By L. Michael Hager, www.boston.com, 8/20/2002

DOG DAYS of August. Nothing to take our minds off corporate greed, a declining stock market, pedophile priests, and a waning war on terrorism - nothing except an impending war on Iraq.

News commentators tell us that such a war is a foregone conclusion - a matter of when, not if.

Bowing to the Defense Department, the White House spurns European and Arab voices cautioning restraint.

Give the Bush administration credit. Its focus on Saddam Hussein's tyranny has shifted the burden of proof to those who oppose a preemptive attack. In so doing, the president's men have avoided having to make the case for a unilateral first strike.

Up to now, critics have focused on the likely costs in both blood and treasure, citing think tank estimates of US deaths in the thousands and military costs in the billions. To economists who argue that the US economy, already reeling from recession, cannot afford a war, the administration says Iraqi forces are weaker than during the Gulf War. Its predictions of an easy victory recall Vietnam policy makers in the '60s.

For all the talk about relative strength and strategy, the debate on Iraq has failed to address some basic questions:

(1) What legal or moral justification is there for launching a first strike? Even during the most acrimonious days of the Cold War, the United States required provocation before unleashing retaliatory force. As in the Cuban missile crisis, our adversaries had ample opportunity to escape American firepower by changing course. Now, without any justification (beyond the mantras: Saddam is evil, he's likely to have weapons of mass destruction, and he's likely to use them), the first-strike policy suddenly seems to have become doctrine - and a precedent for others.

We should ask ourselves whether we are ready for other nations to behave in similar fashion. Legitimizing first strikes could embolden a country like Pakistan to launch its own preemptive nuclear attack against a more powerful foe. Indeed, we saw how quickly Israel's President Ariel Sharon and other leaders adopted President Bush's script, branding opponents as terrorists and discounting collateral damage that would likely result from missile strikes.

(2) Can we remain indifferent to the civilian casualties likely to result? In casting its vote for the war on Iraq, the conservative magazine The Economist acknowledged that the casualties this time - especially the civilian casualties - could be much larger than they were before.

Punishing innocent people to get at a guilty target is no more defensible in Iraq than it was in Afghanistan, the West Bank, or even Kosovo. Accepting civilian casualties as collateral damage smacks of negligent homicide or worse. Could a fear of human rights accountability explain why the Bush administration is so adamant in resisting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court? Will the Arab street remain silent when US attacks begin killing innocent civilians in Baghdad?

(3) Why is war against Iraq assuming priority on the administration's agenda? These may be the dog days of summer, but there is no letup on international security issues of importance to the United States. The Middle East and the Indian subcontinent cry out for intervention that only the United States can provide. And what of our war on terrorism and homeland security concerns?

Are we prepared to let growing military expenditures swallow up our future? Already, cuts in social welfare and education budgets imperil both present and future generations.

The Bush administration seems fixated on Iraq. If that issue is more important and urgent than the others, the American people need to understand why. The Defense Department rests its case on the capacity of Saddam to wage war with weapons of mass destruction, but former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter and others sharply question that capacity. If there is hard evidence of imminent threat, we need to know what it is.

And what about alternatives to first strike? If UN inspectors were allowed to return to Baghdad, the threat that Saddam might use weapons of mass destruction could be assessed and contained. But Bush seems to have ruled out any negotiated resumption of the inspection process. One may ask once again, why?

All these doubts should be resolved before Americans are asked to fight and die in Iraq.

L. Michael Hager is executive director of Conflict Management Group, a Cambridge nonprofit organization.

This story ran on page A19 of the Boston Globe on 8/20/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.