In the midst of worldwide protest against an impending war with Iraq, the Bush administration and its allies have trotted out their trump card: Condoleezza Rice and Tony Blair suggest that the hands of those who oppose attack on a tyrant will be stained by the blood of innocent Iraqis. Strong language, but the underlying moral calculus is flawed.

“First do no harm” is as imperative for national leaders as for physicians. An invasion of Iraq to free its people faces powerful counterarguments. The war strategy involves massive bombardment of Iraqi cities. Conservative estimates suggest that 100,000 civilians will die either directly from the bombing or from the resulting starvation. If humanitarian considerations actually guided US policy, plans to liberate Iraq would emphasize a ground attack – even if U.S. casualties were higher.

Iraqis aren’t clamoring for a U.S. air attack. Though most Iraqis detest Saddam, hostility doesn’t imply eagerness to face an aerial invasion. Guardian columnist Seamus Milne comments: “Even the main US-sponsored organizations such as the Iraqi National Congress and Iraqi National Accord, which are being groomed to be part of a puppet administration, find it impossible directly to voice support for a U.S. invasion, suggesting little enthusiasm among their potential constituency.”

Iraqis have good reasons even beyond immediate casualties to fear aerial invasion.

The war on Afghanistan not only failed to catch or deter Osama, it left a country still largely ruled by warlords, economically decimated, and increasingly sustained only by drug exports.

If Dr. Rice were to leave the cloistered grounds of the White House, she would learn that the anti-war movement is a virtual forum on ways to depose Saddam’s without incapacitating his subjects. (I have an e file on alternative perspectives, which I would be happy to share with interested readers.) Rice forgets that while the U.S. national security establishment armed Hussein in the eighties and helped him cover up gas attacks on the Kurds, only the democratic Left opposed his rule.

University of San Francisco professor Steven Zunes reminds us that “In the vast majority of cases, dictatorships were toppled through massive nonviolent action, “people power” movements that faced down the tanks and guns and swept these regimes aside … such as those that brought down the Communist regimes in East Germany and Czechoslovakia and overthrew Southeast Asian strongmen like Marcos and Suharto.”

Zunes points out that, unfortunately, current economic sanctions on Iraq only weaken the middle class, the source of many earlier rebellions against tyrannical states. Smarter sanctions could limit weapons development while enabling poor and middle class elements to rebound.

The U.N. disarmament process should be allowed to continue. Imperfect as that process is, it has left Iraq little real threat to its neighbors – as they fully acknowledge. The world community could also recognize an Iraqi government in exile based on that entity’s openness to diverse ideological and ethnic factions. That government could be granted access to growing portions of the oil for food revenues and administrative control over areas of northern Iraq already essentially outside of Saddam’s orbit. Disarmament inspections could be supplemented by human rights monitors, with debt relief and Marshall Plan type assistance as a reward to Iraq for progress in human rights. Such steps are unlikely to be immediately effective, but they would sow divisions even within the leadership.

For the foreseeable future, Iraq will likely accept such monitoring only if enforced by the possibility of military intervention. Nonetheless, European calls for internationalism cut both ways. The United States can and should ask other U.N. states to share the burden. At some point, removal of Hussein by military means might also be deemed necessary. But where such actions are taken on the basis of regularly debated standards enforced by a multinational police presence, the risks occasioned by resistance to an occupying national power or by inciting new generations of ethnically and religiously based terror are lessened.

The most immediate task in curbing terror lies in an even-handed resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The resolution of that conflict is unlikely without an international police presence to enforce secure borders and punish terrorism. Such a peace process can model broader standards regarding border conflicts and human rights.

No one should imagine that this agenda is easy, sure to spare all innocent life, or without continuing controversy. Its strength lies in its willingness to acknowledge its own limits. It thus stands in stark contrast to Bush’s. Like Rome at the height of its imperial power, the United States under Bush seeks to reduce the world to one monochromatic desert and call it peace. Enduring peace, however, requires the collaborative development and periodic revision of standards of international law and practice. These cannot be ordained and imposed by one leader or nation. They will work and survive only as they are the product or a more democratic politics both within and among nations.

John Buell is a political economist who lives in Southwest Harbor. Readers wishing to contact him may e-mail messages to jbuell@acadia.net.