I am taking this opportunity to make a proposal to my peers who support the current war in Iraq.

As is well known, opinions are best testified to when they are enacted through deeds. For this reason, I should like to suggest to my pro-war brethren that they enlist in the armed services and offer to replace any soldiers currently stationed in Iraq who joined the military solely because their economic condition left them no viable choice.

I do not mean by this proposal to imply that young persons who support the Iraq war are in any way hypocritical. On the contrary, I believe them to be possessive of the most stringent consistency and laudable integrity imaginable. Never would it be the case that a lover of war should shirk from fighting for his own opinions while gladly allowing the poor to do the dying for him. In short, I am not suggesting the war-hungry constituents of my demographic are voluntarily failing to fight in Iraq — it is just that the glorious prospect has not yet occurred to them.

However, now that I have made the prospect obvious to them, they will no doubt immediately enlist in the military and request a quick deployment to Iraq where they might commence the battle against evil. Indeed, I expect that this honorable publication shall be flooded in the following weeks with innumerable Viewpoints thanking me for my ingenious proposal on account of its allowing war advocates to substantially express their virtuous patriotism and infallible logic.

Of course, many soldiers who are presently serving in Iraq firmly believe in the justice of President Bush's cause. Just as certainly, there are soldiers in Iraq whose presence there ultimately owe to unfortunate economic circumstances that made going to college an impossible option and who do not so adamantly believe in the justice of the war. This is the sort of soldier my war-mongering peers should replace. Such an offer would be both fair and logical. In fact, anything less would be hypocritical.

Of course, nothing of hypocrisy has ever been perpetrated by an advocate of war. therefore, there is no reason to doubt that they will soon be offering their services in the noble Iraq campaign.

Svoboda is a junior philosophy and English major.

Click here to comment on this viewpoint on the Tribune Forum.