It is fitting, as our country contemplates another war with Iraq, to recall the experience of previous wars. Comparisons with World War II and Vietnam are all too familiar. In Bangor’s Davenport Park is a memorial to the 268 men who died in the sinking of the USS Maine, which puts us in mind of an almost forgotten war of just over a century ago. Although no evidence was ever produced of the cause of the explosion that sank the Maine, the event galvanized support for America’s war with Spain, in which over 5000 Americans died – 379 in combat, the rest from disease and other causes.

The judgment of history is that it was an imperialist war. The Cuban struggle for independence from Spain was preempted by the Platt Amendment. The United States went on to conquer the Philippines in a ruthless war that cost thousands of Filipino lives and many times the American battle casualties of the war in Cuba, and established the United States as a power in the Pacific.

I say this not to dishonor those who fought and died, but to distinguish the ideals for which they died–our security, our rights, and our democracy, and the cause of self-determination abroad – from the more sinister motives that pushed our leaders to war.

Theodore Roosevelt wrote to a friend in 1897 – well before the sinking of the Maine – “In strict confidence … I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one.”

In the thinking of many in the political and business elite, the United States needed war to pull the country out of recession, to expand overseas markets for the overproduction of American goods.

But it is not for these imperialist motives that we honor those who died, but for the nobler motives that impelled them to serve, and which have always been invoked, sometimes with justice, but often manipulatively, by those who would lead us into war.

We can honor those who died no better than by exercising those rights for which they fought. Indeed it is our patriotic duty to exercise our rights to peaceably assemble, and to protest, when we question yet another rush to war, in which the victims will be not just the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, but the Iraqi people, hundreds of thousands of whom have already died as a consequence of the Persian Gulf War and the sanctions, the Americans put in harm’s way in what is likely to be a much bloodier and more protracted battle for the troops on the ground, the Americans at home and abroad who are liable to become targets of invigorated terrorism, and all those who suffer daily here at home for lack of resources diverted to war.

This is not to deny the dangers of an Iraq possessed with weapons of mass destruction. But we owe it to ourselves, to our troops, and to the cause of international peace and justice, to pursue diplomatic resolution of conflicts – for example, to let the weapons inspectors do their work–and to abide by our international treaties. In a democracy, we have a special obligation, in part to those who have died in past wars, to hold our leaders accountable. We must do this to assure that, in the long view of history, they will not be seen to have died in vain, that the America they defended will be a model for democracy and human rights throughout the world.

Mike Howard is a member of the steering committee of the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine. This commentary is dedicated to the memory of Philip Berrigan.