam and the U S Air Force have destroyed the water and power lines and polluted everything with chemical and bio poisons?  What if the Kurds want to break off and join with the other Kurds who live in Turkey and form their own country?  Will we start killing them?  Will our ally the Turks kill them?  What if snipers and bombers continue to kill our boys long after Fox News has declared our great victory?  Will we "crack down hard" on the Iraqis?  Will we try massive retaliations?  Selective murders?  Torture?  Relocate the population to concentration camps?

12. There have been hundreds of military invasions since 1900 and, in every single case, the invader was eventually defeated. 
America will eventually leave Iraq.  Maybe we will leave behind a stable, flowering non-threatening mid-east country.  An Iraq where the new strongman will agree with Bush that only other countries in their region, like Pakistan and Israel, should have weapons of mass destruction. Or we will be driven out, as we were in Vietnam, Somalia, and Lebanon.  Remember that this war means everything to the Iraqis---it is the most important thing in their lives.  To the average American it means little.  Saddam and his powerful circle know if an invasion begins, that they will be killed.  There is no way out for them.  Since surrender means certain death, they have no choice but to fight, kill as many as they can, and make the invaders as sorry as possible that they came. Modern wars are easy to start, but very, very hard to stop.

Douglas Miller
dougmill1@aol.com

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