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Armageddon Junction: Forum on going to war with Iraq

A somewhat gloomy but evenhanded campus debate -- held two days after an election apparently favoring conservative policy -- considered the merits and demerits of another U.S. war in the Middle East. The Nov. 7 CAPE forum "Should We Go to War With Iraq?" featured four panelists, each of whom spoke for 20 minutes, followed by a question-and-answer session moderated by Andrew Flescher, professor of Religious Studies.

Should we go to war? Panelists' subtext, even from those presenting moderately favorable views, inclined toward "no." Will we go to war? In the minds of most attending the event, considering their questions and demeanor, the answer seemed to be "yes."

Philosophy professor Tom Imhoff spoke first, outlining the traditional Western just war theory first propounded in the fourth century by Christian philosopher Aurelius Augustinus.

"When Augustinus was writing, the Roman Empire was falling apart," said Imhoff. "He was confronted with the problem of what a Christian prince should do to defend his people. The just war tradition developed in response to the idea that it's important to defend people who are otherwise defenseless."

The theory also requires that only a competent authority carry out a war. "This actually raises an interesting issue concerning the coming war with Iraq because 'competent' here means 'legitimate,'" he noted. "You can speculate whether or not George W. Bush fits the criterion of legitimate authority because, in his election, it was actually the Supreme Court, not the people of the United States, that elected him."

Geography and Planning professor Jim Claflin painted a verbal portrait of the Arab world, highlighting particularly the complex, multinational mire that the United States would find itself in should it force a regime change in Iraq and assume responsibility for the resulting political and economic chaos in that country. He also questioned the wisdom of cornering someone as unpredictable as Saddam Hussein.

"There's a lot that we don't understand about this guy," said Claflin. "He's a back-street alley boy, very, very street smart -- he has to be. He lives in one of the toughest neighborhoods in the world. And we've basically told him up front, 'You cannot survive this.' I would hold us morally responsible in terms of the harm he causes on his way down."

Though a strong critic of the Bush administration, political scientist Jim Jacob also spoke out against Hussein, whom he characterized as an "extravagant paranoiac," sketching, as evidence, some of the documented atrocities committed under his regime. A case could be made for a war against such a person, said Jacob, but it hasn't been done.

"The inconvenience of fighting a war on terrorism by defining it as being against someone like Osama bin Laden is the fact that Osama bin Laden is a will-o'-the-wisp," he said. "It's hard to define something you can't see. So in that peculiar way in which politics mirror Hollywood movie magic, have you noticed that the face of Osama bin Laden has begun to morph into the face of Saddam Hussein? It's a whole lot easier to fight a war against an adversary who is in possession of a state, with all the accoutrements of state, including an army."

Jacob recalled a recent Palestinian bombing in Israel. "It occurred at a crossroads called Armageddon Junction," he said. "I think it's appropriate that one of those awful incidents occurred at a site so called because, in a real sense, the Middle East today, along with the various foreign policies vying for positions of influence there, find themselves, singly and collectively, at Armageddon Junction."

A retired military officer now teaching in the Department of Recreation and Parks Management, Doug Campbell concluded the presentations by emphasizing the unpredictability of any war, and speculating about "the new paradigm of warfare," in which countries disadvantaged against superior U.S. technology find easy justifications for abandoning Western war theories, whether just or not.

"The ugly concept," said Campbell, "includes attacking civilian, economic, and isolated targets while maintaining anonymity for as long as possible. These countries secretly try to obtain what they call 'equalizing weapons' -- chemical, biological, and nuclear. In their view, the perfect environment to conduct war is during what we call peacetime."

Taran March