no to war

After reading about 5 gazillion comments, editorials and columns on the subject, I'd have to say that I'm coming down on the side of the doves on this one. How strongly do I feel? Not very. I'll probably change my mind again once I hear a really good argument for war, at least for a few minutes, but I will support the president if he decides to go to war.

My reasoning:

• Does Saddam have to go? No question. The man has gassed his own people, he has enriched himself while starving the masses, he is every bit as ruthless as Stalin was, and if he's allowed the chance, he'll probably invade Kuwait or another neighbor again. If memory serves, his official map of Iraq includes Kuwait as part of its territory.
  
• Does Bush have a reasonable legal argument that the U.N. is within its rights to remove Saddam Hussein? Yes. Resolution 1441, as has been pointed out many times, gave Saddam another "one last chance" to disarm or face the consequences. The U.N., however, appears to be unwilling to follow through on that ultimatum; I'm not quite clear on how it becomes our prerogative to act on behalf of the U.N. when the U.N. won't authorize us to. It makes the U.N. into a joke when it won't enforce its own resolutions, but isn't that a matter for the U.N. member nations to address within that body?

• Would we win? Again, that seems to be without question, but an almost-guaranteed victory should not be the overriding factor in whether we invade.
  
• Do we have the moral right to invade? This is the critical question for me, and it's here I think we fail the test. Saddam Hussein lacks the moral right to rule Iraq, but at this point I don't believe there is any strong moral argument to remove him. Connections to al Qaeda and Sept. 11 have been tenuous at best, from what I can remember, and at this point he neither has attacked or nor threatened us nor any of our allies. In the original Gulf War, he attacked Kuwait and was threatening Saudi Arabia. That was the time to get rid of him, and the elder Bush and our allies failed to do it. Twelve years later is a little late.

If we're predicating our moral authority to invade on the way Saddam Hussein treats his people, then there's a long list of other countries we have to invade: China, the Sudan, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Cuba among them.

I also don't believe we're within our rights to invade simply because of Saddam Hussein's record or his current weapons of mass destruction. They are both cause for concern, but at the moment -- again -- there are no indications he is actively plotting or working toward the destruction of another country, is there? Maybe I've blocked out that part of the news, but until there is an actual threat, rather than just the potential for one, I'm not sure what grounds we have for invasion.

On a side note that does not have any bearing on whether we should go to war or not, is anyone else a little unsettled by Bush's strident unilateral approach to foreign policy? First the Kyoto Protocol, now he's telling longtime allies that they're going to hurt their relationship with us if they don't back us on the war effort. Silly me, I thought sometimes friends were supposed to tell us things we don't want to hear. You might agree, you might not, but you shouldn't let that get in the way of your friendship.