I have been struggling to find the words to express my dismay and disgust at the war that is going to start this week. Michael Moore has already found those words and put them together much more succinctly than could I. Read:
A Letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush on the Eve of War
The price of gasoline is going up. On parts of the west coast, consumers are already paying nearly $2 a gallon. Several stories covering this have reported that consumers are blaming the rise in prices on the impending war with Iraq. In fact, the real reason for this spike is the labor strikes in Venezuela. The federal government has responded by cutting off the strategic reserve (i.e., we’re not putting aside any more “rainy day” oil). And the U.S oil companies, frantic not to reduce the amount of gasoline produced by their refineries, have turned to another source for additional oil imports. Their solution: double the amount of oil purchased from one of our middle east oil partners, from .5m barrels a day last November to a current average of 1m barrels a day.
And who is the mid-east benefactor of this windfall? It’s been in the news lately: a California-sized nation called Iraq.
The Observer has the story. This should especially be read by anyone who isn’t already convinced that this war is all about who controls the oil.
Another group that takes a more irreverent approach to peaceful protest is Clams for Peace, a website that advocates, well, sending a box of clams to the White House in order to convince “President” Bush to, uh … think about, um, something.
I’ll let them speak for themselves:
In the 1950’s, tens of thousands of people sent small bags of rice to President Eisenhower convincing him not to attack China. It’s a new millennium with the same problems, rice is for suckers, clams are the choice of a new generation about to head off to war. We urge you the public to grab a box, grab some clams, and send them to George Bush to let him know that “hey this is a box of clams, deal with this Chimpy.”
There you go. And remember: If you send no clams, you are all for children being shot in the knee caps and being left for dead!!!
A group called MoveOn (“Democracy in Action”) is encouraging citizens to write letters to the editors of their local paper advocating continued U.N. inspections in Iraq. They are collecting the letters on their website. Unlike conservative push groups, they are not providing boilerplate text, they merely ask that the letters address these key points:
I think it’s a great movement and I encourage everyone to participate. Here is the letter I am sending to my local papers:
Article II, Section 3 of the US Constitution requires that: “The President shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”I watched this year’s State of the Union address with an open mind and mixed emotions. I want to give this president every chance, I want my country to regain the moral leadership that it evinced after WWII, and I want to raise my children in a land that is safe and secure. The message I drew from the speech, however, is the same message that we have been hearing from this administration for months: we are going to war with Iraq, and no force on earth will stop us.
From the beginning, this administration has been clear about it’s true intention: “regime change”. Unfortunately for them, that has not been a strong enough incentive to convince our allies, so the publicly stated goal has become disarmament, and the means to accomplish that is the U.N. inspections.
It is clear to any one paying attention, however, that the inspections are a mere shell game to this administration, providing simply a pretext for invasion, a distraction to be played out while we build up our forces in preparation.
Ironically, magnificently, the very presence of U.N. inspectors in Iraq is curtailing any efforts the Iraqis might otherwise be making toward further developing the president’s feared “weapons of mass destruction”. This administration’s efforts to argue that Iraq is developing a nuclear capability – thereby significantly altering the balance of power in the Gulf region and threatening the United States – have since been challenged by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Mohamed ElBaradei reported to the United Nations Security Council that his agency “has found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapon program since the elimination of the program in the 1990’s”.
The safest course for this country, indeed, for all countries, is to let the inspections continue.
An additional argument that this administration strives to use to justify war with Iraq is its attempt to link that ‘Axis of Evil�’ nation with the 911 terrorists. “Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans,” said the president in his speech, “this time armed by Saddam Hussein.” That is a frightening picture, to be sure, but to use Bush’s own words, it is also imaginary.
Saddam Hussein is a bad guy, we get that, but he is not an Osama bin Laden whose goal is to combat Western culture through terrorist acts. He is a tyrannical despot, a cruel dictator who sees it as his own destiny to control the world’s vital energy supplies. Sadly, this view cuts perilously close to what the United States has experienced since the Bush administration took over the White House through judicial fiat. It also explains George Bush’s manic obsession with Saddam Hussein: they are business rivals, vying for the same goal, and this country will not be truly secure until we bring about our own “regime change” through honest democratic elections.
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