Keep Believing We Can Stop This War!

By: Dennis Rahkonen

I won't mince words. George Bush is far more dangerous than Saddam Hussein, and consequently more "evil" as well.

While the latter is a thoroughly unsavory fellow, and a harsh dictator, he's rationally bound by the constraints of reality, as evidenced by Iraq's obvious lack of external harm to anyone during the past decade. It wasn't true back in the Cold War when a similar cry was raised against the Russians, and "The Iraqis are coming!" is just so much propagandistic nonsense now.

Bush, however, disregards objective circumstances - and the international community's overwhelming will - with that complete contempt that's always been shown by abject minions of special-interest avarice throughout history. Never mind the peasants, the workers, the children innocently playing when the bombs begin to fall. Forget washerwomen hanging their clothes, or the elderly musing in the warming sun.

All that matters to our President, and to Cheney and Rumsfeld, is that there's black gold beneath Iraqi sand that "needs" to be secured for "better" purposes than providing revenue for Iraq's own development!

Oil men who look at Middle Eastern profit prospects with dollar signs in their eyes are blind to the terrible human cost - the shrapnel-perforated and smoldering bodies of Iraqi civilians and young American soldiers alike - by which their greedy aspirations would be achieved. I say "would" rather than "will" since I'm not resigned to this awful war's inevitability.

There's nothing the blood hawks desire more than a capitulationist acceptance of their drum beat that war can't be avoided. They want to convince us resistance is futile. But humanity is conscious and aroused, and its clout is mighty.

World public opinion is amply aware that Bush is recklessly driving an engine of death that could easily crash into and break open the very gates of Hell. Also understood is the fact that Dubya sees it, instead, as a gravy train to bring booty to his elitist pals. Such incredible risk for so narrow and wicked a cause has radicalized multitudes across the planet, and within our own country. In fact, the peace movement galvanized by the Bush administration's wild willingness to set the cradle of civilization ablaze to grab its natural wealth has spread more quickly and deeply than any other, ever. The Vietnam War was underway for five years in grim earnest before equivalent resistance surfaced.

There's an unprecedented people-power loose, and the White House is definitely worried. We see it in the tactics being used to try to marginalize us. It's very evident, for example, that Colin Powell's pointed emphasis during his United Nations speech on claimed connections between Saddam and al-Qaeda - sophistry supreme - was aimed at discrediting the anti-war movement. What better way to paint peaceniks as "traitors" than to cheaply jerrybuild a perception that being against this war "aids" terrorists? Once again, hijacked 9/11 emotions are being used for abysmal no good by Bush and crew.

As for Powell's assertions of Iraq's weapons noncompliance and supposed deceit, it was revealing how responsible nations reacted, France, for instance. All the more reason for further inspection, more comprehensively conducted - and less reason for imminent war! There's a pivotal understanding out there that, so long as the U.N. inspectors are within Iraq and doing their job, there'll be no hostilities initiated by Baghdad (as if it would do so anyway), and probably no attack launched even by Washington. If we can succeed in keeping those inspectors on the scene and searching, while filling world streets with mass protest against Bush's aggressive designs, the resulting combination will be a bulwark for peace nothing can easily breach.

Sometimes even wayward superpowers meet their match.

In the crucial days and weeks ahead, we have to hold to our central faith: "The people united can't be defeated!" Keep flooding your newspaper editors and elected representatives with pro- peace letters. Display yard signs demanding no war. Add your name to the many petitions and formal resolutions popping up around the country. Press local governmental bodies to declare opposition. Help pay for TV or other media ads prepared by peace groups such as Move On. But, above all, get out and demonstrate!

Feb. 15 will see the next round of major protest. United for Peace and Justice has details on both national rallies and myriad smaller events scheduled locally, from coast to coast.

"What if they gave a war and no one came?" was a popular bumper sticker and poster slogan during the Vietnam era. Thanks to Bush's intended aggression being so obviously, outrageously about profit and hegemony, that idealistic notion actually stands a good chance of being largely achieved, in the current context. Hardly anyone honestly believes we've "just gotta" attack Iraq in a big, excited hurry. Folks everywhere are therefore withholding support.

Whatever the Bushites may claim, they can't launch an invasion in such a climate - not without committing political suicide.

We, the people, hold the high cards.

Let's play 'em!