Seeing Red

A Question of Will
by Jon Evans

CHICAGO, Illinois (16 February)-- As the U.S. sits on the cusp of the largest military action since the Gulf War—in which it dropped some 1.77 million pounds of explosives and deployed over 500,000 soldiers—questions keep tolling in my mind: how does the U.S. government justify its intentions, and whose will does it represent?

No small matters, for with quotes like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s "we will have no choice but to take strong measures--not pinpricks, but substantial strikes," rolling off the wire, it is not difficult to realize the impending brutality of the situation.

Couple that with the New York Post's report on 2 February that a "top-secret directive" had been signed to allow U.S. forces to use nuclear weapons, in the event that Iraq unleashes biological weapons on its neighbors, and what we have here is a severely unnerving state of affairs.

The airwaves are filled with reports of how the U.S. will act, but the reasons why are never fully justified. The tune played most often, because it seems hardest to refute, is surely titled "Weapons of Mass Destruction". Who in their right mind would speak against disarming a madman wielding weapons out of a nightmare? That is the refrain, and it is a safe one.

Yet if the issue is weapons, explain the openness of Iraq and its repeated invitations for nearly anyone to come inspect for themselves. Or explain the 10 February call to all political parties to come to Baghdad to hear Iraq's side of the story. Or the invitation to the U.S. Congress to come inspect the disputed "presidential palaces." Or try to vilify Iraq's sole objection to the last U.N. inspections team: their overwhelmingly American composition. Everyone of these points receiving less newspaper column space and air time, in the U.S. media, than your average house fire.

But if it's not really the weapons, there's always Saddam Hussein himself....

Yet Saddam Hussein is not the target of U.S. military action, this point has been stressed more then any other. Washington has no intention of freeing the Iraqi people from his terrible hand, as the Kurdish people learned, to their bloody dismay, following the Gulf War.

So, if the issue is not the weapons, and it is not removing Saddam, it must be aiding the Iraqi people....

If the U.S. had any conviction to help the Iraqis at all, would some 600,000 children have died in the worst embargo this century? Would targets with reported "human shields" still be targets? Would there be any targets at all?

I sit on my couch, TV set on, and ponder these questions as the credits roll into "Chicago Tonight." This "public affairs" program takes panels of local esteemed brains and throws the toughest questions of the day at them. The program opens with a profile of a group, perhaps only three people strong, called "Voices in the Wilderness." They formed in 1996 with a rather unique objective: to "openly and publicly transport supplies through U.S. customs and U.N. checkpoints and into Iraq." They assault the sanctions with real pictures of starving and dead children, and disregard any threat of punishment to make whatever difference three people, with only a couple of duffel bags of medicine and two weeks off work, can make.

As the discussion heats up, the moderator throws this question to one Joseph Morris, a former Reagan appointeee who probably had a hand in selling Iraq the weapons the U.S. now wants to destroy: what does he think of Voices in the Wilderness and its actions?

His vile--and astonishing--response (paraphrased here): they are only second-guessing the policy of democratically-elected officials, policy made in their best interest, as well as, the best interest of the world.

What? In a sudden moment of calm, I ask out loud, "How is administering medicine to children a violation of any policy?"

If the U.S. recognizes the conditions in Iraq (and all the Third World, for that matter) as inhuman, if the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" claims are thin and unjustified, but they still choose to drop bombs, then whose will does that represent?

Theirs. And their will is certainly not ours.

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