Your Choice of Zippered Bags

#100, September 18, 2002

 

We lay together side by side, a cluster of lodgepole pines holding the Milky Way high above us. Zipped up in our nylon bags, sleep heavy on our brows after a long day full of wonder, wandering. “Good night.” “G’nite.” I was seeing my son off to college via a backpacking trip in the northern Sierra. But next spring, it might be different scene: watching him come home from Iraq, zipped up in another kind of bag.

 

I suppose I might find cold comfort in his dying for a worthy cause. But he’s not dead yet, nor are the other thousands like him who would be consumed in the fire of the Iraq war, the war for…

 

What is this war for, anyway? Our Administration wants us to believe that any day now Saddam will pop a nuke on us. So why isn’t the President able to rally support from anyone but Great Britain? Not even his own party supports him.

 

Scott Ritter, Republican ex-Marine, for 7 years following the Gulf War the Chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq: “I'm very certain that the Bush administration has not provided any evidence to substantiate its allegations that Saddam Hussein's regime is currently pursuing weapons of mass destruction programs or is in actual possession of weapons of mass destruction.” Henry Kissinger, a man not shy about launching bloody wars: “The notion of justified pre-emption runs counter to modern international law, which sanctions the use of force in self-defense only against actual -- not potential -- threats." Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor to George H. Bush, says a U.S. invasion of Iraq "could turn the whole region into a cauldron and, thus, destroy the war on terrorism."

 

Perhaps the rest of the world is simply skeptical of President Bush’s concern for their interests. His administration is rejecting or ignoring international treaties restricting greenhouse gas emissions, biological and chemical weapons, land mines, torture, small arms trade, nuclear weapons proliferation, and anti-ballistic missiles.

 

Nelson Mandela, who’s got nothing to lose from telling the truth, puts it bluntly: “The attitude of the

United States of America is a threat to world peace. Because what [America] is saying is that if you are afraid of a veto in the Security Council, you can go outside and take action and violate the sovereignty of other countries….It is clearly a decision that is motivated by George W. Bush's desire to please the arms and oil industries in the United States of America.”

 

What else might be motivating this war fervor? Remember the film Wag the Dog? The movie President, whose predicament mirrored President Clinton’s, called up a war with Albania to hide his screwing around with his mistress. Life imitated art when Clinton attacked Saddam at the time of the impeachment vote in Congress. Now, Bush’s war drummers are drowning out media attention to the fact that the President’s CEO friends have been screwing the American economy, running off with insider profits and a mammoth tax cut. The loudest drummer, our Vice President and former oil industry CEO Dick Cheney, has the most to lose from public and congressional attention to this financial plunder.

 

The alternative to war is clear: reinstate the weapons inspectors that were driven out in 1998 when, according to Ritter, they were used as spies for targeting US air strikes. Enforce the inspection program with a multinational force, sanctioned by the United Nations. Address root causes, the injustices in the Middle East (like the Saudi dictatorship.) Get serious about the switch to safe, renewable energy.

 

We are at the crossroads again. Will we be whipped by a patriotic marketing campaign into investing our sons and daughters and billions of dollars into the downward spiral: death and destruction, deprivation and desperation? Pre-emptive attacks and pre-emptive retaliations? The “peace” of a police state? Or will this, finally, be a turning point in human history?

 

Thirty years ago, it was the political power of the anti-war movement that kept Nixon from using nukes against Vietnam. You and I have that power now. Let your voice for peace be heard, loud and clear. Let our children live.