JUSTIFICATION VS REASON

It's about time we began to question Bush's reasons for wanting to go to war with Iraq. When I say "reasons" I don't mean the same thing as "justification." The latter is a bureaucratic term and is not the same as reason or motive. Bureacrats justify actions on rational grounds by beginning with a premise, or series of premises, that are not necessarily germane to the conclusion they want, but which they claim make the desired conclusion valid. But we have to remember that if the premise(s) of our claim are wrong, then the more rigorous our logic, the more likely we are to err. If the premises are totally unrelated to our motives, then they will not reveal our motives. The Bush administration's insistence on claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was just such an invalid premise used to support, while concealing, the real motivations for attacking Iraq.

Way too many of us accepted Bush's premise that Iran had at least some kinds of weapons of mass destruction and its consequence that we had to destroy the Iraqi military to protect ourselves.

As it turned out, Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, and Bush almost certainly knew that, but still he continued ratcheting up his claim that we must attack Iraq to defend ourselves. As Bush's justifications for the war collapsed, instead of searching for an explanation as to why in spite of all he insisted on starting a war, opposition was devoted to refuting various and sundry claims also founded on premises unrelated to the real reasons for going to war. As with the original WMD claim, none of these new premises even touched the question of motives for starting a war.

Better had we directed attention to searching out Bush's motives than in refuting an invalid claim. But we didn't. The result has been more than three years of yaking that has accomplished nothing, either at home or in Iraq.

Why did Bush and his cronies insist on starting a war with Iraq? I don't know the answer, there are probably several, but I'm very suspicious that whatever his motives, they were not intended to be beneficial to the common good of Iraq or the United States. Results of the needless war show clearly that the administration's motives could not have been honorable, for whatever they were, they have produced only death, destruction, and waste .

Some of the administration's perverted motives that seem likely to me include:

Destruction of the U.S. treasure so that no funds would be available for common good efforts such as social security, education, or a nonconfiscatory health policy. Further, putting the U.S. heavily in debt to other nations would preclude development of common good programs for years ahead.

Few, if any, projects are as effective in eleminating a nation's wealth as war. Not only would a war squander our money quickly, it would make a handy tool for transferring that money into the coffers of a few large corporations.

Being engaged in an active war grants the President much greater power and discretion than he could claim under normal circumstances. We saw Bush exercise this increased power in spying on individuals, intercepting private telephone conversations, torturing prisoners, extraordinary renditions, and abolishing habaes corpus, to name the more egregious examples of his ursurpation of power.

Bush's totally intolerant and ignorant hillbilly Christianity strives for the destruction of competing beliefs.

In the weeks before the invasion of Iraq, Ariel Sharon came to the United States to meet with Bush almost every week. What were they discussing?Was Bush perhaps receiving instruction, or at least encouragement, to use American soldiers and American money to get rid of a feared Israeli
enemy?