Bush should rethink Iraq war

Hands off liberty: Free market resolves prejudice in hiring

Before the movement on behalf of "civil rights" began last century, "discriminate" meant nothing more than to make a clear distinction. Since then, the word has developed a new connotation that has all but eliminated the old; it now refers to distinction-making on the basis of class or category without regard to personal merit. Nowadays, those who speak broadly of "discrimination" are normally referring only to discrimination against those who belong to the Left's victimological pantheon, including blacks, women, Hispanics, American Indians, immigrants, homosexuals, and the disabled.

Hands off liberty: Bias unavoidable in academia

Last week's Orient contained the best treatments to date of the discussion on political diversity among Bowdoin faculty. Students with conservative (or libertarian) views would do well to heed Professor Rael and Mr. Washburn and rededicate themselves to studying and thinking?thinking about the problems individuals in society face and about how best to approach them in the context of a Bowdoin education.

Hands off liberty

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

November 18, 2005

The Bush administration's raison d'?tre is war in the Middle East in order to protect America from terrorism and to insure its oil supply. This approach wasn't suddenly formed in response to September 11, or United Nations grappling with Saddam Hussein. The neo-conservatives who are currently in control have long held plans for regime changes in several countries, and for years they have been attacking the moral, constitutional, and legal arguments for less aggressive foreign policy. According to the long-published writings of the neo-cons, Middle East war is needed to protect Israel and preserve a holy Pax Americana. Senior policymakers also hold a blind faith in the idea, embraced first by FDR and adopted by every administration since, that military force is an effective tool for securing foreign sources of petroleum.

The true motives for war were not mythical weapons of mass destruction or a burning need to rescue the Iraqi people from a dictator. But since readers of The New York Times as well as viewers of the nightly action news usually know little or nothing about the neo-conservative manifesto or the history of U.S. involvement in Iraq and the Middle East, President George W. Bush and his media shills had an easy time selling the distorted case for invading Iraq.

The real story begins with our government helping to bring Saddam's socialist Ba'ath Party to power in the 1960s, and it continues with its friendliness and eventual alliance with Hussein during the 1980s, something current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld helped orchestrate. The gassing of the Kurds occurred during this alliance (although even this occurrence has been called into question for lack of evidence). It also was during this period that the United States and other Western nations sold Saddam the capacity to make chemical weapons. This was an interesting decision considering that the sanctions imposed on Iraq from 1990 to 2003 resulted in the death of 500,000 children under the age of five, according to UNICEF estimates. For a period during 2001, the Bush administration even prevented infant vaccines and medical equipment from being sent to Iraq.

Hussein clearly was a terrible dictator, but (echoing Phil Donahue's remarks on "The O'Reilly Factor") , he was our dictator. Iraq also was the most liberal country in the Middle East and was hated by neighboring Islamic fundamentalist regimes because it tolerated Christians. Daily freedom in Iraq was such that one could buy a drink or a gun in downtown Baghdad. None of the 19 hijackers of September 11 were from Iraq, and unlike Pakistan or Israel, Iraq was not in possession of nuclear weapons. Yet as a result of U.S. incursion, Iraq eventually will be controlled by a fundamentalist Islamic government predictably hostile to the United States. None of this is surprising in light of history since the United States overthrew the only democratically?elected Middle Eastern government in Iran back in 1953.

When it comes to Iraq and terrorism, the American people often know only what the government tells them. As a result, our leaders have been able to excuse their expansion of an already vast military, which is properly understood as the largest single government bureaucracy. Even excluding much spy spending, its funding exceeds the military budgets of the next 27 countries combined. Money that should belong to a productive, private economy is used instead to build and maintain weapons of mass destruction and a huge military force. Furthermore, this military occupies over 120 countries and is clearly designed for interventionist imperialism, not national defense.

Since 2000, Bush has increased spending by about 30 percent, created the largest civilian bureaucracy erected since World War II, and used federal police power to violate the Constitution and invade the lives of private citizens. He has done all this in the name of peace and freedom. His programs and his expansion of the warfare state could not be less effective if they were designed to undermine our peace and prosperity.

Washington as a whole has shown no interest in rethinking its mistaken foreign policy approach or its continued expansion of power. As in the past, policymakers on both sides of the aisle will continue to call for more intervention and more spending. At the moment, administration officials are contemplating invading Syria and redrafting Pentagon policy to include the possibility that the United States may use nuclear weapons in preemptive strikes. Democrats, meanwhile, are not doing much to question them.

To combat this tyranny of good intentions we need vigorous intellects who are willing to challenge the growth of centralized power on all fronts. We need citizens who are willing to develop their love for peace into something more than blind faith in the Left. We need people brave enough to speak out and defy the moral scorn the Orient, President Barry Mills, and Alex Cornell du Houx '06 have in store for those who wonder why one should blindly perform "national service," even when it involves shooting other men to order in the name of a cause one knows is wrong.

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