As part of the ongoing argument over how the dirty smelly hippies somehow managed to be right about Iraq, Avedon Carol has produced the clearest presentation ever of the anti-war case. She did this by ignoring all the pointless side issues people often get ensnared by and going right for the jugular:
Any reasonably sane person over the age of 15 knows that war is dangerous, expensive, and terrible. You know that it kills lots and lots of people, leaves many others damaged, and makes new enemies with new grudges. It is profoundly destabilizing and carries with it the threat of wider, more devastating unrest. So you don’t do it unless you absolutely have to.
In the run up to the invasion of Iraq, no one provided a credible justification for the war. It was obvious that we did not have to invade Iraq. This is the overriding fact: Invading a nation without cause (you can call it “preemptive”, but that just means you don’t have cause) is breathtakingly immoral and equally stupid and you do not do it…
A sane person starts from the position of not making war. The question of why not support starting a war should never even be raised—the reasons not to are always obvious…
Yes, we’d all like to be Superman, able to fly into countries and create freedom and justice for all. If I wake up tomorrow morning and discover I have become God, believe me, everyone will be hearing from me. But no number of weapons, and no army of whatever size, can compensate for the fact that human beings are not God and we can’t just make everyone behave the way we want them to.
And there is more, all well worth reading.