The Providence Phoenix News/Features

Thoughts on going to war
It's no longer a question of if, it seems, but when. When we broaden our war on terrorism from Afghanistan to Iraq, that is. With that in mind, the Phoenix asked staffers and freelancers to give their thoughts on expanding the war

The year was 1917, and progressives were faced with a historic decision: whether to support fellow liberal Woodrow Wilson's entry into World War I to "make the world safe for democracy." In a series of articles, John Dewey, who as a founder of the bracing new philosophy of pragmatism and leader of the progressive-education movement had inspired the next generation of young Americans with fresh democratic promise, had finally weighed in: yes. And with that, Randolph Bourne, one of Dewey's most fervent young admirers, penned a series of antiwar essays -- most notably "Twilight of Idols" and "War and the Intellectuals -- that not only expressed his generation's sense of betrayal by their elders, but marked out the hawk-dove divide that has haunted American liberalism ever since.

Bourne did not speak as a theological pacifist, however; he spoke as a pragmatic democrat, which is why his essays cast valuable light on George W. Bush's preparations to plunge us into war with Iraq. Eighty-five years ago, Bourne watched in dismay as liberals placed their democratic hopes in a "doubtful League of Nations" while tolerating the "suppression" of radical democratic labor unions at home. "I search in vain for clues as to the specific working-out of our democratic desires, either nationally or internationally, either in the present or in the reconstruction after the war," he wrote. "No programme is suggested, nor is there feeling for present vague popular movements and revolts. Rather are the latter chided, for their own vagueness and impracticalities." As far as Bourne could see, "democracy remains an unanalyzed term, useful as a call to battle, but not as an intellectual tool, turning up fresh sod for the changing future."

**Illustration by Robert Davies**

Applying these observations to our current state of affairs does nothing to detract from Saddam Hussein's status as tyrant and mad man. But they do remind us that it is as a democratic people -- not as dogs cowering in fear -- that we should measure George W. Bush, who is, after all, the most powerful man in all human history. And by Bourne's standard, Bush -- his war and his leadership -- is a menace to democracy of vast historical proportions.

How much more evidence do we need? The excesses of Attorney General John Ashcroft's crackdown on civil liberties come to mind. Far more disturbing along these lines are Iran-Contra mastermind John Poindexter's plans for a super Pentagon database on all US citizens. More disturbing yet are the innumerable ways Bush has put the war on terror in the service of his ultra-conservative domestic agenda, and done so even at risk to national security. Consider, for example, how he used the Homeland Security bill as a union-busting tool, thereby upending decades of political debate about the place of organized labor in the good society. Still not satisfied, upon passage of the bill by the House, he announced the privatization of 850,000 federal jobs. Then there came the news a week later that the Army discharged nine highly trained linguists, six of them specializing in Arabic, for being gay. This, at a time when there is a critical shortage of translators available for intelligence work.

But one of the greatest casualties of Bush's authoritarianism -- for that is what it is -- is the corrosion of democratic argument itself. This deterioration concerns more than Bush's malapropisms and tortured prose or the question of whether he is an "idiot." He may very well be. But articulate or intelligent or not, the most chilling truth is that he doesn't speak democratically -- in a way that is respectful of the moral intelligence of the American people, keen to persuade while recognizing the integrity of the opposition. In their appalling incoherence, his shifting explanations for invading Iraq have been deeply insulting to democratic sensibilities.

Bush's adversarial method owes more to the world of corporate raiders than to the rhetoric of public persuasion or even the law. Making matters worse, he betrays the dull brutality that comes with a casual sense of aristocratic inheritance. No, worse. It's as though this son of privilege's unexamined sense of entitlement has been morally reinforced by the disciplinary emotivism of the recovery movement. The result is the same arrogant yet righteous tone he and his people brought to the 2000 election debacle.

**Illustration by Robert Davies**

The effects are remarkably infectious. For all of Senator John Kerry's many fine qualities, for example, his public justification for supporting Bush's war-powers resolution was not his finest hour. He may have been assured by Bush and Powell that war would be multilateral and only pursued as a last resort, but what about the rest of us? As a leader of the loyal opposition, Kerry had an obligation -- to democracy -- to explain to the public what the president didn't feel obliged to, and to upbraid him for such a show of contempt.

As democracy circles down the drain, we need fewer gentlemen's agreements, and more "malcontents," as Bourne had it in 1917. "They will be harsh and often bad-tempered," he said, "and they will feel that the break-up of things is no time for mellowness." We must insist on accountability from our "leaders," call authoritarianism by its proper name (while not confusing it with respect for legitimate authority), and re-examine, honestly and personally, what we mean when we say we are committed to the democratic ideals of freedom and equality. Short of that, in these imperiled times, what sort of future will we be fighting for?
-- Catherine Tumber

Call it the Bush Corollary to the Wherry Doctrine. In 1940, Senator Kenneth Wherry, a Republican from Nebraska, cast an eye toward China and declared, "With God's help, we will lift Shanghai up and up, ever up, until it is just like Kansas City." Sixty-two years later, George W. Bush seeks to bring peace, justice, and democracy to another troubled part of the world -- the Middle East -- through the alchemy of military force and benevolent imperialism. The president proposes to lift Baghdad up and up, ever up, until it is just like . . . Dallas.

**Illustration by Robert Davies**

Bush can be a cynical operator when it comes to little things, like (not) counting votes and pushing through tax cuts for his wealthy campaign contributors. But on the stuff that really matters -- war, peace, and the future of humanity -- he is an idealist through and through. And that should scare the hell out of us.

Everyone has a spin on why Bush is so eager to go to war against Iraq. Most of these theories, at least from some elements of the antiwar left, are cynical indeed, ranging from the president's alleged lust for Iraqi oil to his desire to change the subject from the shaky economy just before the fall elections. And I don't doubt that oil has something to do with why Bush is more interested in Iraq than, say, North Korea, or that he prefers to talk about weapons of mass destruction rather than corporate greed and corruption.

But what's at the root of Bush's war fever is that he believes he can make the world a better place by toppling Saddam Hussein. The president has reportedly been enraptured by a vision put forth by his most hawkish advisers -- principally Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, aided and abetted by Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice -- that we can transform Iraq into an Arab-Muslim version of a liberal democracy, much as we reconstructed Germany and Japan after World War II. Show the way in Iraq, so this theory goes, and corrupt dictatorships such as those in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Egypt will fall in line (or fall). Radical, America-hating Islamists will be transformed into moderate, America-loving Muslims, the Palestinians and the Israelis will finally agree to live in harmony, and we will all reap the benefits of a new era of wonderfulness.

It's a theory of which Kenneth Wherry would have approved. But it's not worthy of consideration as an operating principle for a mature and realistic superpower. More than anything, the Bush Corollary fails utterly to recognize the limits of American power. It's tiresome and not always relevant to dredge up the lessons of Vietnam, but there were lessons from that misguided and tragic episode. The first and most important: we cannot remake in our own image cultures that are very different from ours.

Yes, Iraq will fall if we invade. The gravest danger American troops may face is getting trampled by surrendering Iraqi soldiers. But after that, Iraq is ours, for a generation, if not longer. As a recent Atlantic Monthly cover story put it, Iraq will become, in effect, "the 51st state." Is that what we want? Can we really transform Iraq into another Japan or Germany? Or are we going to make the entire country -- as opposed to just Saddam and his henchmen -- despise us, and seek revenge for our arrogance and hubris?

Despite the war fever that has infected the White House, if not the rest of the country, I'm not entirely pessimistic. Secretary of State Colin Powell and British prime minister Tony Blair reportedly urged Bush to cease his threats of unilateral war and "regime change" and, instead, to work with the United Nations and our allies. Their entreaties had the intended effect, at least for the moment. The UN Security Council voted unanimously to enforce tough new inspections in Iraq aimed at depriving Saddam of his chemical- and biological-weapons capabilities, and of whatever nascent nuclear-bomb program he may have. If Saddam impedes the UN's weapons inspectors, the US and Britain will invade -- but presumably with the backing of the UN, which makes all the difference.

**Illustration by Robert Davies**

Moreover, the weapons inspections could well mean no war at all. Saddam is evil, and he sometimes acts irrationally. But he doesn't want to die. No doubt he'll play some cat-and-mouse games with the inspectors, but there's reason to hope he'll be just forthcoming enough to avoid an invasion.

Of course, the UN has to live up to its responsibilities, too. After a certain point, the UN's desire for peace morphs into appeasement. But the greater danger is that Bush -- to use the cliché of the moment -- won't take "yes" for an answer. He's playing the internationalist card for the time being, but every day there are new stories about his administration's preparations for war. The air war already may have begun, and the White House was charging that Iraq had committed a "material breach" of the Security Council resolution before chief weapons inspector Hans Blix could even begin his work. It would be a tragedy if Bush views the weapons inspections as nothing more than a speed bump on the road to Baghdad.

The Wherry Doctrine and its Bush Corollary speak to the typically American, usually wrong belief that all problems can be solved. Unfortunately, in international politics problems often can't be solved; they can only be managed. The British have a long tradition of pursuing a less high-minded but more sensible strategy. It's called muddling through.

Thanks to Powell and Blair, we have a chance to muddle through -- to keep Saddam tied up and contained indefinitely, to wait for him to die or be overthrown, at which point new opportunities will present themselves. Obviously, the greatest obstacle to that strategy is Saddam, who may have already decided to go out in a blaze of glory. But the next-greatest threat is the naive idealist in the Oval Office, utterly convinced of how much better the world would be if only we could invade Iraq -- and teach all those Arabs to be more like Americans.
-- Dan Kennedy

The current Danse Macabre preceding the second Gulf War would be amusing, in Saturday Night Live fashion, were it not so grim. This is a "we know that Saddam knows we know he knows we're going to war but it's just a matter of when" affair, composed of equal parts mock concern about the sensibilities of the rest of the world, preference that at least that part of it we like to call friendly will be on board, and anxiety over whether, having won the war, we'll also win the peace. No one needs a primer on what's wrong with Saddam Hussein's Iraq or why defanging it would be a beneficial act for humanity.

