Let’s Honk Our Horns

as a “Last Resort”

By Hank Edson

On March 8, 2003, President Bush gave a presidential radio address discussing his “War on Terror.” A major portion of his address was devoted to his claims that Saddam Hussein was not complying with weapons inspections, was not disarming, and that “he possesses weapons of terror.” He ended his address, saying,

“We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq. But if Saddam Hussein does not disarm peacefully, he will be disarmed by force. Across the world, and in every part of America, people of goodwill are hoping and praying for peace. Our goal is peace -- for our own nation, for our friends, for our allies and for all the peoples of the Middle East. People of goodwill must also recognize that allowing a dangerous dictator to defy the world and build an arsenal for conquest and mass murder is not peace at all; it is pretense. The cause of peace will be advanced only when the terrorists lose a wealthy patron and protector, and when the dictator is fully and finally disarmed.”

This echoed a long pattern of claims by the Bush administration that it sought every possible means of avoiding a war. On October 9, 2002, Secretary of State Colin Powell told Larry King, “ War should never be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It should always be a deliberate act by people acting rationally, hopefully. And in this case, as the president said the other night, we are trying to see war as a last resort.” On November 14, 2002, White House Press Secretary told the press that Bush “seeks a peaceful resolution. War is a last resort.” On November 20, 2002, Bush himself repeated his own previous assertions that war with Iraq would be a last resort.

On January 22, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell told News Hour’s Jim Lehrer, “The United States is preparing itself for military action if it's called for. The president still hopes for a peaceful resolution of this matter. The matter is in the hands of the Iraqi regime.” Just two days before the war commenced, Powell was still claiming the administration was trying hard to resolve the crisis peacefully. The International Herald Tribune reported that Powell saw a way out of war with Iraq if "Saddam Hussein, his sons and a number of other top leaders were to leave Iraq" and were replaced by "more responsible leaders."

In fact, less than two weeks before the President made his radio address claiming he was doing everything he could to avoid war, Bush acknowledged to Spain’s leader Jose Maria Aznar that he had rejected an offer by Saddam Hussein to go into exile in exchange for $1 billion and the right to take certain documents related to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs.

The Spanish Newspaper, El Pais, published a transcript yesterday of Bush's conversations with Aznar which took place on February 22, 2003, at Crawford, Texas.

In covering the story yesterday, Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman reported:

“The Middle East analyst Juan Cole speculates that Saddam likely wanted to bring with him information that showed Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had helped fund and support his weapons program. Possessing that information, Cole says, would have protected Saddam from future retaliation out of fear of embarrassing the White House. The transcript also shows President Bush hoped the UN Security Council would support the war in part because “[it] would save us fifty billion dollars.” The fifty billion figure was the initial estimate of what the invasion would cost. Bush also made clear he expected U.S. forces to invade Iraq within a month of the conversation regardless of UN approval. Bush and Aznar met on February 22nd -- the U.S.-led invasion began on March 19th.”

Given the Bush administration’s record of repeatedly claiming from October 2002 to March 2003 that “war was a last resort,” these revelations that the Bush administration turned down an offer from Saddam Hussein to go into exile in order to avoid war demands our immediate attention.

According to a recent study conducted by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes, just one day of Bush’s war costs us nearly as much as Saddam’s $1 billion dollar one time demand. Stiglitz and Bilmes estimate that we spend $720 Million each day we are in Iraq. Recent studies estimate that the death toll in Iraq since the invasion is over 1.2 million dead. Over 3,800 troops have been killed and tens of thousands have been seriously wounded.  And of course, there were never any weapons of mass destruction found because Iraq had already complied with his obligation to disarm.

There is a reason why we say “war is a last resort”: What can possibly justify 1 million killed human beings? A President of the United States should not be permitted to use these words, “war is a last resort,” without being held accountable to them. The cost is too high otherwise.

To all Americans, who, like me, are outraged by the lies we have been told, by the absolutely unnecessary mass murder our nation has unleashed, by the loss of thousands of our own young men and women who deserved better from their president, and by the exploding, astronomical costs of this criminal war, I propose that on Tuesday after next, October 9th, we all go out to our cars at the same time and honk our car horns continuously for five minutes in rebuke of the administration of George W. Bush and their decision to reject Saddam Hussein’s offer of a peaceful way out of the crisis, which George W. Bush instigated in the first place.

I choose the date of October 9th because it is close in time, but gives us some time to gather momentum for the idea, and because it is the same day on which Colin Powell quoted the President on Larry King Live asserting that war was a “last resort.” In order to make it happen, bloggers will have to take a leadership role. On September 27, 2007, bloggers across the world participated in “Bloggers Unite: A day of blogging against abuse.” Let’s use this recent experience to put our collective strength into action. If America’s blogging community hums with the idea of a honk-in, then we can put pressure on the political action organizations to join us and on the editorial pages of the newspapers to discuss us. Let programmers design polls to register the public’s intention to participate. Post this article in your blog; promote it every way you can.

We, the people, voted in a Democratic Congress to end this war. Our votes have apparently meant nothing. It is time to vote with our car horns. It may be pathetic in a once democratic nation, but it is, for the powerless people of the United States of America, our “last resort.”

1.2 million human beings have been slaughtered by the war our government started unprovoked even after an opportunity to achieve its objective peacefully was offered. Are we really unwilling to make a little noise for just five minutes?

  
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Copyright © Hank Edson 2007