During the course of the last week our politicians and pundits have accepted that going to war against Iraq is inevitable, no longer a question of “if” but only of “when.” Our elected congressional leaders, for all their posturing on the weekend talk shows, have capitulated to the administration’s rhetoric, not wanting to be accused of disloyalty to the troops.

Not wanting to seem unpatriotic before an election, Congress has warmed to its role of rubber stamp, and no one is willing to speak out against the Alice in Wonderland logic of “pre-emptive action.” If the goal of war is eliminating Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, how will we do it?

We’re told that inspectors on the ground won’t be able to find Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological weapons. Are we then to understand that U.S. bombers can locate them with satellite technology from space? We know that weapons inspectors, at least, don’t kill civilians in the course of their work. Or is our plan to take out the possible means of delivering these weapons by bombing Iraq’s military machine and the nation’s infrastructure?

Have we forgotten that the horrors of Sept. 11 and the anthrax deaths and disruption that followed were delivered from our own soil by using American planes and the U.S. Postal Service? If the goal of war is regime change, meaning killing or otherwise deposing Hussein, let’s refresh our memory again. It was just one year ago that President Bush said we would capture Osama bin Laden, “dead or alive.” The Iraqi leader has plenty of places to hide. It is also human nature for a nation to back its leader – even an unpopular leader – when under enemy attack. Wouldn’t we?

President Bush’s speech before the United Nations, seen as both conciliatory and determined, was a diversionary tactic. Challenge the other nations of the world to uphold the rules of international law and hold Iraq to its obligations under the surrender terms of the Gulf War, but insist on having the last word in making the rules, or quit the game if the rules don’t favor our position (see Kyoto, the World Court, etc.).

I have no illusions about Hussein, but neither do I have illusions about our own country and our history of selective morality, supporting authoritarian regimes or undermining democratic ones when it has been seen as in our strategic interests to do so. If this administration is prepared to spend $100 billion to $200 billion to make the world safer, let them think about putting those dollars to better use than bombs. Television news coming from Israel should tell us how effective weapons are, regardless of the delivery method, in solving the world’s problems.

Andrea Stark lives in Monroe.