I’ve considered what a war would look like. I’ve thought of all the innocent lives that would be stripped from the face of the earth. Only those who have no compassion would slaughter those people. War is inhumane.
Some people support war with Iraq because of the September 11 attacks. Yes, we’ve been attacked before. Still, it doesn’t give us the right to attack others with no cause. We would be doing the same thing as the terrorists who attacked us.
I acknowledge nuclear and chemical weapons will cause severe damage. But we don’t even know if Iraq really has them. The Bush administration claims Iraq has weapons, but is unwilling to show Americans the proof. It is unwilling to show the United Nations the proof. We can’t attack another country just because we think they may have something. We lost innocent lives on Sept. 11, 2001. We must not kill innocent Iraqis.
This Bush administration is trying to finish what the first one started. The U.S. should not play tit-for-tat with the lives of American soldiers. The people who call for war never fight them. It’s the young men and women of this country who die.
We are always invading other countries. If other countries declared war on the U.S. every time we created a new weapon or attacked another country we would be destroyed. We have enough technology and intelligence people to protect us. We spend billions of dollars on defense. If Iraq is trying to create weapons of mass destruction, we should be able to stop them without going to war.
Instead of going to war with Iraq, we should be focusing on our own problems. The Bush administration should be concerned with our economy. Millions of Americans are out of work. There needs to be a plan to stimulate the economy other than war or one that would benefit the rich.
President Bush has said Osama bin Laden was public enemy number one. Now, he never speaks of him. He’s always talking about Saddam Hussein. What happened to bin Laden? We need to find bin Laden, not go to war with Iraq.
Anthony Ray, 21, is a junior newspaper journalism student from Miami, Fl. He can be reached at aj4_21@hotmail.com.