In 1968, I graduated from high school and entered college. It was a year of rage in this country. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were murdered. Riots marked the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Lyndon Johnson was hounded from office. And Richard Nixon made his comeback via a "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam. It was the year when America reaped the whirlwind, the passions of its discontent boiling over and spilling out for all to see.

I wasn’t an antiwar activist in 1968, but as I observed the price paid by those who fought, coupled with the revelations that our government was lying to us and the rest of the world, the war became intolerable. I also became aware of the price paid by my father’s generation, the people who fought in World War II. The past war was presented to us kids, growing up in the 1950s, as a glorious and glamorous time. But why didn’t my father ever talk about his participation in the war? After all, he was in the Army Air Corps, CBI (China, Burma, India), not one of the major hot spots. He indicated he wasn’t really involved in any combat, but I found this not to have been entirely true years later, when he described being shot at by Japanese pilots while working on an airstrip in India. It seemed there was a lot of pain, suffering, shame, and guilt about the Great Adventure that wasn’t being discussed.

It’s a much different world and a much different situation today, but some of the things that began to dawn on me back then have been reinforced by reading about the history of World War II and Vietnam. And I’ve come to hate war, hate the fact that we still resort to death and destruction as a way to "solve" conflicts. A closer look reveals that these conflicts do not even get solved.

Saddam Hussein is indeed a threat and international menace. Still, I believe there are more creative ways to combat this threat than waging a war. Will the United States be honest and acknowledge the huge part that our "strategic interests" (i.e., Iraq’s oil reserves) have to do with all this? No, we will downplay the role of oil, stressing instead the connections (some real, some tenuous) between Iraq, Al Qaeda, and the other terrorist groups waging war against the US.

I don’t trust Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the yahoos who have been willing to attack Iraq unilaterally. I don’t believe in Bush’s black-and-white vision of the world ("You are either with us or against us"), and I don’t believe the world will become safer if we fight and "win."

The answers can be found only in a search for fairness and equity, justice and economic opportunity for all. None of this will come quickly or easily. In the meantime, yes, we must pursue and neutralize the terrorists and their organizations. I haven’t been convinced that attacking Iraq is a part of the fight. Once again, it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for?

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