Editor,
As America titillates itself with the prospect of war, it is not clear whether the nation's urge to attack Iraq is mostly about weapons or oil, our own politics and economy, terrorism or tyranny. It is certain who the conflict, like most conflicts, is not about: children.
Remember the first Gulf War, where we received a story about every American death yet knew not even how many thousand of Iraqis had been killed -- including teachers, mothers and children? Remember Bosnia and Kosovo, where NATO forces so judiciously, so gingerly attacked and we knew how many died -- on both sides?
Remember Rwanda and Vietnam? The greatest difference between these conflicts resides in our imaginations: most can imagine the suffering and death of white Europeans, including each of their children. Many Western adults still find the people of African, Asian or Arabic origin existing beyond their imaginations -- strangers. Many of the same individuals are attracted to war, perhaps because it creates an opiate of certainty; certain control, many certain agonies and certain anger with subsequent terrorism for decades to come -- which I consider to be a greater threat to my own three children than Saddam Hussein.
The inspections offer mere possibility -- the possibility of resolution and the possibility of not killing hundreds or thousands of individuals. But war also generates possibility. As we watch the video game-like explosions of precisions we can imagine the possibility of a nursing mother, a great logician or a school, extinguished beneath its plume. A child, less different from an Iraqi child than from an adult, would have no difficulty imagining such horror.
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Dane Myers
UNM Graduate Student
