The issue at hand - Editorial

Humanist, July-August, 2003 by Fred Edwords

Has the cure been worse than the disease?

The U.S.-led war on Iraq clearly succeeded in dethroning a vicious tyrant. Iraqi citizens who formerly feared to express their religious and secular views have now been voicing their beliefs. And humanitarian work toward the alleviation of longstanding Iraqi suffering is underway.

But this war has created its own problems. Its unilateralism has significantly compromised and eroded critical parts of the carefully built edifice of international law. Its unconscionable negligence led to the looting of Iraqi museums and archaeological sites as well as the burning of historic and religious libraries--robbing the Iraqi people of their heritage and humanity of a portion of its self-knowledge. Its use of embedded reporters caused the U.S. news media to blatantly function as the administration's propaganda arm. Its demonizing of high-profile peace activists continues to have a chilling effect on freedom of expression. Its failure to reveal weapons of mass destruction has increased distrust and cynicism toward the U.S. government both domestically and worldwide. Its failure to bring about self-determination for the Iraqi people has given support to the charge of American imperialism. And its connection to a larger web of blunt-edged antiterrorist policies, including periodic alarms and ongoing civil liberties violations, has placed foreign military victory in the service of domestic civilian oppression.

Clearly, radicals are in the U.S. government, not on the fringes, having persuaded a nation to acquiesce in doctrinaire policies.

That is the direction of this issue's cover stories. Almira Poudrier delves into the gross negligence behind the destruction of Iraqi antiquities. Greg Shafer analyzes how the war has negatively impacted American democratic values. Erika Waak reveals extensive media bias in the reporting of celebrity antiwar activism. And Norene Kelly describes how Americans, despite widespread patriotic sympathies, have actually failed to "support the troops."

Elsewhere in this issue, Nick Fox asks what country will next fall into the Bush administration's crosshairs. And David Marcoux provides an investigative report on an ominous new landmine system being tested by the defense department: the "self-healing" mine field.

Humanists, of course, have more concerns than war. So we also follow up on last issue's release of Humanism and Its Aspirations: Humanist Manifesto III with additional signers as well as commentary from signers and nonsigners. Thus begins a discussion and development of this dramatic new document's ideas, which will be carried forward into subsequent issues.

We also publish the first place essays in the Humanist Essay Contest for Young Women and Men of North America. These give us cause to celebrate the fact that youthful concern and idealism aren't a thing of the past. Able hands are ready to carry humanity into a better future.

But we must pause and ask if they will be allowed to. Is power becoming concentrated in so few hands that energetic concern and idealism will be forced to the sidelines?

In the 1960s I believed that the forward-thinking idealism of my generation was reversing forever the old-time conservatism that had denied us our rights, forced us into immoral wars, and failed to address the needs of the disenfranchised. I never imagined that in 2003 the United States would charge backward into the junkyard of false ideas and failed policies.

Clearly, history isn't linear and progress isn't continuous, so the task before us may be harder than anything we've faced before. This adds force to the case that, no matter what benefits have accrued from the war against Iraq, the cure has indeed been worse than the disease.