The “war on terrorism” is an oxymoron because war is terrorism.

The Bush Administration capitalized on the September 11 tragedy to expand its increasingly omnipresent and global presence in oil-producing countries throughout the world. Bush and others say war will stop terrorism.

Isn’t war a form of “terrorism” in itself? Mapping the “war on terrorism” is frighteningly similar to the act of mapping the strategic locations of global oil reserves. It should come as no surprise that the current administration hold such interests in high esteem.

Can the fragile American economy withstand a potentially abrupt rise in oil prices, another decline in air travel, an increasingly bulging federal deficit, a drop in consumer confidence and other negative economic effects that can be expected from a major war in the Middle East?

Are we willing to deploy 100,000 or more American soldiers in Iraq for ten or twenty years at a cost of billions of dollars a year?

Are we willing to risk triggering the beginning of World War III?

Wouldn’t an invasion of Iraq aimed at the removal of Saddam Hussein remove any inhibitions he might have regarding the uses of chemical, biological and possible nuclear weapons, making their use more rather than less likely?

Is the United States prepared to accept significant losses of American lives in war as well as possibly again on our own soil due to further terrorism?

Is the United States prepared to inflict heavy losses on Iraq’s civilian population if, as expected, Saddam concentrates his military assets in urban areas?

Would this not make our country appear as a moral pariah in the eyes of much of the world rather than a good-intentioned promoter of operation “enduring freedom?”

Paul Goodman

Senior

Sociology