U.S. and attack on Iraq

Criticism of U.S. warmongering has intensified in recent weeks, with much invective finding its way into this newspaper both in the editorial and letters to the editor.

Running through these almost repetitive scolds against the U.S. is the tenuous theme that they are not entitled, neither morally nor legally, to unilaterally strike Iraq. A syncretic combination of reasons, ranging from the laughable to the laudable has been posited in buttressing this posture. Most, however, are flawed, literally from the first paragraph, because they begin their assault with a premature battle cry "America will attack Iraq."

The U.S. has never expressed an intention to attack Iraq per se; rather an aptly defensive administration in the U.S. seeks to decommission the very offensive administration of another country -- that of Iraq.

This war or possible war will not be prosecuted against the common folk of Iraq, who have never been identified as the enemy of the U.S., nor will the conflict be rooted in an abjuring of Islam, an essentially noble and compassionate religion practiced by millions of Americans. Rather, it is to be a justified and overdue eviction of a tyrant and his equally vicious nest of minions who are not content to subject their own nation to terror and wretchedness and are either overtly or covertly intent on spreading menace beyond their borders, with the U.S. being the principal recipient.

Parcels of terror delivered by maniacal fanatics, whose interpretation of religion is as crude, though no less lethal, than the weapons they employ to kill and maim people, are what is in store for the U.S. And this is the crux of the matter, for it is the U.S., not Canada nor France that is and has for so long been the nearly exclusive target or terror campaigns, both abroad and at home. Time after time it is grieving Americans families that must come to terms with the loss of their loved ones; and it is the survivors of outrages who must, for the rest of their lives, bear the wounds.

Points of international legal and moral prerogatives are thus moot here because the U.S. is primarily accountable to its citizenry and not, as some would have us believe, to a vortex of nebulous world opinion. The uppermost duty of any sovereign state is indisputably the protection of its citizens and if this cardinal function of the state can only be realized through anticipatory defense, as opposed to reactive defense, then so be it because here the end -- the prevention of murderous plots, certainly justifies the means.

FRANK COSTA

Jakarta