Protesting for Peace A Reminder That Death on All Sides Surrounds War

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I spent a relaxing fall break camping, swimming in waterfalls and demonstrating against President Bush's proposed war against Iraq. The 10-hour car ride to the heart of our heart-breakingly unrealized democracy was tedious, but the matter was pressing, to say the least.
When Ari Fleischer was here several weeks ago, he defended the president, glibly saying that Bush viewed war as a last resort. This was before the administration accepted what the rest of us already knew, that the rest of the world, even the United Nations Security Council, believes that force is unjustifiable.
Now, newspaper articles tell of a "testy" Bush becoming frustrated at even our closest allies' reluctance to accept a war. Bush's visible frustration belies the fact that he has always viewed a new war as the answer. Of course, he's never quite gotten the problem pinned down.
Theoretically, this war would ensue when Saddam Hussein refused to allow U.N. weapons inspectors the run of his country. This would be because Iraq holds "weapons of mass destruction" which threaten our allies in the region and us. We know that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons.
We also know that Iraq has no ability to use them against us or our allies; there is no delivery system. Iraq's possession of these weapons is a violation of international law. But then, the United States also possesses these weapons — why won't the U.N. inspect us?
Iraq does not have the capability to produce nuclear weapons unless it procures fissile material in massive quantities on the black market. According to arms control experts, such material is unavailable.
Theoretically, this war would ensue because Iraq supports international terrorism. The international terrorist group we are currently fighting is based in Islamic fundamentalism.
Iraq is a secular country that has repressed both Sunni and Shi'ite muslims, as well as the Kurdish minority in the north. The only reason Iraq would ally itself with Al Qaeda would be to attack the United States, a dubious proposition at best considering the swiftness with which we responded to the Taliban's harboring of terrorists.
Suicide is a tool for religious fanatics who view death as simply a ticket to heaven; no secular leader would knowingly commit such an act.
But these political arguments suffer from the principal drawback to all political arguments; they are merely abstractions. The concrete reality of war is death.
Our peers, indeed some of us, will be on the front lines. They will be bombed, shelled and shot. Their blood will coat the sand. If they are unlucky, Iraq will use its chemical weapons in the only way it is capable, on the battlefield, and they will die even more horrendous deaths.
Iraqi soldiers will die similarly. Furthermore, we will certainly use aerial bombardment, as we have been doing in Iraq for more than a decade.
Bombs will certainly go off target, as they did in Afghanistan. That means innocents will die. An attack in the Muslim world, albeit in a secular country, will mean a new generation of recruits for the very same terrorist networks that we are trying to destroy, a network that has killed thousands in the last year alone.
In the Jewish tradition, we have a saying, that to kill a person is to destroy the universe.
This is not an abstraction; it is a statement of spiritual fact. Death is the fact of war. If the abstract arguments don't hold up, our act of war will amount to the murder of the young men of Iraq and the United States for the benefit of a few politicians.
This is why last Saturday, hundreds of thousands of us from around the country said no to the Bush administration, and will continue to say no, even as the bombs begin to fall.

Ben Gore is a junior at Middlebury College. He is involved with Middlebury United For Peace, and last wrote about Ari Fleischer's visit to campus.