To the Editor:
I'm writing to express my disagreement with two statements that were attributed to me in your article "Students sound off on conflict with Iraq" (The Dartmouth, Feb. 15). I am cited as having expressed the opinion that the war will be fought to ensure "continued low oil prices." I said nothing of the sort.
While history doesn't provide any track record that would lead me to believe the concern of the administration on democratic and human rights issues, it does provide observers with another possible motivation.
A report issued in Sept. 2000 by the Project for the New American Century -- a conservative international policy group that counts among its founders Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and Assistant Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz -- described "the unresolved conflict with Iraq" as "provid[ing] the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
That is what I believe this war is about: establishing a base of force in the region. And Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz agree -- or at least they did before they found new, more publicly acceptable reasons in the ashes of Sept. 11.
The article also implicitly describes me as a "pacifist." Pacifism, defined as the rejection of force as a just method in all circumstances, is a philosophy I do not subscribe to -- I do believe in just wars in theory and practice. And the polls are starting to show that a majority of Americans, and indeed humanity, have come to believe that this proposed war falls well short of those standards.
