never believe anything until it's been officially denied

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat Oct 5 19:29:13 PDT 2002


Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> Top Stories - Reuters
> U.S. Assures It Does Not Seek to 'Conquer' Iraq
> Sat Oct 5, 5:44 PM ET
>
> By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent
>
> LEESBURG, VA. (Reuters) - [clip]
>
> While reaffirming a decision on using force against Iraq had not been
> made, Zalmay Khalilzad, a senior aide to President Bush ( news - web
> sites), said, "Should force be required, U.S. and coalition forces
> will liberate the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein."

One really amazing feature of the present insanity. Almost _everyone_, including perhaps a substantial majority of those opposed to war on Iraq, has accepted the terms of the question as posed by those beating the drums. The assumption is that Iraq constitutes a _problem_ that must be solved, and the question is whether it should be solved peacefully or by military action.

But Iraq is not a problem. _Nothing_ needs to be done. Nothing. The very question, "What should we do about Iraq?" is a defense of the war crimes which the U.S. is planning on committing.

The task for those who hope to build a left in this country is first to build an anti-war movement of all who will oppose the war on _any_ grounds, and secondly to work within that anti-war movement to establish the apriori wrongness of all u.s. military adventures.

(_Almost_ anything is always possible, given that we have no crystal ball, the probablility of _any_ u.s. military action being defensible is vanishingly small.)

Carrol



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