“Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe.
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain.”
In his 1963 anti-war song “Masters of War,” Bob Dylan sings out against the war industry and elected officials trying to “sell” the war.
We are seeing this scenario played out again, and again we are struggling to speak out against it.
Whether there is a majority approval for the pending “war on Iraq” is hard to judge. Polls ask loaded questions for opinions about whether people support an attack on Saddam Hussein or if it coincides with our existing “War on Terror.”
Other questions ask whether people are for or against protecting the United States, or the United States’ interests abroad.
These questions circumvent the underlying question most people would like to answer. No one is being asked whether or not they support an attack on Iraq as a new war. Instead they are being asked questions that cry for honest answers, many of those being “yes.”
It seems obvious that elected officials have not gained the support they need or want before going ahead with preemptive strikes. If they had, why would they still be campaigning and convincing and selling the war?
Secret meetings take place about secret documents. Legislative leaders, Cabinet secretaries, all of them are making their own arguments. Whether it is Gephardt, Lott, or Daschle, as Senate leaders, or Powell, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Cheney, or Bush, as executives, arguments being made are thrown back and forth across the nightly news.
But no resolutions are being made. There are all these calls for a bipartisan agreement, for a proposal to go to the United Nations. Maybe this will happen, maybe there will be an agreement. Will the U.N. agree though?
Right after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan spoke out about taking cautious steps and going ahead with weapon inspectors, President Bush tried to convince the representatives that preemptive strikes were the way to go.
We need to know where everyone stands. We need to get an opinion from every leader, from every voter. Speak out to the ones you voted for, and make them responsible for who they represent.
“Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks.”
Unsigned editorials are the majority opinion of the Collegian editorial board.