Tuesday, February 18, 2003 @ 12:25pm

Well, I've been thinking about that a lot lately, especially as discussions have gotten heated at work. I seem to be one of the ones causing the heat. Most Utahns are pretty conservative, as you might guess. I thought I was conservative before I moved here.

Basically, I feel that it isn't the time or place for an invasion of Iraq. Nothing I have read thus far indicates that Saddam poses a threat to US security adequate to warrant:

• the cost of war
• the cost of lives
• the risk to NATO and UN relations (who is right and wrong aside)
• risk of increased funding to and hostility of terrorist organizations towards the US

Barring some remarkable US intelligence concerning Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, there is no clear threat from Saddam. There are others to whom we should probably be paying attention. The next terrorist attack on US soil, IMHO, won't be coming from a debilitated, regulated and internationally inspected armament that includes mostly our own exports. Rumsfield wha? And Kim who? They're not serious.

My argument goes like this:

1. By taking it upon ourselves to enforce a UN resolution that isn't really ours to enforce, we nearly eliminate what little usefulness the UN still has. Foreign relations *are* important, despite Powell's begging-the-question quote, "we cannot let multilateralism be an excuse for inaction." I would say we cannot act without multilateralism.
2. In becoming a first-strike war power, we enforce the perception of the US as unfair bully, accurate or not. War does not stomp out the flame of terrorism, it fuels that flame. Especially when our strike targets have very little if nothing to do with terrorist organizations. Some believe that bin Laden would like nothing more than for the US to remove the current government of Iraq, and that it strengthens his own potential in the area.

Say what you want about France's motivations and the UN balking on its resolutions and Saddam's subversions. This war will not help me, it will not make me safer, and it will not increase my stocks' value. Take the cost of the war and put it in to hydrogen cells, if you really want to win the war with the Middle East.