I understand the hawkish folks who want to go to war with Iraq. I agree that Saddam Hussein is a merciless, irrational dictator who can’t be trusted and that his continued violation of UN sanctions makes him a fair target in that regard.

What I can’t deal with are the rightist rationalists who attempt to portray the world through their one backward-facing lens in their attempts to justify on an absolute level why Iraq must be invaded. It doesn’t work that way, folks. Some of the hawks remind me of a kid sitting on the floor, fingers in his ears, face beet red with effort, wishing as hard as he can that a new bike will magically appear in front of him. Occasionally this kid takes a break and wipes his brow, but then returns to his rationalizing and wishing.

Unfortunately, wishing does not make it so. Those who so strongly desire war may wish that there were no other valid position to take… but this is not a clear-cut case by any means. The position that we should go to war is, essentially, a philosophical one. It is about morals, standards, and evidentiary process. Here’s my feelings on the major talking points:

1. Invading Iraq signals a major change on the part of the US and its relations with the rest of the planet because it is a shift from defense to outright aggression. I don’t think this kind of change can be taken lightly and I question whether it should be taken at all.

2. The conflation of war on Iraq with the “war on terrorism” is bullshit. First of all, there is no real evidence that Iraq has any significant role with Al Qaeda, and certainly none that it had anything to do with the WTC attacks. Undoubtedly there are some terrorists there. There are also some terrorists in Seattle, not to mention at least 20 other countries. That is not a justification for invasion.

3. The notion of “potential threats” is problematic at best. The argument is: we need to invade Iraq because they are a potential threat to the US and our interests. But isn’t that true of many nations? More to the point, isn’t it more true in some other cases? If we are going to invade anyone based on the potential threat they represent, we should be invading North Korea, Iran and Syria long before Iraq. There is no question that they possess greater weapons of mass destruction, have developed more enhanced technology, are represented by unstable leadership, are rife with anti-US sentiment, and have the capacity to strike out further than Iraq.

Moreover, the notion of striking out at potential threats cuts such a broad swath that it can be used to justify almost any action. “Defense” is called that because it has to be in response to an actual threat. Not a threat that might evolve.

4. Hawks can’t have it both ways when it comes to “proof” regarding Iraq’s capabilities. When they think they have some evidence in hand, suddenly it becomes a useful tool… but when such proof is difficult to obtain, they decide that proof is not needed anyway. The argument goes something like this: “well, here is proof that Saddam wants to have nuclear (or should I say nuceeler, ala Bush) weapons. Oh, that evidence is false, misrepresented and flawed? No problem, we don’t need evidence. The only evidence you will ever have is when a nuclear bomb goes off on top of your kids school. There is no way to have proof other than that.”

BZZZZZZT. Try again. There is a reason we have intelligence agencies, and a reason that “intelligence” has evolved to be a noun for material information. There is a whole range of evidence in between the two states of: a) knowing nothing at all, and b) living through a nuclear winter. Just as there is a whole spectrum of convincing evidence in a murder trial short of: a) a random guess, and b) having a dated videotape with the alleged perpetrator bludgeoning the victim to death while chanting his name.

We try not to throw people in jail based on the surmise that they might be prone to doing something wrong. The price for that system of justice is that we generally have to wait until someone does something. And then when we try that person, we actually have to have evidence. We can’t just stick our fingers in our ears and repeat “he a bad man, he a bad man” ala Limbaugh.

5. Not all “doves” are completely against an invasion. There are, of course, those who are philosophically opposed to that kind of action for any reason, just as some of those on the right are in favor of such action on philosophical grounds. Most of us (and that means most people around the world, judging from the protests against the United States’ proposed unilateralism) simply need more evidence. We need more than just the word of the Republican administration, and we need some proof of Saddam’s capabilities and rebuilding effort… the fact that he is a bad man who it would be convenient to be rid of is simply not enough.

Nor are all doves only pretending to want more evidence while being secretly committed to extreme pacifism. This contention drives me crazy. I will support an invasion in some circumstances. Specifically, I need: a) some credible evidence (the level grows higher with every backhanded attempt by the administration to make old evidence look new, every misuse of numbers and every attempt to make questionable evidence look like a sure thing), b) some sign of a long-term plan for leadership of the country and the region, and c) some sign of international support for the effort and for what will have to be a long-term commitment, lest we end up in the same situation again in 5-10 years.

6. Using the spectre of 9/11 to stoke the fire of anger, revenge, and resentment in support of attacking Iraq is wrong. It is immoral and repugnant. To attempt to shoehorn motivation for this attack as part of the war on terrorism is just as wrong. This does a disservice to those who died and the family they left behind by using them and their feelings as a pawn in a larger, political chess game.

7. While the statements can get easily blown out of proportion, there is nothing irrational or un-patriotic about noting that the pressure for an attack on Iraq has a political component. We may argue about the significance of that aspect, but it is undeniable that when it comes to domestic politics, focusing on invasion is a heck of a lot better for the administration than the sucking sound of our economy, the gasping sound of senior citizens who don’t get enough to eat or enough medication, the rape of our environment by administration special interests, or those kinds of topics that were all the rage not that long ago, and about which nothing has changed.

8. No one disagrees that Saddam is a bad man. He is likely mentally ill. He has murdered his own citizens by the hundreds. He is an opportunist who would love to be a larger power in the Middle East, and is willing to achieve that end by force. But the fact that he is a bad man is not a justification for an attack. If it is, then we need to follow that conclusion and attack other countries. We also need to step in and moderate many more conflicts than we do.

More importantly, though, I see little evidence that, at heart, Saddam Hussein does not live by the same rules of reflexive self-preservation that we all do. The idea that if he just had an ICBM he would definitely nuke the US is ludicrous. Saddam is sane enough to know that striking such a blow would end with most of his country turned into a parking lot. The only circumstance in which I would be willing to believe that he would use inter-continental nuclear capabilities would be, ironically, in the event that he were attacked.

I feel the same way, incidentally, about North Korea, a nuclear power, whose leadership is at least as irrational as Hussein, but about which no one seems particularly concnerned, even the hawks. Why is that? Why would we intervene in one place and not the other? Or is that argument merely a subterfuge?

Or perhaps we only undertake actions with little physical risk that achieve a political end?

Whatever the case, once we lance this boil based on the smallest thread of supposition, what is to protect the rest of our skin. After all, it is all potentially cancerous.

9. I sympathize with the desire for revenge and the desire to prevent possible harm. But we need to recognize that the cost of living in an “enlightened” society is that the door must remain cracked for evil to find its way in. We can attempt to pressure people like Hussein with UN resolutions and inspections, but there is always the possibility of resolute resistance. In that case, we can only keep trying to do the right thing, and enforce such sanctions and apply other pressures as best we can. Similarly, we raise our children and enforce rules about school attendance on others in the hope that they will grow up to be happy, productive citizens. But even if they do not appear to be headed that way, even if they strike us as being the dictionary definition of bad-seed, we don’t execute them. We may suspect that our neighbor is beating his wife, molesting his children, and torturing his dog… but we can’t imprison him, take his property, or put him before a firing squad until he has committed a crime.

This indeed means that, should our surmise turn out to be true, someone will pay a price for those freedoms that protected him. And if it turned out that he had harmed one of my children, I may want to (and may carry out my plan) exact vengeance myself. But those freedoms that allowed a vile act are freedoms we also enjoy in our day-to-day lives, and our society should protect us from exercising our baser instincts.

10. I will support a war against Iraq given particular conditions. The fact that this does not jibe with yours doesn’t mean that I am irrational, lying, unaware of the threat, or even in disagreement on many points.