I was only nine years old when the elder Bush waged war with Iraq. I hated it, but only because the television coverage pre-empted my Saturday-morning cartoons. All my friends hated it, too.

I’m still surrounded by peers who hate the prospect of a war with Iraq, albeit for very different reasons. As a student at Brown University, arguably the most liberal college in the country, I hear a resounding cry against United States military action. But the most outspoken of the campus antiwar groups, Not Another Victim Anywhere (NAVA), has such a skewed perception of the United States that it makes me more conservative than I would ordinarily be.

After September 11, NAVA staged a demonstration during parents’ weekend. On the college green, a group of students read bits of a poem. Each section of the poem condemned US actions abroad. Poor Afghans, they said. Poor Iraqis, they said. There was no mention, though, of the thousands of Americans who died at the hands of Arab terrorists. It seemed as if the members of Not Another Victim Anywhere thought the only lives worth demonstrating for were the lives of impoverished people in other countries.

If Iraq does not disarm in accordance with United Nations regulations, I am ready to support military action. Historian Howard Zinn was the keynote speaker during a recent teach-in at Brown about the looming war with Iraq. Zinn preached a message of disarmament, but not just for Iraq — for the entire world. Global disarmament is a nice idea, but we don’t live in utopia. For better or worse, we live in the real world — a place with real threats. Many of the most vocal students at Brown, however, seem to believe in the unrealistic.

Perhaps I’d feel differently about this war if conservatives surrounded me. I didn’t support US intervention in Iraq without the backing of the UN Security Council. Nor am I a fan of George W. Bush. But I do believe the world has reached a point with Saddam Hussein where war may be a necessary last resort. It would be nice if, as Zinn suggested, we could take America’s huge military budget and put it into social services. But these social services won’t mean a thing if Iraqi weapons make their way to our cities.

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