The world is desperate for a "third way" between war and ineffectual responses -- an alternative to war as the way to defeat Saddam Hussein. If we are to find an effective response to Saddam instead of a full-scale military assault against Iraq, that "instead" must be strong enough to be a serious alternative to war. "An Alternative to War for Defeating Saddam Hussein," Sojourners Press Release (Feb. 18, 2003)
Here is my question: Why is an invasion of a sovereign nation by the United Nations not a war? It was in the 1991 Gulf War. It was in the Korean "police action."
Another question: Is there any doubt that most of the troops and equipment would have come from the United States, just as they did in the 1991 Gulf War and the Korean "police action"?
I realize, Mr. Wallis, that your bona fides in the far left wing of the Democratic Party comes from your position as a peace activist. Part III of God's Politics is devoted to "Spiritual Values and International Relations: When Did Jesus Become Pro-War?. This is good positioning on your part. As a marketer, I fully understand what you are trying to do. It has worked for your entire career.
But I have this problem. I regard war as an organized act of violence, in which one army marches against another army. Yet your proposed "alternative to war" involved marching armies.
Worse, you called on the United Nations to invade a nation that was not a threat to the world, a nation under UN sanctions, with no-fly zones (enforced by the U.S. Air Force) and oil for peace, administered -- the correct word is "looted" -- by the United Nations.
Of course, you loved those no-fly zones. They were just your cup of tea, as your organization said in its mini-manifesto. Let me refresh your memory.
a. Military enforcement. Removing Saddam must be coupled with greatly intensified inspections to fully enforce all U.N. Security Council resolutions that relate to Iraq since the 1991 Gulf war. Inspections have shown progress -- the agreement by Iraq to destroy its Al Samoud-2 missiles is significant. But rather than simply increasing the number of inspectors, inspections must be conducted more aggressively and on a much broader scale. The existing U.S. military deployment should be restructured as a multinational force with a U.N. mandate to support and enforce inspections. The force would accompany inspectors to conduct extremely intrusive inspections, be authorized to enter any site, retaliate against any interference, and destroy any weapons of mass destruction that it found. A more coercive inspections regimen should also include the unrestricted use of spy planes and expanded no-fly and no-drive zones.
No-fly zones are safe for those administering them. The enemy is defenseless -- almost the way that taxpayers are defenseless when the government sends out its tax collectors to "help the poor." It's just your kind of peace-loving violence: safe, coercive, and State-expanding.
Here is your organization's plan for peace before the U.S. invaded Iraq -- again, in case readers have not seen it.
1. Remove Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party from power.The Bush administration and the antiwar movement are agreed on one thing - Saddam Hussein is a brutal and dangerous dictator. Virtually nobody has sympathy for him, either in the West or in the Arab world, but everyone has great sympathy for the Iraqi people who have already suffered greatly from war, a decade of sanctions, and the corrupt and violent regime of Saddam Hussein. So let's separate Saddam from the Iraqi people. Target him, but protect them.
As urged by Human Rights Watch and others, the U.N. Security Council should establish an international tribunal to indict Saddam and his top officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Indicting Saddam would send a clear signal to the world that he has no future. It would set into motion both internal and external forces that might remove him from power. It would make it clear that no solution to this conflict will include Saddam or his supporters staying in power.
You have this remarkable love of violence. You want tax collectors to stick guns in taxpayers' bellies and fork over their money to be collected by State bureaucrats on behalf of the Democratic Party's constituents, "the poor." The welfare State, to paraphrase Mao, grows out of the barrel of a gun.
Then when it comes to international peace, you call on the United Nations to do the dirty work for you.
Include me out.
I realize that your anti-war rhetoric is part of your long-term program of personal positional marketing. But some of us out here are not impressed with your bona fides. We see your commitment to peace as compromised by your goal of centralizing political power, both nationally (the welfare State) and internationally (the United Nations).
We also claim to follow Christ. Some are old enough to have opposed the Korean war. Others, including me, publicly opposed the Vietnam war, opposed the Gulf War, and consistently oppose the United Nations.
When we opposed the Iraq War, we were acting from a consistent position: opposition to all offensive wars. You did not. That is because, to put it bluntly, you are highly selective in your peace activism.
For a peace-loving man, you sure do love guns . . . as long as the guns are carried by officers of a State that you think best represents your constituents.
If there were a 12-step program for people who are addicted to government coercion, the testimonials would begin like this:
"Hi. I'm Jim, and I'm a power addict.""Hi, Jim!"
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