by Columbus Hecklers for a Healthy Democracy, and
Columbus Coalition for a Democratic Foreign Policy, Feb 23, 1998

As members of the vocal opposition who attended the February 18, 1998 Columbus Town Hall Meeting to ask questions and voice dissent, we maintain that the proposed military assault on Iraq is illegitimate and morally unacceptable for the following reasons:

• The US claims to be defending international and national interests, yet the proposed military action lacks the support of the international community and US citizens. The US administration's pursuit of "Lone Ranger" diplomacy threatens to imperil the lives of both innocent Iraqi citizens and US military personnel.

• The threatened military action sets up inconsistent standards of justice. Saudi Arabia has tortured political and religious dissidents, Israel has bombed refugee camps and repeatedly ignored UN resolutions, and Indonesia has conducted a program of genocide on the East Timorese. The US continues to lend nearly-uncritical military, political, and economic support to each of these countries. While we condemn Saddam Hussein's aggression against his neighbors and Iraqi citizens, we find this double standard of justice reprehensible.

• US officials have admitted that the greatest reduction of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons has come as a result of UN inspections in a time of peace, rather than US bombing during Operation Desert Storm. Further, the Clinton administration has openly admitted that air strikes will not eliminate Hussein's arsenal and may in fact create more resistance to UN inspections. Diplomatic options are the only way of maintaining regional stability and achieving Iraqi compliance with UN resolutions. The proposed military confrontation represents an international cockfight.

• Continued references to Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction" belies the fact that sanctions and bombings are responsible for the deaths of over a million Iraqi citizens over the last seven years. The US-inflicted "mass destruction" caused by conventional weapons and sanctions are as worthy of condemnation as the atrocities from biological and chemical weapons.

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