Dying for War

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Monday, Colin Powell tipped his hand for Wednesday's UN speech, asserting that though there was still no "smoking gun," the world must face up to the fact that Iraq has flouted the will of the international community.

It's a peculiar charge to brandish in light of America's newly emphatic unilateralism.

Photo courtesy of Rigo Ordaz

Medic treating wounded POW. Delta Company Medic Pete Tovar treating wounded POW under the watchful eye of an M60 machine gun.

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• Saddam Hussein
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Indeed, American hypocrisy is easy to find in the bluster of the Bush administration. Appealing to Americans' genuine concern for human rights, for instance, Bush has reviled Saddam's abuses of his people. But official state torture of detainees in the Philippines hasn't stopped the U.S. from sending troops to help train that government's soldiers. It's easy, in fact, to get smug on such matters. The point, though, is that the U.S. has shaky credibility when it comes to the moral argument, especially since it supported the Iraqi regime during the period of its most egregious human rights violations. In any case, when it comes to mass murder—which war inevitably is—moral argument in the end is all that counts.

United States Marine Corps veteran Travis Lee Clark understands that well. As he says in his post to the sound-off board of Veterans Against the Iraq War, "For every person in the world who has not and will not harm me and my family, I likewise vow not to harm them and theirs."

Related Story:
"Blood, Stats, and Tears: How the Coming War Stacks Up" by Ward Harkavy

Information about the February 15 antiwar March can be found at unitedforpeace.org.