Whether conservative, moderate or liberal, all Americans are now urgently seeking the best path to greater personal and national security. The question before us is whether a military attack against Iraq will make us more secure or less secure.

Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator and may have some weapons of mass destruction. So do many other countries, including Pakistan, India, Israel, China, Russia, France and Great Britain … and the United States, with the most lethal stockpile in the world. Simply possessing such weapons alone does not justify an immediate attack.

President Bush suggests there is a connection between Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks. But in reality, Iraq’s leader has made no recent threats against the United States and there is no proven link between him and al-Qaida. He knows that attacking the most powerful country in the world would mean his death. He has shown himself to be ruthlessly homicidal, but there is nothing to indicate that he is suicidal.

Thus the fundamental question remains: Will a pre-emptive attack against Iraq make us more or less secure? Such an attack, without a United Nations vote specifically authorizing it, would violate international law and increase anti-American sentiment worldwide, destabilizing the Middle East and stimulating rather than reducing terrorism.

The United States has made a commitment to work with the international community to address the danger that Saddam Hussein poses. The resumption of the U.N. weapons inspections and disarmament regime in Iraq is a triumph for the United States, and for international law and multilateralism. Such an approach to foreign policy and national security embodies values that Americans are most proud of: integrity, the capacity to view facts objectively, and a fundamental belief in the force of law, rather than the law of force.

The United States will lose all credibility with our allies if President Bush launches a war regardless of the weapons inspectors’ success. And by alienating allies through unilateral action, the United States could throw the success of the entire global campaign against terrorism into jeopardy.

In addition to lacking clear justification and having a very unclear outcome, there is a high price to be paid for a pre-emptive attack against Iraq, if launched without U.N. authorization. U.S. taxpayers would have to foot the entire bill, estimated at $100 billion to $200 billion initially and perhaps as high as $1 trillion over the next 10 years.

Perhaps most serious and most neglected in the public debate to date are the inevitable humanitarian costs, reviewed by medical researchers in a recently released report by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Medact (its British affiliate), and Physicians for Social Responsibility (its U.S. affiliate). Using the most authoritatively outlined war scenarios, “Collateral Damage: The Health and Environmental Costs of War on Iraq” describes the likely deaths of between 24,000 and 130,000 innocent Iraqi civilians and an equal number of Iraqi soldiers being killed. It is also likely that between 100 to 5,000 of our loved ones serving in the U.S. military will be killed. Postwar health effects could take additional 200,000 lives.

With the potential benefits so uncertain, sacrificing so many lives is unconscionable.

To increase global security, we all agree that we must do everything possible to reduce the risk that weapons of mass destruction might be used by anyone. In deciding whether or not to preemptively attack Iraq, President Bush must not act to increase those risks. Cornering Saddam Hussein in Baghdad is the one action most likely to provoke him to use his weapons of mass destruction.

Now it appears the Bush administration is looking for an excuse to go to war, when a peaceful and just solution may be at hand. We must be prepared to take “yes” for an answer. Although the inspectors have been at work only for a few weeks and so far have not encountered any Iraqi obstruction, administration officials are already dismissing the possibility that they might be successful in discovering and monitoring the destruction of whatever remaining weapons of mass destruction might be in Iraq.

It is crucial that we now support the U.N. weapons inspectors by sharing with them the information they need from our intelligence services and giving them the time they need to do their job. If we do that, we really do have a good chance to resolve this conflict without a war, and to increase our security at the same time.

Peter Wilk, M.D., of Sebago, is president of Physicians for Social Responsibility/Maine.