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X-Apparently-To: royflanigan@yahoo.com via 216.136.172.73; 06 Feb 2003 17:11:15 -0800 (PST) X-Track: 7: 100 Return-Path: Received: from 66.180.246.24 (HELO out004.tepmail.com) (66.180.246.24) by mta492.mail.yahoo.com with SMTP; 06 Feb 2003 17:11:15 -0800 (PST) To: royflanigan@yahoo.com From: "djgrothe@centerforinquiry.net" Subject: Regarding Iraq: A Message from the Editors of FREE INQUIRY Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 16:10:39 -0700 Errors-To: Reply-To: X-Topica-Id: <1044580249.svc003.3969.1008440> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 5754 8 Article Newsletter Template

		Message from the Editors of FREE INQUIRY

In This Issue:


•	The Immorality of the War Against Iraq

•	That’s REV. Mr. President!

Featured Links:


•	Council for Secular Humanism

•	Campus Freethought Alliance

•	Center for Inquiry

•	CSICOP

The Immorality of the War Against Iraq

FREE INQUIRY magazine does not endorse political candidates nor political parties. We recognize the wide diversity of political viewpoints among secular humanists. We do, however, take positions concerning two vital issues: first, we support humanist ethical principles on grounds independent of religion; and second, we defend the separation of church and state.

By both these standards, we face an urgent crisis in the United States today, for the Religious Right has virtually captured the Bush administration. Increasingly, its moral ideology is that of Evangelical Christianity. This is seen directly by its impact on foreign policy, with strong overtone of self-righteous moral indignation U.S. foreign policy is guided by the sense that we face a battle between “good and evil.” This can be read in the speeches of Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, and others. In its extreme form, the War on Terrorism smacks of a Holy Religious War against Islam.

As we go to press, the War on Terrorism has morphed into an impending war against Iraq. (War may have erupted by the time you read these words.) President Bush has repeatedly condemned Saddam Hussein as evil (surely he is no angel, but that is true of many world leaders). Bush has further demanded the disarming of Iraq and the replacement of its government with a puppet regime. We object to this war on moral grounds.

What especially bothers us is the crescendo of wardrum-beats advocating, however incoherently, a preemptive first strike. This marks a radical reversal in American foreign policy. Never before has teh U.S. struck first in the absence of an immediate threat. One might conceivably justify preemptive war, but only when there is imminent danger of attack by a threatening adversary. Iraq currently does not fit into this category. Defeated in the Gulf War of 1991, its population impoverished, its economy in shambles, constantly bombarded by American and British aircraft, Iraq hardly poses a threat to the safety of the United States.

If the United States reserves the right to engage in preemptive warfare (even nuclear*), what are we to say about the confrontation between India and Pakistan—would they or anyone else be justified in resorting to the same pretext? We believe in a world in which there are certain norms of established international conduct and in which one power (in this case a hyperpower such as the United States) does not arrogate to itself the right to dictate acceptable behavior across the globe.

We thoroughly approve of the administration’s earlier decision (under the influence at that time of Colin Powell, who has since become more hawkish) that UN inspectors return to Iraq and that retaliatory measures be taken only if explicitly authorized by the UN Security Council. We do not see the need for war, for we believe that the best method of resolving international conflicts is by the negotiation of differences. We thus agree with efforts to disarm Iraq peacefully.

Obviously, current U.S. policies threaten to undermine the entire fabric of collective security so carefully developed by the world community after the Second World War. As a result of our policies, will the United Nations be rendered impotent like the League of Nations, unable to resolve international conflicts? If so, this could have tragic implications for the future of humankind.

Indeed, the Bush administration’s recent policy choices, such as its refusal to sign the Kyoto Treaty or to accept the jurisdiction of the World Court, illustrates an increasingly unilateral chauvinistic character.

Mr. Bush expresses his reasons for war in high-flown rhetoric about defending ourselves from the weapons of mass destruction of Saddam Hussein. Interestingly, his speeches are drafted by Evangelical speechwriters (such as Michael Gerson), and they express a dismaying level of religious imagery. They convert the Presidency into a bully pulpit for God, which simultaneously masks underlying imperialist economic ambitions while it suggests divine sanction for American policy. We wonder whether the real motive in all this is oil, for Iraq has the second-largest oil reserves in the world; and we suspect that the underlying goal of the United States and Britain is to replace the Iraqi oil contracts bestowed upon France and Russia with new ones benefiting themselves.

There is one measure the president has recommended which we thoroughly support: the decision to provide economic assistance to African and Caribbean countries suffering high rates of AIDS. Some 15 million Africans have already died from the disease, and there are an estimated three million new cases a year. There is a desperate need for medicines; and the president is to be applauded for proposing financial assistance to purchase them.

Will his administration also undertake the preventive measures that Africans so desperately need, namely, contraceptive education and the free distribution of condoms to the millions who cannot afford them? Or will the administration’s dominant theological-moral position cause such assistance to be choked off, as it was in the past, in the name of a “higher” religious morality, which instead urges abstinence and offers no promise of reducing AIDS transmission? The first measure that the administration adopted upon Bush’s inauguration was to cut off all contraceptive aid for the developing world, fearing that it might lead to abortion. In this area as in others the foreign policy of the United States suffers from its being dominated by a theologically driven* conception of morality, and this has had dire consequences for the entire world.

Parenthetically, we wish to express our approval of the uprisings among students and other dissidents in Iran, and especially to commend the views of Prince Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed Shah, who courageously demands democracy, human rights, and a secular state in a future Iran. Iran has suffered a religious Inquisition at the hands of the Ayatollahs; and it is encouraging that there are today genuine calls for secular democracy. Were that to take root in Iran, what an enormous difference it could make in the Middle East.

Paul Kurtz, Editor-in-Chief
Tom Flynn, Editor
Andrea Szalanski, Managing Editor
Norm Allen, Deputy Editor
Tim Madigan, Chair, Editorial Board