As always, the "antiwar movement" is a congeries, as in the last greatly disputed war, Vietnam. One faction can't abide the prospect of the USA going to war for any reason: the Unabridged Pacifist Coterie. Another isn't really antiwar, it's anti-US involvement in any war we might win: the Jane Fonda Redivivus Cabal. A third is unique to this situation: the Arab Street Will Be Pissed Off Sodality, nowadays an auxiliary of the old State Department Arabists. A fourth faction is the one anxious to make life as miserable as possible for Israel, erroneously believing that our upcoming war against Iraq will be catnip for Israel. Harvard president Lawrence Summers is loath to say outright that if it walks like an anti-Semite, talks like an anti-Semite, and smells like an anti-Semite, it's an anti-Semite, so I'll say it for him: this faction speaks to Martin Luther King Jr.'s insistence that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. This faction hates Israel and the Jews and doesn't want the US to do anything that might help either. In fact, our war against Iraq may well bring, initially, terrible destruction to Israel, but the Jew-haters don't know that.

Finally, there's the faction that thinks this would be the wrong war, certainly at the wrong time, maybe at any time. Its proponents make their case in today's Phoenix. They err in assuming that a pre-emptive war is inherently un-American and likely to set us on the fast track to many such wars. They assume that attacking, conquering, and "regime changing" Iraq would be a brand-new war rather than the continuation, after an 11-year lull, of the first Gulf War. They assume also that since we don't have authenticated photographs of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein lolling cozily in a hot tub setting Old Glory on fire, we can't reasonably assume these bad actors act in concert.

But we can, and must. Islamist terrorism is hydra-headed; recently, most of it has operated along Osama-inspired lines, a brainchild of the Wahhabist belief that everyone must be an ultra-orthodox Muslim or be slaughtered. But a part of this generalized terrorism is its secularist Baathist tentacle, headquartered in Baghdad and with a satellite branch in Damascus. Nazi Germany managed to make common cause with Fascist Italy and to incorporate the Japanese into its Axis as "little Aryans." So, too, the only rhetorically Muslim Saddam Hussein and the Islamist fanatic Osama bin Laden are twin pillars in the Middle Eastern terrorist war on civilization. For both, the enemy of their enemy is their friend.

Forgotten also in the ritual condemnation of pre-emptive wars is that they are often supremely just. Two examples: in 1967, Israel, recognizing what was in store for it were it to wait for Egypt, which was massing troops in the Sinai to tighten the noose, struck first, urging the Jordanians not to get into it; Jordan, as usual, stupidly paid no heed and lost Judea, Samaria, and Old Jerusalem for its pains. And in 1981, as France, the world's great model of lightning-quick surrender and 21st-century anti-Semitism, was assisting Iraq in building a nuclear reactor that could soon have been converted to weapons-making purposes, Israel struck and destroyed the facility. The whole world bellowed -- although much of the civilized world was privately, quietly relieved -- and today all but the "antiwar movement" is grateful for what Israel did.

Our upcoming "pre-emptive" war against Iraq will be criticized by much of the world, although a subset of the world secretly will be filled with joy. History will show that the US (and any nations that have the common sense to join us) rescued the world from those dreaded weapons of mass destruction. If the European Union is cranky about that, well, as they say in the EU salons, or at least in the French part of Brussels, tant pis.
-- David Brudnoy

In the end, a lot of it was a lie -- or at least an exaggeration. But throughout the Cold War, American and Soviet citizens lived under the constant threat of nuclear attack. The two nations' respective bogeymen, our governments relentlessly reminded us, had their fingers on Big Red Buttons that could fire missiles capable of hitting New York, Moscow, Pittsburgh, Minsk, Detroit, Leningrad, Los Angeles, Irkutsk, Washington, and everything in between -- precipitating, of course, the End of the World. It was never presented as an issue of "if"; just as a question of "when." The atmosphere was dreadfully unpleasant on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Like many of us, I lost sleep.

Today, the Bushies are determined to provoke a war over the possible presence of "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq, a remote nation so militarily advanced that if it wanted to deliver an atomic bomb to Detroit, it would have to buy it a train ticket. Never mind that any war is an atrocity that no moral person can favor. Never mind that we'd be aiming our proverbial elephant gun at the proverbial mosquito. Never mind that we'd be taking the lives of Iraqi civilians who don't possess a sack of garbanzos, let alone a weapon of mass destruction. Never mind that the war would put American lives in harm's way and expose 18-year-olds to the science of killing. Just consider President Bush's alleged justification for assaulting Iraq in light of the fact that the United States survived, occasionally prospered, and generally muddled on for decades while the Soviets sat with their Big Red Fingers poised over their Big Red Button.

Where's the emergency here? Okay, bogeyman du jour Saddam Hussein (granted, a petty dictator of comical proportions and fully capable of ungentlemanly behavior) could aim those WMDs at a target closer to Baghdad. But the Cold War Soviets could have taken out Finland or West Germany in an eye-blink, and (aside from a lack of will and a soupçon of decency) what stopped them? The mere threat of all-out hell-from-the-sky retaliation from the West, that's what. And the protection the US afforded our less-armed-to-the-teeth allies gave America a reason to demand gratitude and cooperation from everyone we shielded. It was idiotic, but, given the tenor of the times, the arrangement saved face and probably lives.

Not that the balance-of-terror deterrent is something I care to revisit. It was a dead-end bluff the last time we tried it. Weapons of mass destruction in anybody's hands are a bad idea, and gun-to-the-head diplomacy isn't exactly an enlightened approach to international relations. There are humane and civilized alternatives to sanctions and bullying that the oil-thirsty thugs in Bush's State Department haven't fully explored, and I'd prefer that creative avenues to peace were the focus of the current debate. "When do you think we should bomb Iraq?" isn't any more of a policy choice than what the Democrats gave us in the midterm elections.
-- Clif Garboden

When Iraq first entered the public debate several months ago, my first thought was, "Huh?" I, and most of the country, had been laboring under the belief that we were right in the middle of something else -- catching the guy who orchestrated the attacks of September 11. But as usual, I, along with most of the country, was wrong.

The argument is that Iraq has not let our weapons inspectors in to verify that he rid his country of weapons of mass destruction -- a key condition to the end of the Gulf War. These "weapons" are a potent threat, George W. Bush alleges, since, as a fellow Muslim, Saddam Hussein is more likely to support the aims of Al Qaeda and may give some of those weapons to those who were involved in the 9/11 attacks. The lack of any compelling or publicly available evidence that Saddam is ready, willing, or able to do such a thing has, to date, had no effect on the urgency with which the president's argument for war has been presented. The argument, if I understand it (which would require employing what I call "distractive reasoning," a technique that I have not used since I was 12 and had to explain to my parents why I went to see Star Wars again instead of finishing my astronomy homework), is that Bush is still, tangentially, working on the whole 9/11 thing, but without doing anything that might result in actually finding Osama bin Laden.

To force Saddam Hussein to comply with our demand that we be allowed into his country in hopes that we find nothing . . . for this, they want to send my little brother -- who is part of the active military -- off to war. Don't get me wrong, he'll go. Not happily, but he'll go. And it's important that countries don't have weapons of mass destruction (excepting us, Russia, North Korea, possibly Pakistan, possibly India, and also maybe China, but definitely not any other Muslim countries).

Please don't tell my brother or me that this war is about democracy, or our way of life. Tell us that it's because we haven't made all that much progress finding the guy who killed our friends, and the president likes to look like he's doing something, anything, even if it is only obliquely related to the main task at hand, even if it means even more Americans will die. Plus, the president gets to publicly dominate a Muslim ruler who sometimes wears a turban, and who, if you squint real hard, looks sort of like Osama bin Laden (but only if he's wearing the turban).
-- Kris Frieswick

I was only nine years old when the elder Bush waged war with Iraq. I hated it, but only because the television coverage pre-empted my Saturday-morning cartoons. All my friends hated it, too.

I'm still surrounded by peers who hate the prospect of a war with Iraq, albeit for very different reasons. As a student at Brown University, arguably the most liberal college in the country, I hear a resounding cry against United States military action. But the most outspoken of the campus antiwar groups, Not Another Victim Anywhere (NAVA), has such a skewed perception of the United States that it makes me more conservative than I would ordinarily be.

After September 11, NAVA staged a demonstration during parents' weekend. On the college green, a group of students read bits of a poem. Each section of the poem condemned US actions abroad. Poor Afghans, they said. Poor Iraqis, they said. There was no mention, though, of the thousands of Americans who died at the hands of Arab terrorists. It seemed as if the members of Not Another Victim Anywhere thought the only lives worth demonstrating for were the lives of impoverished people in other countries.

If Iraq does not disarm in accordance with United Nations regulations, I am ready to support military action. Historian Howard Zinn was the keynote speaker during a recent teach-in at Brown about the looming war with Iraq. Zinn preached a message of disarmament, but not just for Iraq -- for the entire world. Global disarmament is a nice idea, but we don't live in utopia. For better or worse, we live in the real world -- a place with real threats. Many of the most vocal students at Brown, however, seem to believe in the unrealistic.

