wfn.org | ACNS3354 An alternative to war

["Anglican Communion News Service" <acnslist@anglicancommunion.org>]

ACNS 3354     |     USA     |     19 MARCH 2003

An alternative to war

 From an article by Jim Wallis and John Bryson Chane

It is the eleventh hour, and the world is poised on the edge of war. Church
leaders have warned of the unpredictable and potentially disastrous
consequences of war against Iraq - massive civilian casualties, a precedent
for preemptive war, further destabilisation of the Middle East, and the
fuelling of more terrorism.

Yet, the failure to effectively disarm Saddam Hussein and his brutal regime
could also have potentially catastrophic consequences. The potential nexus
between weapons of mass destruction and terrorism is the leading security
issue in the world today. This is the moral dilemma: a decision between the
terrible nature of that threat and the terrible nature of war as a solution.

The world is desperate for a third way between war and ineffectual
responses - an alternative instead of war to defeat Saddam Hussein.

The Bush administration and the antiwar movement are agreed on one thing 
Saddam Hussein is a brutal and dangerous dictator. Virtually nobody has any
sympathy for him, either in the West or in the Arab world, but everybody has
great sympathy for the Iraqi people who have already suffered greatly from
war, a decade of sanctions, and the corrupt and violent regime of Saddam
Hussein. So let's separate Saddam from the Iraqi people. Target him, but
protect them.

As argued by the Human Rights Watch and others, the Security Council should
have established an international tribunal to indict Hussein and his top
officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Indicting Saddam would
have sent a clear signal to the world that he has no future. It would have
set into motion both internal and external forces that might have removed
him from power. It would have made it clear that no solution to this
conflict would have included Saddam and his supporters staying in power.

It is five minutes before midnight, as Dr Martin Luther King Jr might have
said. Unless an alternative to war is found [at this late stage], a military
conflagration will soon be unleashed. A morally rooted and pragmatically
minded initiative, broadly supported by people of faith and people of
goodwill, might help to achieve an historic breakthrough and set a precedent
for decisive and effective international action in the many crises we face
in the post September 11 world.

___________________________________________________________________

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