Sunday, March 23, 2003

Ah, I guess its time to say somehting aobut the war in Iraq. I'll begin by saying I am cautiously for the military intervention. War is ugly, as we have been reminded again the last few days, but I feel this conflict is generaly justified. Saddam has broken the terms of surrender for the last Gulf War, which makes this current situation a continuation of the last war, much as some historians charecterize WWII as a continuation of WWI. Saddam is also a brutal dictator, and no-one can argue that the Iraqi people won't be better off without him, although they certainly aren't thrilled at the prospect of renewed bombing. There are a few reservations for me though. First, I have an isolationist streak in me that asks "Why are we risking our necks for a people half-way around the world?" I also have a nationalist streak which asks "Why are we going to the UN?" Finally, my constitutionalist aspects asks "What ever happened to congressional authorization for war?"

This is how I think we should have done this. Let's go back 13 years to the first Gulf War. I think we should have actually declared war on Iraq. That war was indeed justified, as Saddam had invaded a sovreign neighbor with no causus belli, and my isolationist side is easily overriden by the economic implications which called our country to action. We should have declared war (without mentioning the UN) and came to the aid of Kuwait the same way we declared war and came to the aid of France and England in the World Wars. If we had done so, it would be quite a bit easier to present this current conflict as a true continuation of the first.

However, that's not how it was done. Yet the fact remains that something needed to be done, and that's what we're doing.

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