I was recently asked why I thought it was a
bad idea for the President to initiate a war against Iraq. I responded by
saying that I could easily give a half a dozen reasons why; and if I took
a minute, I could give a full dozen. For starters, here is a half a dozen.
Number one, Congress has not given the
President the legal authority to wage war against Iraq as directed by the
Constitution, nor does he have U.N. authority to do so. Even if he did, it
would not satisfy the rule of law laid down by the Framers of the
Constitution.
Number two, Iraq has not initiated
aggression against the United States. Invading Iraq and deposing Saddam
Hussein, no matter how evil a dictator he may be, has nothing to do with
our national security. Iraq does not have a single airplane in its air
force and is a poverty-ridden third world nation, hardly a threat to U.S.
security. Stirring up a major conflict in this region will actually
jeopardize our security.
Number three, a war against Iraq initiated
by the United States cannot be morally justified. The argument that
someday in the future Saddam Hussein might pose a threat to us means that
any nation, any place in the world is subject to an American invasion
without cause. This would be comparable to the impossibility of proving a
negative.
Number four, initiating a war against Iraq
will surely antagonize all neighboring Arab and Muslim nations as well as
the Russians, the Chinese, and the European Union, if not the whole world.
Even the English people are reluctant to support Tony Blair's prodding of
our President to invade Iraq. There is no practical benefit for such
action. Iraq could end up in even more dangerous hands like Iran.
Number five, an attack on Iraq will not
likely be confined to Iraq alone. Spreading the war to Israel and rallying
all Arab nations against her may well end up jeopardizing the very
existence of Israel. The President has already likened the current
international crisis more to that of World War II than the more localized
Vietnam war. The law of unintended consequences applies to international
affairs every bit as much as to domestic interventions, yet the
consequences of such are much more dangerous.
Number six, the cost of a war against Iraq
would be prohibitive. We paid a heavy economic price for the Vietnam war
in direct cost, debt and inflation. This coming war could be a lot more
expensive. Our national debt is growing at a rate greater than $250
billion per year. This will certainly accelerate. The dollar cost will be
the least of our concerns compared to the potential loss of innocent
lives, both theirs and ours. The systematic attack on civil liberties that
accompanies all wars cannot be ignored. Already we hear cries for
resurrecting the authoritarian program of constriction in the name of
patriotism, of course.
Could any benefit come from all this
warmongering? Possibly. Let us hope and pray so. It should be evident that
big government is anathema to individual liberty. In a free society, the
role of government is to protect the individual's right to life and
liberty. The biggest government of all, the U.N. consistently threatens
personal liberties and U.S. sovereignty. But our recent move toward
unilateralism hopefully will inadvertently weaken the United Nations. Our
participation more often than not lately is conditioned on following the
international rules and courts and trade agreements only when they please
us, flaunting the consensus, without rejecting internationalism on
principle- as we should.
The way these international events will
eventually play out is unknown, and in the process we expose ourselves to
great danger. Instead of replacing today's international government, (the
United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, the international
criminal court) with free and independent republics, it is more likely
that we will see a rise of militant nationalism with a penchant for
solving problems with arms and protectionism rather than free trade and
peaceful negotiations.
The last thing this world needs is the
development of more nuclear weapons, as is now being planned in a pretense
for ensuring the peace. We would need more than an office of strategic
information to convince the world of that.
What do we need? We need a clear
understanding and belief in a free society, a true republic that protects
individual liberty, private property, free markets, voluntary exchange and
private solutions to social problems, placing strict restraints on
government meddling in the internal affairs of others.
Indeed, we live in challenging and
dangerous times.