Perhaps I'd feel differently about this war if conservatives surrounded me. I didn't support US intervention in Iraq without the backing of the UN Security Council. Nor am I a fan of George W. Bush. But I do believe the world has reached a point with Saddam Hussein where war may be a necessary last resort. It would be nice if, as Zinn suggested, we could take America's huge military budget and put it into social services. But these social services won't mean a thing if Iraqi weapons make their way to our cities.
-- Jessica Grose

In the wake of the Republicans' unexpected midterm-election triumph, it may be unfashionable and even politically dangerous for Democrats to oppose a war in Iraq. And it would certainly seem that George W. has been given a mandate to rally the troops and send them packing to finish the job that his dad started.

But at this point, the real issue isn't whether we should do battle with Saddam Hussein, or even whether there is just cause for going to war with Iraq. After all, on both moral and political grounds, Hussein's regime clearly does pose a threat to stability in the Middle East, to American interests, and to the world at large. In fact, it could even be argued that a state of war already exists between the United States and Iraq. It just happens to be a vaguely cold war that's being fought in the economic sphere and at the United Nations.

So the real question is, how well is George W. doing? Or, less gently, what the hell is George W. doing? Because, if Desert Storm was the first major US war to be televised 24/7, then the cold front that's currently taken hold of US-Iraqi relations marks the first time that a modern president has been so indecisive as to sit back and make idle threats while the various strategies for a potential military operation spill out all over the pages of the New York Times. As a result, George W. has accomplished the one thing they teach you to avoid in International Relations 101: he's painted himself into a corner where he's got no choice but to go to war or end up looking sillier than Michael Dukakis's big ol' head in a tank turret. And he's given Saddam all the time in the world to read the daily reports about the various military strategies currently under consideration and to put his troops into the appropriate defensive positions.

And then there's the impact that this prolonged talk of war has had on the Saudis and most of our other Arab allies: it's given them plenty of time to get awfully cold feet. Then again, maybe there is a point to all this bumbling around. After all, if, at this point, George W. does manage to dislodge Saddam with the efficiency of a Desert Storm, he can then rightfully boast that nobody stands a chance against the US military, not even an enemy who knows how, where, and when we're coming. And we'll be able to tell the world that this time we did it all by ourselves. That should go over pretty well at the UN. It does make you wonder, though: whatever happened to speaking softly and carrying a big stick?
-- Matt Ashare

My war will be a connoisseur's war. A war for the sake of war, free of any need for just cause and, ultimately, any need for real justification. It will be a war like my favorites, a war like World War I and the Crimean War. (World War II? The Civil War? Too obvious. Too easy.) It will be a war fought largely because we've run out of other things to do. It will be a war fought without regard for rules, without concern for its effects on civilian populations, without questions about morality and justice. (All the best wars turn solely on questions of patriotism, anyhow. Or variations on a single question: are you patriotic enough to support the war?) It will be a war led by men who can't or won't consider the greater consequences of their actions, for the present or for posterity, and fought largely by people whose circumstances (crafted by those selfsame leaders over the course of decades -- with seemingly uncanny prescience) have left them with few alternatives.

My war will be a technophile's war. Like the other Bush's Iraqi war. It will be a war fought with gadgets, a war in which the key statistics won't be casualty counts but degrees of accuracy. It will be a war in which no one ever asks why the missile hit the hospital, but only by how many centimeters it missed the reputed weapons factory. It will be a war related back to the people funding it (financially and morally) by animatronic journalist robots. The warriors' agents will feed whatever information, whatever half-truths, whatever jingoistic slogans they're peddling at a given moment to the androids in front of the TV cameras and the robots in the control rooms. And the mechanical information-laundering process will pass the "news," free from the stink of the propagandists who created it, on to the people.

My war will be a cynic's war, a war like every other war. It will be a war that drags on not for the weeks or months that have been promised, but for years. It will be a war that sends planeloads and shiploads of young Americans home in boxes. It will be a war that calls those corpses heroes and ensures they are received as such in the churches and the funeral parlors of their hometowns. It will be a war that denies treating its dead as little more than means for justifying its own continuance. It will be a war that pretends, without so much as a telling wink, that those heroes' bodies are viewed as something more than steppingstones by a leader who was morally bankrupt long before he ever cheated his way into office. It will be a war that eats the very population and subverts the very ideals it purports to protect. It will be a war that is said to be nearly over when it's only beginning, over when it isn't halfway there.

My war will be the last war ever fought. And the war that comes after that.
-- Sean Glennon

I was in Cairo during the 2000 presidential elections, that tense time when no one knew who was going to be the president of the United States. What I remember most about that November is not the graphs and maps on CNN, but the teasing of Egyptian cab drivers and waiters. They loved that the world's only superpower and loudest champion of democracy couldn't fairly elect its own president.

When the jokes died down, I was surprised to learn that many of these cab drivers and waiters preferred George W. Bush over Al Gore (especially considering how much they loved Bill Clinton). Their reason was even more surprising: they thought his father, the commander in chief during Desert Storm, was a hero. For most of them, the objectionable aspects of Desert Storm were far outweighed by the political imperative of stopping Saddam Hussein's colonial aspirations in the Persian Gulf. Although they were unhappy about the political division of the Arab world and the use of Saudi Arabia (a Muslim holy land) as a staging area for the United States Armed Forces (a Christian army), they thought Saddam Hussein should be punished for invading Kuwait.

A war in Iraq now would be entirely different. Although our current Bush is using the same slogan as his father ("Saddam Hussein must be stopped"), there is no immediate, tangible thing that the United States military can stop Hussein from doing. Without this immediacy, it is hard to justify supporting a war. I seriously doubt that the cab drivers and waiters who once teased me would support the son's "first strike" in the way they supported the father's "strike back."

Although Arab governments have lined up behind UN Resolution 1441, we should realize that a war in Iraq would probably swell the ranks of those sympathetic to the objectives of Osama bin Laden. I don't mean to suggest that all the cab drivers and waiters in Cairo will join Al Qaeda if the United States attacks Iraq. But we should take them into account. Although we can count on the support of Arab governments that rely on our foreign aid and trade agreements, we cannot rely on the support of their citizens.

A more thoughtful government would stop to consider the reaction of an unsettled Arab population increasingly bombarded with the call of militant Islamism. A more thoughtful government would also assess the wisdom of attacking a country for producing weapons it hasn't used. But our government probably won't.
-- Michael Lukas

These are ugly times, the kind I hoped that, as an American, I would not experience.

Never before have we had a president who was so obviously owned by corporate interests. Don't believe the hick act, if you still do. George Bush is a slick, manipulative liar whose primary objective in attacking Iraq is establishing a military base there to protect Big Oil's interests in the Persian Gulf. This became important to Bush and his owners when the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks revealed that Saudi Arabia is not the ally it was considered to be, but rather a country capable of switching its allegiance to Islamic extremists should it decide it no longer wants America's oil dollars.

In their rotten, dark-scoundrel hearts, members of the Bush administration quietly thank Osama bin Laden for opening the doors at home to a decade of foul legislation they'd unsuccessfully sought to pass restricting the rights of American citizens. Many sections of the Homeland Security Act are deliberately structured to begin dismantling free speech and other civil liberties, and to establish a Kremlin-like federal culture in which anyone can be spied upon at whim and thrown into prison under the pretext of suspicion. If you think this administration has the best interests of Americans, or humanity-in-general, in mind, check its record on environmental issues such as global warming or oil farming in the Alaskan wilderness, or its stance on national health-care initiatives or education.

I'd go so far as to call this part of a long-term conspiracy by the corporate oligarchy for which the Republican Party has become the primary mouthpiece. The Reagan administration began deliberately dismantling nationwide education initiatives and devaluing intellectualism as part of a plan to dumb down a new generation of citizens who have now come into adulthood. How else to explain recent survey results indicating that younger citizens support Bush's intentions to wage war on Iraq, while middle-aged voters view the president's efforts with skepticism? Or the conviction of marketing experts that the generation coming into adulthood over the next decade will be the most susceptible ever to advertising? A generation of consumer cattle, bred by the fed. I hope these stupid little fuckers will prove this aging bastard wrong. But it's obvious that even older citizens have caved under the weight of two decades of propaganda. How else to explain the election of an unqualified corporate raider like Mitt Romney as the governor of Massachusetts? Government is supposed to be a benevolent institution that takes care of us, not an industry led by cost initiatives. How the hell did we ever let things go so wrong?

Now, I hate Osama bin Laden and believe that he should already have been brought to justice (although it's great for a smoke-and-mirrors operation like Bush's to have a live scapegoat). I also believe that Saddam Hussein is a murderous scumbag. But war is vile. And we've already seen in Afghanistan that this war is going to be altogether different from the first, high-tech Gulf War. It will be up-close and messy, opened by bombs and long-distance-weapon fire, but brought to its ultimate result -- if it can be -- by close-quarters fighting akin to the battles our troops fought with Al Qaeda members in that desert prison, in hospitals, and within the walls of homes in small villages. It will be personal and terrifying, and it has the potential to cause the kinds of death and injury to US troops and civilians that we have not seen since Vietnam. It will do nothing to prevent terrorism in the US or to make anybody's life better. The opposite is likely. Blood for oil and corporate wealth. Is that a trade a responsible president would ask us to make?
-- Ted Drozdowski

It's difficult to imagine that it was once honorable to wage war; that the English and the French would stop fighting at sunset and sort out their dead and wounded peaceably. Of course, that's nostalgic hooey. They were probably just limited by their technology. If they'd had night-vision goggles during the Hundred Years' War, I'm sure they would have kept fighting through the night. Now, thanks to that same technology, war has become a video game. There isn't much honor in winning a video game. Most of us just hit reset until we win.

And when aren't we playing that video game? Are we at war with Afghanistan? In Afghanistan? Reset. With Colombia? In Colombia? Reset. Did we win the war against Bosnia? Against Iraq the first time? I'm not sure, but the game's over. I know we won World War II because I've played Medal of Honor. And they don't make video games about the wars we've lost. There's no game about Somalia, right?

In the video games, we become the people -- soldiers and civilians (are we all soldiers in the war against terrorism?) -- who are fighting for their lives. That makes sense. If somebody's about to kill you, you try to stop them. You kill them. Isn't that Bush's central argument for Gulf War II? Saddam is trying to kill us, so we're trying to stop him? Or is it that Saddam is trying to kill someone else (his own people, the Kurds, those poor Kuwaitis), so we're trying to stop him? Or maybe we know (or think) that Saddam has the power to kill lots of people (maybe us, maybe not, maybe Israel), so we're trying to stop him from doing that (assuming he can do it and wants to do it, which he obviously does because he's evil, obviously).

North Korea is much the same -- you know, it's evil, it has bad weapons, it wants to kill people -- but we don't want to play that game.

Even a bad video game gives you a set of clear objectives. Mission: go into Iraq. Mission: assassinate Saddam Hussein. Mission: install your own puppet regime. They may be blunt, but they're easy to follow. Bush would win points with me if he were at least clear about what he wanted.

No self-respecting video game would ever come up with something like: go tell your citizens and the world that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction even though you, yourself, are not actually sure; then, without confirmation one way or the other, start amassing troops on its border until you just get impatient for an actual excuse and make one up about Al Qaeda or some other secret intelligence source so that you can start dropping bombs and controlling its oil. Warning: if Saddam really does have chemical and biological weapons, like you say he does, then you're totally fucked because he'll use them against your troops -- your own CIA says so -- and the casualties will be criminal.

My father took shrapnel during World War II in the Aleutians. After his death, when I was very young, my surrogate father for two years was a career Marine who fought in Korea. Having loved and respected them both, I still have a rather healthy respect for the military and those who serve.

Perhaps this is why I am so furious that our president -- who never served in the Army and dodged his National Guard duties in Alabama -- and the "chicken hawks" with no battle experience who surround him are so eager to send our kids off to a pointless war in Iraq, all in the cause of supporting America's Big Oil plunderers.

Many of these servicemen and -women are people who admirably signed up to fight for the United States in response to 9/11. Iraq is not 9/11. It is a contrived, distorted attempt to demonize one person -- Saddam Hussein -- making him the whole reason why the US is despised abroad, with Dubya looking like a tinhorn diplomat. Simply a bad premise, but we've allowed the administration to build upon it. Castles in the sand.

It is very easy -- as well as cowardly and ethically bankrupt -- to make other people's children do your dirty work. One can easily imagine young George Bush paying his elementary-school friends to fight his battles for him. I doubt he was ever in a real fight in his life -- unless it was a fight with pom-poms at 10 paces at Andover cheerleading practice. He sure has no qualms about sending America's young men and women -- not his own daughters, mind you -- into a senseless battle based on a fictitious rationale. And don't look for anyone with the surnames Rumsfeld, Perle, or Wolfowitz to be leading the charge into Baghdad either.

I was in college when Selective Service drew numbers to determine who might experience the joys of Vietnam during monsoon season. Many of my friends now have children who, if we go to war with Iraq, might face a similar situation. These parents range from liberal academics to conservative, former state troopers who have served in the Army. I have yet to see any of them do anything other than bow and shake their heads at the thought of their child going to the Middle East to fight for a nonexistent cause.

Who is George Dubya Bush sending to war? You. Or, if you're old enough, your kids. Those who aren't rich will take the incoming, while Bush's daughters and the offspring of his political cronies -- and of those across the congressional aisle on the Democratic side -- will be doing tequila shooters after another tough week of attending classes at prep schools, Yale, Texas A&M, and other universities.

I wouldn't have fought in Vietnam even if my number had come up as a low ball. And if I were 20 today, and facing a war with Iraq, I wouldn't even consider being dragooned off to Iraq to make sure some oil-business suit can make the payment on his Mercedes or grab lunch on Capitol Hill with Big Time Cheney.

After the Vietnam War was over, it took another 10 years before I realized why the draft board for Fairfield County, Connecticut -- the place where I grew up and one of the richest suburban areas in the country -- was located in Bridgeport, a poverty-stricken shit hole. The good fathers of Fairfield realized that if and when the draft ever came up -- as it did, with fangs bared -- the local quota would be quickly filled by the poor white, black, and Hispanic kids from the city before ever getting close to college-deferred wonder boys from Westport, New Canaan, and Greenwich. This realization shamed and humiliated me like nothing I had ever felt. And it made me sick to hear about the experience of Vietnam from friends and relatives who served there -- almost all of whom came back with a variety of visible and invisible wounds.

George Bush and his cronies are sending other people's children to die for a bogus cause. It's becoming more and more evident every day, as the lies about US motives come flying in from Washington. Mothers and fathers must be looking anew at their teenage sons and daughters, and considering what a hideous fate they may face. Perhaps it is time for them, and all of us, to say to the Bush administration and its armchair generals, "We regret to inform you . . . that our child is not fighting your dirty war."
-- Chip Young

I'd like to eat just nuts and flowers. Animals have feelings, I'm convinced. And I really don't believe another being ought to die so that I can live. But when dinnertime rolls around, I get a hankering for what commercials that featured the late Robert Mitchum said should be "what's for dinner." There's nothing like a cow, with those big, brown eyes, to satisfy a carnivore as a hunk of tofu just never will.

In the same way -- but, I hope, more seriously -- I believe in nonviolence on a broad scale. I'm against the death penalty in every case. And I despise war.

In recent months, I've become obsessed with the bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians. With the arrogant detachment that only an outsider can muster, I deplore the endless point and counterpoint conducted by both sides. Thousands of miles away from the fray, anyone can see the futility of attack, retaliation, attack, retaliation, and attack some more. War doesn't work.

But I'm also a child of the Cold War. Born during what was unquestionably a just war, I often think of how my parents' generation stopped evil in its tracks.

And later, these World War II victors played nuclear roulette with Russians, fought creepy, dirty subterfuges across the earth, and eventually won the arms and the economic race to stop the Evil Empire. Frankly, as a liberal, I've always resented Ronald Reagan's claim that he won the Cold War. Containment of an expansionist Soviet Union was a policy implemented by men and women who had learned about stopping evil the hard way, not by playing at it in the movies.

Reluctantly, I believe some wars must be fought. But in my old age, I've come up with some simple tests for which ones they should be.

The first test is that war should be a last resort. The Bad Guys have to be on the move, and our own existence should be in such peril that there's absolutely no other alternative. It has to be defensive, and not a first strike.

The second, and very reliable, personal test of war-worthiness is whether I -- as imaginary commander in chief -- would order to the frontlines not only myself and my wife, but also our three children.

Would I order my granddaughter to a war? Would I send her to kill and maim other warriors? To dispatch her and her foxhole companions to commit the inevitable atrocities of war, to slaughter children and undertake other collateral accidents? Would I have her experience all these and other unspeakable terrors, then celebrate her homecoming as she arrives in a straitjacket, a wheelchair, on crutches, or zipped into a body bag?

You cannot know the priceless, unspeakable joy of life until you have had a grandchild like my beautiful Alexandra.

And this stupid, testosterone-infected, pick-on-somebody-smaller-than-you abomination that George W. Bush has cooked up and somehow hypnotized the rest of the world to believe in, this is not a war worth the life of Alexandra Judith Todorovic-Jones.

You cannot have her, George Bush, you dumb, careless opportunist. Nor can you have any other of the world's priceless children.

First off, to say that America is going to war against Iraq is a bunch of horseshit.

In the coming weeks, the leaders of our country will, very likely, empower the military to attack Iraq. This means that a group of young men with high-tech weaponry will drop bombs and fire bullets at a vastly overmatched army, and, inevitably, at thousands of innocent civilians, who, by their own poor fortune, happen to live in Iraq. Most Americans will watch the Pentagon's approved video feeds on CNN and listen to the sober pronouncements of the anchormen and tell themselves: we are at war!

But they won't be at war. They'll be sitting snug in their heated homes, with their children safely tucked into bed with a fridge full of food and a couple of excellent vehicles in the driveway, watching other people die. That is not war, and it dishonors those people on earth -- including our very own citizens -- who have endured the grave sacrifices of an actual war.

Now: I'm not going to sit here and make some half-baked plea for pacifism. Saddam Hussein is a murderous despot and -- like most of the Arab world -- a virulent anti-Semite, and he was all these things 20 years ago, when American leaders were helping him establish his dictatorship. It is certainly possible that he will lash out, if allowed to develop weapons of mass destruction (though more likely at Israel than at America). That is what the Bush administration would like us to believe, and I'm not going to pretend to know otherwise.

But I, for one, am getting good and tired of watching a draft-dodging, failed oil executive -- who ascended to the presidency through the most vile, undemocratic judicial chicanery in the history of our nation -- frame the debate. Is there not one brave person in all of Congress who will stand up and call a spade a spade? Bush is pushing for this war, in part, because the economy is in the crapper, his tax cuts have drained the federal surplus accrued during the Clinton administration, and he has no idea what to about it.

If the attacks of September 11 taught us anything, it's that Americans are viewed by much of the developing world as greedy bullies. Bush's war-mongering only reinforces that impression. His foreign policy -- to dignify that term -- is a monumental failure of imagination.

This is the precise moment in world history when America needs to step up to its challenges morally -- not through brute intimidation, but by devising a more rational response to our new role as the lone superpower. That begins by realizing that we are, to a greater extent than anyone ever dares to say, greedy bullies. We continue to hog most of the planet's resources and to treat the rest of the world as client states whose most useful role is to supply us with cheap goods and labor.

Rather than leading the effort to conserve our dwindling natural resources -- not just oil, but clean air and water -- the Bush administration has rolled back environmental regulations and sought to turn the Alaskan wilderness into a petroleum free-for-all. Rather than declaring war on world poverty, we've chosen to accept that might makes right, that we can send our boys overseas to kick some towelhead ass and that will make us all safe in our SUVs.

What amazes me isn't that George W. Bush would seek to sell us this feeble and shortsighted brand of logic, but that the good and decent citizens of this country are so morally listless that they buy it.

I do not trust my government. I do not trust the media. Osama bin Laden is dead. Osama bin Laden is alive. We're going to war. We're not going to war. Be scared of terrorism. Be more afraid, like code-red afraid. Worry about anthrax. Fret about smallpox. Fear the thug in Iraq. Ignore the dictator from North Korea. Forget about corporate crimes. Disregard the faltering economy.

I consume the news in disbelief. The American people -- fooled by the president's arrogant preaching -- overlook his hypocritical message: we will use our weapons of mass destruction if Saddam doesn't get rid of his.

When we go to war, we become the terrorists. Thousands -- or hundreds of thousands -- of innocent Iraqi civilians will die. Our smart bombs will cause carnage. Our missiles will knock down apartments, hospitals, and mosques. Our artillery will destroy neighborhoods. Our bullets will murder the blameless. Our actions will obliterate a country and further destabilize a region already filled with people who hate America. Our brutality will trigger more violence from our enemies.

If the US military's exploits in Afghanistan are any indication, Saddam will survive unscathed, just as he did after battling Bush's father. He is a man surrounded by doubles and look-alikes. How will we know if we ever get the real Saddam? He will become a secular bin Laden, taunting us from an undisclosed location while his surrogates wage a war of terror the United States is not prepared to fight.

The armed forces have begun the grand migration of personnel and equipment for Gulf War Two. The pollsters wonder if the American public can handle casualties. The more realistic question, though, is whether we understand that most of our deaths will be the result of accidents, blunders, or mathematical errors.

That's what we forget during these days of patriotic fervor and militaristic boosterism: we can kick Saddam's ass, but not without mistakes. Remember, most of the American casualties in the first Gulf War died as the result of "friendly fire," the polite way of saying, "We fucked up." It's unpatriotic to discuss the incompetence of the armed forces. We're led to believe that our crack troops are perfect and strong. But most of today's sailors and soldiers volunteered during peacetime. And these inexperienced warriors will be almost worthless in the battles that follow the initial high-tech bloodbath.

Bush is using Saddam to distract Americans. Bush and his handlers have hypnotized the masses into believing Iraq is our worst enemy. He doesn't want us to realize it's almost impossible to beat the small cells of militants -- armed with box cutters and airplanes -- who infiltrate our society. Instead, he wants us to focus on a traditional foe with borders and buildings, on a tangible measure of alleged success and on kill rates.

Although he claims to be a Christian, Bush's war-mongering shows he's just a poser with a Bible. I'm pretty damn sure Jesus wouldn't recommend slaughtering a country in order to punish its leader. I don't think the Savior would agree with our weapons strategies, or our willingness to fight over oil or to wage war in order to revitalize the sagging defense industry.

We need to seek peace. It's as simple as that. Every other option is complicated and painful. But easy changes to our foreign policy could defuse global conflict. We need to eliminate our dependence on oil. Remove our troops from countries where they're not welcome. Stop giving despots guns and money and biological poisons. Disarm all nuclear weapons on the planet. Stop playing these war games that will haunt us forever.
-- Chris Barry

All right, Mr. President. Let's ignore the vapid, matted-haired peaceniks whose anti-Americanism is so reflexive and ingrained that they'd sooner cook Osama bin Laden a vegan meal than countenance hunting him in Afghanistan. And let's forget about your creepy "chicken hawk" plotters who are so fixated, so obsessed with sending low-income 19-year-olds to die in combat even though they themselves craftily eluded conscription a generation ago. Both of these groups are immaterial now. Because, like many other spoiled children, you've complained and fussed and hectored for so long that it looks like you'll finally get the war you want so badly.

But, Mr. President, leaving aside the fact that you still haven't given us a cogent argument as to why we need to do this now, please answer this question instead: then what do we do?

Because no one in your administration has offered anything more than boilerplate bromides when confronted with explaining what exactly the plan is once the military campaign is over (it should be relatively quickly, we're told) and Saddam Hussein is gone. It's not because no one is asking.

What sort of government will you install in Baghdad? You'll have to do it quickly. Who will it be? The Iraqi National Congress or other exile groups? The US by proxy? Somebody like the shah? (Or like Saddam used to be?) I read an Associated Press report about some plans in the works to "use American and other foreign troops as a stabilizing force until a new government is formed." ("The United States will not cut and run," assures Ari Fleischer.) But what exactly does that mean?

And what about the myriad other hurdles after that? Iraq's enormous debt? Internecine squabbling and vendettas among the country's fractious ethnic groups? Iraq's nervous neighbors? What about tending to the injured and destitute? Food, medicine, education? I remember how you used to jeer at "nation-building." Can I believe someone's mind changes so quickly? Or do you plan to palm that yucky stuff off on the UN? (An organization that's worth something sometimes.)

It just seems like you're putting the cart before the proverbial horse. You're very intent on disarming and dethroning Saddam, that much is abundantly clear. But I've seen very little evidence of serious, specific thought about the whole range of responsibilities that will arise after we've "won." How much have you pondered what happens next? In the November Atlantic Monthly, James Fallows wrote a cover story called "The Fifty-first State?" that deals with "the inevitable aftermath of victory in Iraq." Did you read it? In researching the piece, Fallows consulted with "spies, Arabists, oil-company officials, diplomats, scholars, policy experts, and many active-duty and retired soldiers." Have you? Or have you talked only with Richard Perle?

I'm not saying the challenge we face is impossible. Nor -- I feel compelled to spell out -- am I saying I'm against it out of hand. I just wish you'd be a little more forthcoming about how, specifically, you plan to tackle it. I keep hearing Paul Wolfowitz talk about this shining beacon of Iraqi democracy, the cornerstone of a new Middle East, that will rise from the ashes of Baghdad when the smoke finally clears. Of course I hope it does. I'm sure the Iraqi people do too. But what if they elect someone you don't like?

At the very least, you know all this will be extraordinarily expensive. You seem very willing to go to war alone; are you equally willing to shoulder the financial imperatives of reconstruction? In this economic climate? Without raising taxes? Do the American people know about this?

Yes, we did the brunt of the work in refashioning Germany and Japan in our image after World War II. But we did have some help. And it took a lot of time and a lot of money. But look what we've done on other occasions. We routed the Soviets from Afghanistan. Then we "cut and ran." Look what happened next.

Mr. President, all I'm saying is this: your guys are very good at leaking war plans to the papers. Let's see them leak some reconstruction plans. Because we can't afford to make this up as we go along. Not now.
-- Mike Miliard

When the first Gulf War broke out, I was with a girlfriend, touring Acadia National Park, in Maine. We had only been there a matter of hours when the news came on the car radio -- a breathless, jittery dispatch from downtown Baghdad. We pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the engine. It was a lovely spot: moss-freckled rocks, wrinkle-free waters, snow-capped spruce trees. I remember thinking how strange it was to be sitting there, not a cloud in the sky, barely a breeze, listening to Baghdad burn.

The truly strange thing about that day, though, is how impassive I felt. Later, my girlfriend and I went back to our hotel room and ate sandwiches and watched CNN. "Wow!" I kept saying. "Holy shit!" I was dazzled by the fairy-light tracers that filled the sky, spellbound by the orange firestorm flickering on the horizon, the delayed and muted Boom! Boom! Boom! But I wasn't scared. The images on that TV screen hardly seemed real. I honestly don't think it even occurred to me that every flash signified pain and terror and death.

"America may not survive the second attack coming at it. BYE BYE AMERICA." These words, recently posted on a message board by someone calling himself Death4U, cannot be taken lightly. We've seen what our enemies can do when they put their minds to it. It's patently clear now that a US-led attack on Iraq could lead to a devastating response right here in America -- maybe even in Boston. Boom! Boom! Boom!

On a chilly Sunday morning not long ago, I sat beside Memorial Drive and gazed out across the Charles River. A few hardy scullers glided by. The occasional Red Line train slid across the Longfellow. I've sat in this spot many times, and I've never seen the city look so beautiful, so calm. Then it hit me: we could lose this. At that moment, I felt such anger that I think I actually growled. Then I just felt tired. Then sad. Then angry again. Muttering mad. How dare they. Bomb the bastards. Make them suffer. A couple of spandexed joggers lollopped by. Fuck.

Back in 1991, escaping the war seemed as easy as switching off the TV, taking a road trip to Northern Maine. No more. This time, I will have to take the fighting seriously. And maybe that's a good thing. What worries me, though, is the emotion that has replaced my indifference, the fury that courses through me now, the desire -- the need -- to see somebody pay. But who? We've been swatting at Al Qaeda for over a year, to little effect. It worries me that we may seek catharsis in Iraq. I am frightened. I am angry. I am bent on revenge. But I cannot rid myself of the thought that there may be someone like me, sitting on the banks of the Tigris River, looking out over Baghdad, wondering whether it will still be there tomorrow.
-- Chris Wright

My sister Randi was active in the antiwar movement during the Vietnam War, leading me to wonder, as a young child of six or seven, if I would one day wind up facing death on a foreign battlefield. Measuring the years between World War I, World War II, and Vietnam, my childish reasoning suggested the gaps in timing might allow me to avoid the next spasm of large-scale violence.

Prodded by my sibling, I wrote a letter expressing my conscientious objection to war (although I'd done my share of playing at mock-military games). As it happened, getting drafted was never a real possibility during the proxy wars of the Reagan era, so as a young man I sought adventure by traveling in vaguely dangerous places.

The closest I've come to a combat zone was when I caught up with a friend in Costa Rica in the spring of 1990, and we spent a few weeks traveling south through Panama and north to Nicaragua. The US had deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega a few months earlier, and the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, worn down in part by US economic sanctions and the CIA-supported Contras, was about to yield power to the US-backed Violeta Chamorro.

It was hardly a surprise that the official line in America -- Panama had been freshly liberated and something similar was happening in Nicaragua -- bore little resemblance to the truth. Panama City remained a seething cauldron of tension, while the Nicaraguan capital of Managua, although no less gripped by desperate poverty, was a surprisingly relaxed place even in the waning days of Sandinista rule.

Later that year, I watched as college-age members of the Connecticut National Guard squeezed off shots from their M-16s, readying for the day when they would face Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait instead of paper targets on a rifle range at Fort Devens. It was a very cold, very gray day in December 1990, and the prospect of war -- with heavy casualties all around -- hung in the air. I feared for the safety of these young soldiers and the other unknown consequences of the conflict.

The Persian Gulf War passed quickly, of course, with relatively few American casualties. But the possible consequences of a new war with Iraq are so much more serious -- heightened unrest in Pakistan, an even more volatile Arab-Israeli conflict, and enhanced support for the twisted worldview of Osama bin Laden, to name a few.

I find myself occupying a curious middle position in the post-September 11 world, believing that the fight against terrorism must be prosecuted by both military and altruistic means. I agree with those who fear that a US war with Iraq would distract us from -- and quite possibly worsen -- the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. Saddam Hussein is a villain, and he's unlikely to yield his possible weapons of mass destruction unless he's checked aggressively. But I still don't trust George Bush, and a far larger problem is posed by the too-prevalent mindset of those animated by hatred of the US.
-- Ian Donnis

It's official: the biggest question looming in people's minds these days -- people, that is, who don't live under a rock -- is if and when our fearless president will carry out his not-so-veiled threat to attack Iraq. Newspaper columnists, talk-radio hosts, everyday folk on the street -- it seems they all have an opinion. The war talk has become so rich that Slate, the online mag, just published the "Saddameter," a new daily column that monitors the chances of a US invasion of Iraq. Based on the latest developments -- arrival of weapons inspectors, positioning of American soldiers in Kuwait, firing at planes in the no-fly zone -- Slate pegged the possibility at 57 percent (and counting).

Me? Well, I must be one of those people who live under a rock because, truth be told, I don't especially care about the prospect of war with Iraq. I'm not frantically following the policy debate. I'm not anxiously soaking up the commentary on how life will change, although it very well might. The imminent war in Iraq has not consumed me.

Don't get me wrong. I despise Saddam Hussein as much as your average saber-rattling, gun-toting American. I know he has committed ruthless, inhumane acts. I don't doubt that he could, someday, once he has the actual capability, unleash a rain of firepower on the US. But a pre-emptive war -- any war! -- is terrifying stuff. I have a visceral reaction to its carnage, destruction, blood, and guts. The thought of war makes my skin crawl.

So, for that matter, does the thought of George W. Bush, who has offered up little evidence to convince me that an assault on Iraq equals an assault on terrorism. I find it hard not to see Bush as a crafty manipulator whose primary objective has far more to do with controlling those vast Iraqi oil reserves than with protecting innocent Americans like me. After all, ever since the September 11 attacks, he and his minions have set about tromping on the very liberties at home that they say they want to defend abroad.

Which brings me back to my indifference to the prospect of a war against Iraq. It's not that I don't care about sending our troops into combat because, naturally, I do. I just happen to care more about the things that I watch unfolding here. Things like the near-unstoppable effort to make permanent the shameful Bush tax cuts for the richest one percent of Americans; the Bushies' much-anticipated march to stack the bench with reactionary judicial nominees; and the little-noticed provision in the Homeland Security Act that would allow the Pentagon to spy on the consumer-spending and video-watching habits of regular, law-abiding citizens. The list goes on and on.

These stories are what I want to find plastered on the dailies' front pages, displayed on the evening news, chatted about ad nauseam on the 24-hour cable circuit. But instead, it's all war talk, all the time: retired-military-general talking heads; flashy TV graphics; breathless play-by-play accounts of the Bush-Hussein tango. The countdown to "Showdown with Saddam" begins. Ho hum.
-- Kristen Lombardi

This is what I hate about current discussions about a possible (inevitable?) war with Iraq: they are hardly ever discussions. Most people's political opinions are formed by a mixture of personal experience, economic interest, gender expectations, and one's idea -- usually sentimental -- of what America stands for. In times of crisis, we all resort to the simplest, most reductionistic expressions of these opinions. As someone who has been actively involved with progressive politics since the mid 1960s, I am infuriated -- and disheartened -- when any criticism or qualm I voice about the Bush administration's foreign policy or war on terrorism is greeted with the dismissive comment, "Get over the '60s -- this isn't Vietnam." Of course it's not Vietnam, but it's not Pearl Harbor either, and Saddam Hussein isn't Hitler.

I understand that there is a strain of progressive political argument that easily slips into knee-jerk rhetoric enumerating the appalling, immoral errors of US foreign policy: the genocidal war against Vietnam, funding and training death squads in Central America, instigating "regime changes" (i.e., assassinations) in Chile, Cuba, and a host of other countries. But, quite frankly, this is not what I hear most progressives arguing. What I hear -- and say -- is not "This is another Vietnam," but "We don't want another Vietnam." That is very different. It is called remembering and learning from history.

What I hear from conservatives, however, is rhetoric that is far less nuanced. It is the rhetoric of insistent nationalism. I remember hearing such sentiments about Vietnam in the 1960s and early '70s, the constant reiteration of "America -- love it or leave it" and the far more frightening "My country, right or wrong." These declarations were called out -- and called upon -- to displace discussion. The antiwar movement (a wide range of groups and people, hardly all progressive) was demonized for even voicing criticism of US policy. It's true that the protesters themselves often did not promote fruitful discussion. Although it raised a startling, potent, and vital question, chanting, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" was as polarizing as the "America first" rhetoric. As with politics today, real discussion was hardly possible. But that was because -- in large part -- those with political and military power (and their supporters) were unwilling to have a discussion.

Most progressives I know today are willing to have a frank, civil discussion. But that discussion has to be a complicated one that involves the past and the nature of international politics. And it must be open to the possibility that the United States might not always be right. Complicated discussion is difficult when people feel threatened. During the 1960s and '70s, the "threat" of a Communist takeover of Vietnam -- which in retrospect appears so illusionary, so imaginary -- was enough to impede all civil political discussion. Life and politics are so much more complicated today that even the idea of such a discussion feels nearly impossible.

When I discuss Iraq with my less progressive friends, I try to be clear and avoid easy rhetoric. My basic theme is that war should be the last resort, not the first. It should be predicated on moral and ethical principles and waged with clear objectives against clear dangers. At this point in the discussion -- as rocky as it is -- it seems to me that a war against Iraq meets none of these criteria. Yes, I know that this isn't the 1960s and this isn't Vietnam. But I also know that we don't move forward with any sense of survival or integrity unless we have hard, open discussions about what we are doing and why; where we have been, and what we have done wrong in the past.
-- Michael Bronski

Ever a trend-bucker, I shall not gorge myself at the trough of post-9/11 American narcissism (USA!! THE NUMBER-ONE VICTIMS!!) to discuss how George W. Bush's bloodlust is causing me angst. Iraqi peasants have already suffered through a decade of harsh sanctions and harsher military assaults for the crime of living under a dictator, and now they face another massacre. They are the central figures here. It just happens that the amplification of their suffering serves exactly none of my best interests.

I do not drive an SUV, so I don't need a drummed-up war just so Western concerns can recolonize the world's second-largest oil field. How about mass transit instead of mass murder -- or at least a Toyota Prius instead of a Ford Expedition?

I don't need to distract the American people from White House complicity in the economic terrorism committed by odious corporations that have destroyed so many families. No war for me.

Unlike W., I don't need to deploy the Pentagon to create a horrific diversion from my irresponsibility (or worse, responsibility?) surrounding 9/11.

I needn't conjure up bogeymen to provoke fearful American silence as the Bill of Rights is decimated by religious fundamentalists, racists, and misogynists who dress like Ward Cleaver and attend Sunday services. During "wartime," penny-ante patriots like Kaiser Ashcroft, court-appointed president Bush, and Shadow Emperor Cheney face fewer challenges as they rationalize police-state activity. This is one of the reasons reactionaries are always looking to go to war.

If you love this country, you must ask: why send soldiers halfway around the world to purportedly defend freedoms that are under life-threatening assault at home?

This war will provoke rather than curtail terror. At least a few of the Iraqis, insane from grief after the upcoming hostilities, will join the ranks of terrorists who hope to visit American and Allied shores with ugly replies to the upcoming volley of Red, White, and Blue carnage.

I also don't want America's economically conscripted soldiers to take part in this insanity. These combatants needn't be wounded or killed to be victimized by war. Most will come home and suffer their post-traumatic stress in silence and obscurity. (How many Desert Storm yellow-ribbon-wavers have spent five seconds doing anything for that war's now-forgotten vets?) A dangerous few will follow the path of Timothy McVeigh or John Allen Muhammad and make a mockery of homeland security. Americans are more likely to die as the result of a crazed act of a damaged vet than at the behest of Saddam Hussein.

This isn't Gulf War II, it's Spanish-American War VI or VII. Remember the Maine? Please do. It was a hoax, and so are the rationales for the slaughter about to ensue in Iraq. Saddam is a vile and reprehensible dictator, but there is no believable evidence that he was involved in last year's attacks on the USA. What could make Saddam more dangerous is that if cornered, he could decide to use anything in his arsenal.

If it's now open season on repugnant and undemocratic leaders, then any number of heads of state, many of whom are close US cronies, had better start liquidating their national treasuries and checking to see if that invitation from the Duvaliers to visit France still stands.

People should not be killed simply because they live under the insane rule of an undemocratic strongman. If that becomes the only criterion necessary to rationalize an assault on unwilling subjects, then it will be time for some angst -- and air-raid shelters -- of our own.
-- Barry Crimmins

In 1968, I graduated from high school and entered college. It was a year of rage in this country. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were murdered. Riots marked the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Lyndon Johnson was hounded from office. And Richard Nixon made his comeback via a "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam. It was the year when America reaped the whirlwind, the passions of its discontent boiling over and spilling out for all to see.

I wasn't an antiwar activist in 1968, but as I observed the price paid by those who fought, coupled with the revelations that our government was lying to us and the rest of the world, the war became intolerable. I also became aware of the price paid by my father's generation, the people who fought in World War II. The past war was presented to us kids, growing up in the 1950s, as a glorious and glamorous time. But why didn't my father ever talk about his participation in the war? After all, he was in the Army Air Corps, CBI (China, Burma, India), not one of the major hot spots. He indicated he wasn't really involved in any combat, but I found this not to have been entirely true years later, when he described being shot at by Japanese pilots while working on an airstrip in India. It seemed there was a lot of pain, suffering, shame, and guilt about the Great Adventure that wasn't being discussed.

It's a much different world and a much different situation today, but some of the things that began to dawn on me back then have been reinforced by reading about the history of World War II and Vietnam. And I've come to hate war, hate the fact that we still resort to death and destruction as a way to "solve" conflicts. A closer look reveals that these conflicts do not even get solved.

Saddam Hussein is indeed a threat and international menace. Still, I believe there are more creative ways to combat this threat than waging a war. Will the United States be honest and acknowledge the huge part that our "strategic interests" (i.e., Iraq's oil reserves) have to do with all this? No, we will downplay the role of oil, stressing instead the connections (some real, some tenuous) between Iraq, Al Qaeda, and the other terrorist groups waging war against the US.

I don't trust Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the yahoos who have been willing to attack Iraq unilaterally. I don't believe in Bush's black-and-white vision of the world ("You are either with us or against us"), and I don't believe the world will become safer if we fight and "win."

The answers can be found only in a search for fairness and equity, justice and economic opportunity for all. None of this will come quickly or easily. In the meantime, yes, we must pursue and neutralize the terrorists and their organizations. I haven't been convinced that attacking Iraq is a part of the fight. Once again, it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for?
-- Rudy Cheeks

The brother of Jay Janowsky, my best friend in junior high school, was killed in Vietnam.

I remember going to Jay's house shortly after his brother Carl's death and seeing his mother sitting on a stuffed chair in the living room, weeping and weeping.

If we go to war with Iraq, more people will weep like Mrs. Janowsky. Most will not be Americans, because we fight technologically advanced wars in which few Americans die. And because the Pentagon meticulously controls the press, stopping real war scenes from being depicted, we probably won't see the mutilated bodies of children blasted by errant bombs or their mourning relatives. But sanitized or not, war is not required in Iraq.

I am tired of being embarrassed by my government. We are a great nation, but when we deal with other countries, whether it is Nicaragua, Chile, or Iraq, we can no longer be trusted. We were the hope of the world after World War II, but we have squandered that good will by meddling in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and most recently, the Middle East. We had no business in Vietnam, and we have no business going it alone in Iraq.

Several months ago, I was awakened by a huge bang coming from the direction of T.F. Green Airport, in Warwick, Rhode Island. My first reaction was, "It's a terrorist attack." My teenage son also woke up, thinking the same thing. Scared, he was going to come into our room, he told me later, but he thought we'd all be incinerated in seconds, so why bother?

The noise turned out to have been a loud thunderclap, but I do not want the threat of a terrorist attack always lurking in the back of my mind. And I do not want my son to give up hope for a better world.

An attack on Iraq will only further inflame the Arab world and encourage attacks on Americans by young people who despair because they cannot control their destinies. The US should work cooperatively with the United Nations to calm tensions and resolve injustices in the Middle East.

Instead, we strut through the halls of the international community like an obnoxious and musclebound high-school football player. Do we really need a military base in Saudi Arabia to ensure the safety of Cranston, Cleveland, and Colorado Springs? Isn't it time we told the Israeli government that we aren't going down the drain with it because a handful of zealous settlers think God gave them the West Bank? And couldn't we better use our money to rebuild schools, hospitals, and homes throughout the world, rather than amassing more weapons?
-- Steven Stycos

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Saddam Hussein is a menace to world security, and he must be removed from power.

I've been a close observer of Iraqi politics since the first Gulf War. But my support for President Bush's plans to go to war with Iraq stems from a conversation I had with Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman last March. Lieberman, who has wanted to rid the world of Saddam since 1991, when he called for "total victory" against the Baathist dictator, describes Hussein as a "ticking time bomb" and offers a three-part test to demonstrate the rationale for removing him from power. First, we must ask if Hussein is working to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Second, we must determine if he has demonstrated a propensity to use these weapons. And third, we must assess whether Hussein has a motive to use these weapons against America and our allies in the Middle East. The answer to each and every one of these questions is yes. And the evidence is there for anyone unwilling to be confused by reflexive antiwar rhetoric.

Is Hussein developing weapons of mass destruction? Hussein has tried at least once to build a nuclear facility. In 1981, it was bombed by the Israeli Air Force and destroyed. Two high-ranking Iraqi defectors -- including Khidhir Hamza, who worked on Hussein's nuclear program throughout the 1980s and 1990s and authored Saddam's Bombmaker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda (Scribner, 2000) -- confirm that Hussein is desperate to develop his own nuclear-weapons program.

Is he willing to use such weapons? In 1988, Hussein used chemical weapons against his own people -- the Kurds of Halabja and Goktapa. Thousands died. The effects of the nerve gas linger today among the survivors in the form of high rates of infertility, birth defects, and cancer. (To truly grasp this horror, read Jeffrey Goldberg's March 25 New Yorker piece on Hussein's nerve-gas attack against the Kurds. It's available online at www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?020325fa_FACT1.)

Is Hussein willing to attack the United States or its allies? In 1990, he invaded neighboring Kuwait. In 1991, he launched 39 Scud missiles at Israel. In 1993, he plotted to assassinate former president George H.W. Bush. His rhetoric repeatedly denounces America, Israel, and, often, the other Arab states.

One thing antiwar activists don't seem to realize is that it's been the official policy of the US government to work for Hussein's demise since 1998, when President Bill Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act, which mandates that America work with the Iraqi opposition to remove the dictator. The act also authorized funding of $97.5 million for the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the main Iraqi opposition group. Since then, however, a combination of bureaucratic bungling, quasi-official opposition from the CIA and the State Department, and inertia resulted in the government's failure to send those funds to the INC. My suspicion -- developed through numerous interviews with INC head Ahmad Chalabi -- is that factions within the US government, perhaps under pressure from other Arab regimes, would prefer to deal with Hussein in Iraq than with the unknown possibility of a relatively democratic opposition movement. Count this as yet another in a long line of devastating foreign-policy mistakes our government has made.

Opponents of the war with Iraq may believe that they occupy the moral high ground because they advocate nonviolence. But there is such a thing as making a just and moral case for war. President Bush may not be communicating it as effectively as he could, but such a case exists. If, five years from now, Hussein successfully arranges for a terrorist cell to detonate a nuclear bomb, killing 100,000 innocents, we will be guilty of not having stopped him when we could have. Didn't we learn anything from World War II? There is a special place in hell reserved for those whose willful blindness permits evildoers to do harm.
-- Seth Gitell

As one who expected President Bush to announce an invasion of Colombia by now, I am still adjusting to the idea of invading Iraq, trading in jungle boots for desert boots, switching dictionaries, and so on.

In terms of straight self-interest, I live on the price of oil like everyone else in America. Moreover, war makes refugees, and refugees start little ethnic restaurants. Global tragedy has often provided us with new cuisines. Iraqi food is ancient and complicated and delicious. (Colombian food is hearty mountain vittles.) Do you like good ethnic food? Support the war! If a war economy leaves people without money to spend in restaurants, I could write a lot of columns about thrifty cooking instead of reviewing New American bistros.

More personally and seriously, I'm reluctant to go along with Bush's apparent plan to invade Iraq again, and at the same time, I'm reluctant to join the active opposition (partially because of who else belongs to it, but mostly because I think the situation is complicated).

The best argument for invading is the stop-Hitler argument. I also have some respect for the price-of-oil argument. Unlike the Vietnam War, this would be a better war to win than to lose, if we cannot avoid fighting it.

On the negative side, my main concern is that in destabilizing a large secular Muslim country, we may be playing into the hands of Al Qaeda or other forces on the Muslim religious right. They surely knew the US would react after 9/11, and I think their hope was that the reaction would fall upon civilians in a way that would enhance the political standing of groups like theirs against the established governments in Muslim countries.

