Can you imagine a life without morals or principles?

OMAR RAMALWI

It would be chaotic. There would be no borders; laws would lose their meaning and cease to exist; basically humans would be dominated by law of the jungle, where only the strongest creature will survive. Nowadays, it seems we are governed in that manner: the U.S. ignored the UN, commanding war on Iraq. This clumsy policy may extend the violence into Iran in the nearest future.

Politicians, as we know, are not the most ethical people, although their campaigns demonstrate morals and principles. They manage to convince average citizens who assume politicians will improve everything.

Lately, I was drawn to an article in Harper’s magazine by Daniel Ellsberg, former American military analyst, one of hundreds of advisors working under a number of presidents in the White House.

Ellsberg precipitated a national uproar in 1971, upon his release of the famous Pentagon papers to the New York Times. Ellsberg writes in Harper’s that his conscience was eating him during the Vietnam War. He knew he had power to change and end the misery and deaths of thousands; yet he was reluctant and regretfully waited for some years to react. The release awakened the American people to how much they had been deceived by their own government about the war in 1970s.

The Iraqi issue is more serious, given that it concerns strategic and highly important agendas for the United States of America’s political survival.

According to the CIA and 10 other U.S. defence bureaux’ research, former president Saddam Hussein had no links with al-Qaeda and possessed no weapons of mass destruction. In my opinion Hussein was no worse than any person with his power.

The liberation (invasion) of Iraq was a walk in the park for the U.S. army, the Iraqi army being rusty, exhausted and highly corrupted in its commanding chain. More than three years later, the bloodshed is at its peak: at least 100 Iraqis die everyday. In a recent United Nations study, the Iraqi death toll was estimated to be at 600,000 since the operation began in 2003.

Daniel Ellsberg’s article asks White House insiders to leak the details of Bush’s new war plans for Iran. Bush has said that he is not reluctant to use all necessary force to obtain Iran’s submission, including the use of tactical nuclear weaponry.

Ellsberg writes that what he’s asking insiders to do is very hard, but he knows how necessary it is and how important that it be done early enough to change the direction that the world is heading. “Simply resigning in silence does not meet moral or political responsibilities of officials rightly appalled by the thrust of secret policy. I hope that one or more such persons will make the sober decision accepting sacrifice of clearance and career, and risk of prison to disclose estimates of costs and prospects and dangers of the military plans being considered,” he wrote.

I think courage is a notion linked to honesty; it occurs when there is no doubt or fear of expressing proper truth. Although it took Ellsberg some time to come out of his silence, it’s excellent that he showed that humans can be humane, and chose the sober and conscientious approach.

It surely would be a hard process going against the majority-tide or your own interests. In addition, there are lobbies within the system that control the mass media and most of the information average citizens receive — leaving Congress and citizens to enjoy the colour show (blue, red, orange alert system) and therefore kept in the dark, while the leaders of the free world are off again spreading destruction.

The existing Iranian problem is concluded in a couple of reasons, resembling those for the Iraq invasion: they are basically to maintain American dominance in the Middle East region, protect vital oil supplies in the Arab Gulf and preserve the well-being of key allies within the region.

I think we should question the motives behind “liberation” and “spreading democracy” through wars. Time has proved to us that U.S. involvement in Vietnam was a mere sham. What needs revelation is the internal controversy, the secret arguments and claims of the advocates of war and the nuclear option: the Pentagon papers of the Middle East.

Omar Ramlawi is a third-year student of Economics at the University of Manitoba.