In recent weeks, several retired generals have called for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The reasons they have given for wanting Rumsfeld's ouster are that he has ignored the advice of military leadership and made "mistakes" in the conduct of the Iraq war.
These given reasons ignore the more important issue. Rumsfeld should indeed be removed from his position, not because he has made miscalculations during his tenure, but because he is a murderous war-criminal co-responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people and the destruction of an entire country. This responsibility extends to many members of the Bush administration, all of whom should be impeached and investigated for war crimes.
The Iraq war was not a "mistake." The Bush administration knew quite well that its rationale for war was built on fabrication and exaggeration. There is no excuse for its grossly overplaying dubious stories about aluminum tubes, terrorism and Nigerian uranium, all the while ignoring dissenting voices within the intelligence community. These deceptions were the work of people looking for a de facto justification of their determination to invade and conquer Iraq. The fact that they manufactured these deceptions in order to kill thousands of innocent people makes the Iraq war an outright atrocity, not a tactical error.
More than three years after the administration began its project of bringing "freedom" and "democracy" to Iraqis, tens of thousands of them are dead, the country lies in ruins and civil war is a very real possibility. By invading and destabilizing their home land, the administration has given people throughout the Middle East a multitude of new incentives to turn to terrorism and fundamentalism.
The word "mistake" does not begin to characterize this situation. "Moral catastrophe" would be more appropriate, considering the deceptions employed by the administration in order to wage its war.
If we decline to think of the Iraq disaster as a moral failure, then we run the risk of being similarly deceived in future cases. This is important to remember in light of the administration's desire to attack Iran. Bush has publicly refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons in such an attack, a rather ominous and dangerous precedent.
Since we all bear responsibility for the actions of our elected leaders and since the administration prefers not to operate according to the most basic tenets of morality, we should confront its quest for hegemony by asking critical questions. Why is it permissible for Israel to have a fully functional nuclear weapons program but not permissible for Iran to research nuclear power? By what right does the United States, with its thousands of nuclear weapons, pronounce other countries evil for seeking to acquire such weapons?
If we wish to be fair and avoid hypocrisy, we should hold every country, including our own, to the same standards. No sane person wants Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, but neither should Israel or the United States possess them. If the Bush administration were interested in peace and security, it would begin destroying its own stockpiles and cease threatening non-nuclear states with nuclear attacks. The failure to do so is much worse than a mere mistake.
Svoboda is a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences.