Possible Anti-War Editiorial

Daniel C. Burton (dan@antispam.autobahn.org)
15 Feb 1998 01:42:59 GMT 

I've looked at a bunch of different sources and I'm starting to get some
coherant ideas now.  We should probably write an opinion piece against the
bombing of Iraq as soon as possible, not wait for an actual outbreak of
war.  The issue is at the forefront already.

There is a good page at http://www.nonviolence.org/campaigns/iraq.htm about
reasons not to bomb Iraq.

Considering the extreme hardship caused by our sanctions against Iraq, I
would say we should probably take this time to voice our opinion on free
trade as well.  Free trade is pretty integral to libertarian anti-war
arguments anyway, since it's one of the best guarantees of international
security.

Here are the general threads of argument I've come up with for
non-interventionism so far:

1. War is often a distraction from failures of government policies that
gives the citizens something external to rally around.  Most of the
expansions of government authority have taken place in times of war.
2. War is expensive to fund.
3. It leads to the loss of many lives for purposes of questionable moral
integrity.
4. It creates many other forms of destruction that are detrimental.
5. Bully tactics create enemies abroad and make our citezins the targets of
terrorism.
6. Positive commercial relations between countries through free trade is a
good insurance against war -- you don't blow up those supplying you with
your economic livelihood.
7. We can better lead the world by example than force -- How do we expect
other countries to enact policies of freedom when we have high taxes and a
huge military establishment at home?
8. The U.S. has no authority to interfere in the affairs of other sovereign
nations.  (I don't like this one.  It only seems valid if the other nations
are liberal democracies, which hardly ever go to war with eachother.)

For the Iraqi situation in particular here's what I've come up with:

1. If it weren't for our economic sanctions, Sadam Hussein wouldn't be in
power in the first place.  Opposition to him faded once he had an external
bogeyman to rally his nation around.
2. We seem to have a double standard on weapons of mass destruction --
Israel can develop nuclear weapons without threats of massive bombing, but
for some reason Iraq can't.
3. There is little international support for our bombing campaign.
4. If war doesn't take Sadam Hussein from power, we'll be little better off
than before, and the Iraqi people will be the ones who will be hurt.
5.  Despite the scare stories, there are only 2 scud missiles that U.N.
inspectors haven't accounted for -- not much of a delivery system.
6.  Biological weapons are increadibly easy to produce and a massive
bombing campaign will not necessarily stop this, as long as it doesn't
threaten the power structure of the country.

I'm still trying to sort this out and come up with a more coherant
structure.  We seem to be able to attack this for both lack of coherant
purpose and being a bad strategy for international relations.

It looks like the best line of attack so far is claiming that Iraq is no
real threat to the United States and bombing them is not in our national
interest -- it's expensive, and intervention is the cause of, not the
solution to, hostilities.  Then maybe go into free trade and leading by
example, not force, with a bunch of the specifics of the Iraqi situtation
thrown in.

Anyone else want to help?  I'm off to a good start in making some reasoned
arguments, but this should be a group effort.