Zseni wrote:

Look, it's useless arguing with you about this.

Me: The resolution is not sufficient grounds for a war.
You: WE HAVE TO BOMB IRAQ.
Me: The resolution is not a causus belli.
You: IRAQ IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO OUR NATIONAL SECURITY.

Phase II:
Me: Where was the threat in 91 when we already had, you know, troops and bombs all over the scene and plus revolutionary movements in the country to back?
You: Are we supposed to wait for him to bomb us?
Me: Hey, isn't North Korea nuke capable now?
You: ARE WE SUPPOSED TO WAIT FOR HIM TO BOMB US?

Let me cut straight to the heart of the matter: if there is a war, Americans will die in it. There will be casualties. The world as we know it right now will change, and we will contend within our own borders with grief and shock.

However, unlike the Gulf War grief and shock, ours will be the grief and shock of aggressors. We will be making a pre-emptive strike against a regime we can't seem to prove anything against definitively. Doesn't that worry you? What is the status of those future dead servicemen and women - are they heroes? Americans were generally against nation-building in Afghanistan; are they going to be in favor of nation-building in Iraq? Why are we going, and what will we leave behind?

To you all these questions and concerns are answered by the mere potential threat of a nuclear-capable Iraq and its vague ambitions to bomb the US. To me they are not answered by that. That is the end of the argument. Compounding the matter is my impotent rage at you for allow things like "enforcing the resolution" to play into your ideology at all; it is, I continue to point out, a justification, a rationalization, and not a motivation. I'm not really mad at you. I'm mad at a country which has allowed itself to go this far down the path of disconnect.

War or not war - how can it honestly matter very much to me? I won't suffer, and I know how to keep those close to me from suffering too. But here, in this country, I feel a more insidious war is being fought, one that I can't remove myself from, one that I can't protect my loved ones from. I'm paranoid about our nation's leaders. This war in Iraq seems to me too Vietnamesque for me to accept it with your easy comfort.

I will need to see more proof of Saddam's weapons, and on top of that I need to be convinced that war is the only way, that war will be the successful way, and that we will not pay too heavy a price for it internationally. To me that's only reasonable; if it's not equally reasonable to you, then there is no chance at all of our ever arriving at a concensus on this issue.