by John Bottoms

Hey, President Bush.  Don't listen to those nattering naysayers telling you not to attack Iraq.  You know better than the likes of has-beens like Kissinger, Scowcroft and Armey.  Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are real smart fellows, way smarter than Colin Powell, so go ahead and follow your gut.  Attack now!  

Really you know, you have no choice, now that you've backed yourself into a corner with that "regime change" rhetoric.  You're probably gonna be another one-termer like your old man, so better to go out in a blaze of glory than as the world's laughingstock of geopolitical impotence.  "First Osama, now Saddam.  Dubya just can't get his man!" is what they’ll chant if you drop the ball now, but if you attack you’ll at least be remembered for your cojones.  Besides, it might really enhance freedom in the long run, which you claim to want.

If you thought the Vietnam generation's anti-war movement made the country a freer place, just wait 'til you see what comes down if your desperate Saddam-hunting soldiers become sniper fodder in the cratered streets of Baghdad; if they get suicide-bombed in their sleep like in Beirut; if your ally Israel uses your war as cover to pursue an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinians; if your strategic oil reserve runs out, plunging the world into deep recession.  Our campuses and grocery stores will be hotbeds of anti-government angst.

So go to war.  You can even start small, knowing that once American boys start dying over there, most of the country will rally behind you for a little while.  Then you can quickly build up your forces and move into the inevitable “mission creep” phase  with attacks on Iran and maybe Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan.  Quagmire doesn't begin to describe it.

Go to war, and before long you'll need to bring back the draft, demonstrating that a citizen's final job is to be soldier-slave for the warring state, and creating a new generation of draft-resisting, anti-government criminals.

Go to war, and the world will watch as the backlash at home forces you and your successors to remove the velvet glove from the iron fist of the police state that recent regimes have so carefully assembled, trundling American dissidents off to those internment camps quietly built over the last few years.

Go to war, and make it total war like FDR's and Lincoln's, so the world can again witness the mass murder which is the calling card of the mature state.  As you kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, see who still believes that you're fighting for “American values.”

Go to war, creating even more terrorist enemies, so when the next big attack on the homeland comes, Americans might finally recognize the blowback from your imperial activities.

Go to war, and show the world the lie of your campaign pledge of "humility" and promises to bring the troops home from foreign adventures.  You can join a rogue's gallery of previous U.S. rulers like Lincoln and Johnson, who campaigned on peace, but plunged the country into disastrous wars.

Go to war, and teach us that while being an American is a great thing, the cost of maintaining the imperial U.S.A. is now way too high, encouraging strong secession movements in our more independent-minded regions.

Start with an unprovoked surprise attack on a powerless foe, so your "day of infamy" becomes the world's rallying cry.  Maybe the world’s smaller powers will make the U.N. their tool for ganging up on your rogue administration.  Long waiting in the wings for their chance at power, these wannabe socialist world dictators will grab their opportunity for control over a discredited U.S. weakened by war, and turned inward by dissent and economic hard times.  The American people will finally be forced to give up the illusion of liberty and democratic self-government.

Go to war, so when it’s all over the world can witness your top generals on trial as war criminals in a European tribunal.  “I was only following orders” won’t play this time either.

Go to war, Dubya.  All the while, we anarchist gadflies will be saying "we told you so," as more Americans come to understand that the State is always the instrument of the world's greatest evil.  Perhaps a freer world will be one of the unintended consequences of your insanity. 

It is too bad about all those dead people along the way, but you know what they say about omelets and eggs.