Writing in the London-based daily Independent earlier this month, longtime Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk challenged the notion that there are no good alternatives to attacking Iraq.
"The world might, after all, demand that all Middle Eastern states apply all U.N. Security Council resolutions -- which include an Israeli withdrawal from occupied Arab land as well as the disarming of Saddam Hussein," wrote Fisk. "It could insist that within five years, all weapons of mass destruction in the region -- not just Iraqi weapons but Syrian missiles and Israeli nuclear weapons and possible Iranian rockets -- be destroyed. It could offer a real peace in the Middle East, based on human rights, justice and a Palestinian homeland."
But instead, Fisk noted, "we are beating the old 1991 drums of war, our claims so preposterous that they bury the real viciousness of the real Saddam. For war is not primarily about victory or defeat. It is about death. It represents the total failure of the human spirit."
