I find it more than a little distressing that most people I talk to these days are
not convinced we ought to go to war, but are resigned that we're going to. You'd
think anyone old enough to remember Vietnam (and who used some dubbleyou -- er, I
mean dubious -- methods to avoid serving there) would have scarring memories of
what happens when you get into a war that doesn't have popular support.
It's even more perplexing because it doesn't seem that hard to get
popular support. Given the level of resignation I've seen and the fact that there
doesn't seem to be anyone who doesn't consider Saddam Hussein a mad and evil man,
a large number of the people I've spoken to would likely to be happy to be
convinced that we ought to go to war. (I live in a fairly conservative state,
though.) A good number of those now in power brag about their faith and supposed
morality, but how can it be moral to send people off to die who don't believe that
the cause is worth dying for?
I'm not a pacifist. I believe that war
is an awful, horrible thing, a thing of sordid mud and pain rather than glamor and
nobility. But I believe that there are things even worse, that war is a last
resort but that it is a valid resort to combat those last worst evils. It would be
nice, though, if more than one of us believe that it is a necessary thing in this
time and in this place. If Colin Powell doesn't show the world some evidence, and
by "show" I mean "make really, really obvious, with an Adlai Stevenson sort of
clarity", I will be very disappointed.