If we invade successfully, we will be in a position somewhere between where we stand in Afghanistan and where Israel stands in the West Bank. It can be argued that Israel had no choice; the same can't be argued if the US ends up occupying Iraq. I also wonder about the wisdom of tying our foreign policy so directly to the interests of multinational oil companies. I regret that President Bush did not draw on 9/11 to broaden his base of support away from the oil business and toward energy conservation, although I think he has dropped a few of the worst ideas for which he was elected. Of course, Americans accepted gas rationing during World War II, so perhaps the road to conservation runs through Iraq. That would be a bigger irony than looking forward to Iraqi-American restaurants, but Bush is already the president of Big Ironies. Invading Iraq because a Saudi terrorist blew up a restaurant called Windows on the World? Why not "Bikes for Bombs"?
-- Robert Nadeau

The endless blah-blah of idiots North of the Border on this subject is, of course, fuel for mockery South of the Border. Folks down here in Latin America feel like, "Hey, we've seen this movie before."

"Gulf War I" did not accomplish any of its stated goals, so why the sequel? I don't know how to talk to my countrymen anymore on this subject. They clearly don't respond to logic or reason. Between the "disaster groupies" (as a 13-year-old New Yorker friend described the post-9/11 mood in my hometown) and the macho little fucks who transparently seem to think, "Wow, we finally get our war!" (fucking morons), I am at a loss for words.

You believed in God the Father
You believed in Allah, too
You believed in a Goddess,
The Mother of you all
She made God and Allah, too

And you believed in love
You believed in love?
Said it was what you were fighting for
You once knew when
And how to fight
Now you just believe in war

You believed in Jesus Christ
You believed in Holy Ghosts
You believed in Mary Magdalene
She's the one who loved the most

Saint Maria, Sweet Maria
With her shamanistic chants
Her incense and her ointments
And her sacramental plants
Yes, you believed her heresy
Her prophesy and more
Now you just believe in war

You believed in MTV
You believed in rock and roll
You believed in Oscar, Emmy, Grammy,
Heisman, Nobel, Pulitzer
You believed in Super Bowl

And you believed the salesman
When he knocked upon your door
Put a beeper on your belt
And a screen upon your floor
Told you God was on your team
But he would not tell you the score
And now you just believe in war

You believed in Pentagon
You believed in World Trade
Now, look up in the sky, baby
Tell me what you see
Behold all that you have made

The problem wasn't terrorists
The problem wasn't thieves
The problem wasn't which God
But the way that you believed
Your wife went off to work today
She ain't comin' home no more
And now you just believe in war

You used to shout,
"Out, demons, out!"
Now you've become such a bore
Now you just believe in war.
-- Al Giordano

Tell you what, we Arabs are all the same. Uncivilized, America-hating, constantly ticking suicide bombers. I carry a stick of dynamite in my handbag just . . . in . . . case. Best get rid of us all before we can cause any more trouble. You had the right idea with Afghanistan -- I mean, look how well that went. Amazing how a few carefully planned massacres (and some not so carefully -- we all make mistakes) can bring a nation to its knees. So what if Osama's still out there, making threats, making plans? You messed those people up good, that's what counts. And with Iraq, it'll be a piece of cake. First of all, the country's barely recovered from the first Gulf War. And then the Iraqis are already beaten down, living under a leader who rules by fear and preserves sanctions that keep them in poverty. Easy prey. Almost too easy, really. But imagine the satisfaction. Show 'em who's boss.

And don't let anyone say you don't know how it feels. Because you do, don't you? You remember how sick you felt watching those buildings fall. You still feel the tightening in your throat when you think of all the dead, the horror, the grief. But the Iraqis are used to it. Hell, Arabs are always running around killing each other anyway. What difference does another war make? All those potential terrorists, hugging their nukes and hatching anti-democratic schemes. They're asking for it.

Sure, you could destroy thousands of lives and still come up empty-handed. But better safe than sorry. True, America might lose more of its own citizens fighting a threat that may not exist. But just because other Arab nations aren't worried about Iraq doesn't mean there's no danger (all Arabs are in cahoots, y'know). And yeah, this kind of knee-jerk reaction could alienate other leaders, making them reconsider their allegiance to a trigger-happy USA. But who needs friends when you've got guns and money? Besides, you've got to set an example. As an added bonus, you could get some pictures of dead Iraqis printed on T-shirts in time for the election. They know it's nothing personal. Because it's not. Right?
-- Jumana Farouky

Don't blame George Bush and his Hamlet-like need to avenge his daddy for our single-minded state of rabid war readiness. Blame Hasbro. In 1964, Rhode Island's industrial pride and joy instituted a new underage draft, enlisting little boys all over the country into the action army of G.I. Joe.

Hasbro promoted our boys from foot soldiers who had to fall down and die, to commanders in chief who sent 12-inch action figures to fall down and die for them. Though the toy's name evoked Willie and Joe, Bill Mauldin's WWII riflemen antihero cartoon characters, Hasbro dutifully employed the mind-numbing linguistics of the Vietnam-era military when conceiving its product.

In selling the toy, then-company president Merrill Hassenfeld threatened his sales force: "Don't you dare call G.I. Joe a doll!" According to toy historians, G.I. Joe was the first "action figure," a term that covered not only his martial intent, but also the psychosexual function of the 12-inch plastic fantasy. "Action," a euphemism for armed combat long before Vietnam, was branded onto childish gender identity, lending war the charm of snips, snails, and puppy dog tails.

Now, instead of principled responsibility, moral argument, and international responsibility, the Bush administration offers us hawkish enthusiasm, rowdy seriousness, and phallic bravado -- showing that it, too, was influenced by G.I. Joe's "new play pattern," in which boys and girls substituted imagining for doing.

It should be noted that the imaginative engineering of G.I. Joe differed from that of Mattel's Barbie, in that Joe was "naturally" anatomically different from his commodified Oedipal-mother counterpart. While form-figured Barbie was stiff-limbed and Chinese foot-bound, G.I. Joe had "knees that bent and wrists that pivoted." Joe was a more efficient toy, because as "America's Moveable Fighting Man," he had to get ready, take aim, and fire.

Hasbro's ingenuity was prescient. The Nation, the New York Times, and Canada's Globe and Mail have reported on how, in similar fashion, America's military is making our fighting men more efficient and less susceptible to the post-traumatic stress that plagued their predecessors. Our G.I. Joes are already blessed with flexible limbs, but the Pentagon is working to make their "moral autonomy" more plastic, that is, they're creating the "bulletproof mind."

This bulletproof mind considers violence "manageable." It considers the "intimate" killing of urban, house-to house warfare just another option of "quiet professionals." G.I. Joe will now kill "in a zone," guaranteeing that he'll "never feel sad" for the enemy or "be bothered" by the carnage he causes. This conditioning promises to increase what military historians call "the fire ratio," the regular use of weapons in combat. The fire ratio was so low on some occasions during WWII that about 80 percent of American soldiers failed to fire their weapons, unable to overcome the natural reluctance to kill.

Our soldiers' new psychological accessory may ensure the success of military missions, but it leaves behind questions about the postwar consequences. How will a nation -- and soldiers who fight a war with bulletproof minds -- participate in the peacetime effort to build democracy abroad? Why will we care about an enemy whose death doesn't bother us as much as a low fire ratio? And how will we play with each other here at home when some are moving "in the zone" of a militaristically conditioned moral autonomy?
-- Gloria-Jean Masciarotte

Ed just turned 17. He's my brother's son. Standing nearly six feet tall, he's a husky kid, but not fat. His complexion is fair, his crew cut light. Somewhat shy, he tends to mumble and mostly gives one-word answers to anyone his senior. He often needs a shave, but he's still at that age where flaxen facial hair is fluffy and fine, growing in wispy clumps rather than stubbly scrub. He lives in a small house in a Boston suburb with his mom and stepfather -- my brother and Ed's mother divorced about 10 years ago, and ever since then, Ed and his younger sister have split time between their parents.

Ed's a typical teenage boy. He cracks up at scatological jokes, laughs hysterically when his dad farts, watches Jackass religiously, and loves The Simpsons. When he laughs, he scrunches up his nose and snorts, but in an endearing way. He loves music, but is still too inexperienced with pop culture to realize that flash-in-the-pan bands like New Found Glory probably won't be around in another six months. He reveres Eminem so intently that he twice bleached his sandy hair bottle-blond and saw 8 Mile on opening weekend. He's a picky eater: on Christmas, his father buys him microwavable chicken patties so that he won't have to suffer through the baked ham and broiled haddock his grandmother dishes up. He's almost never left Massachusetts. He hasn't been to the prom yet, but he did have a girlfriend named Kailie for a whole grade -- eventually she kicked him to the curb for reasons he wouldn't disclose.

He likes to play games. He's obsessed with PlayStation and an expert at Grand Theft Auto III. Since the age of five, he's been a maniac about professional wrestling. Two or three years ago, he and his friends built a full-scale ring in one of their back yards and staged elaborate matches until a crabby neighbor called the cops. Later, a community newspaper wrote a sympathetic story about their 'rasslin' fiasco -- it was the only time I can remember seeing his picture printed in a newspaper.

Ed never really enjoyed homework or school -- neither did his dad -- so in eighth grade he enrolled in a regional vocational high school where he could learn a trade. He recently told his mother that he wants to join the service after graduation. Apparently, recruiters came to his school, and he's been thinking about it a lot, since it's his junior year and all. It seems like an easy option. It's hard to tell if he means it, but there's a very big chance he does.