Why are We in Iraq?

In 1942 Frank Capra made a series of films called Why We Fight to explore America's reasons for entering World War II. People have asked me why I stole his title for my film. Actually I think I stole Capra's movie. Or at least I hope I did.

Capra was a great director, but more important he was a champion of democracy and a defender of the little guy. In Its a Wonderful Life George Bailey fights to save his small town of Bedford Falls from what is effectively Wal-Mart. In Mr. Smith Goes to Washington Jefferson Smith battles until his legs give out to protect his beloved creek from damming by special interests. Throughout Capra's films the hero is a lovable everyday American struggling against dark forces of corruption in our society. And always America's first principles are at stake.

When he made the Why We Fight series Capra took his concern for democracy global. In seven gripping films tracing the rise of totalitarianism in Germany, Italy and Japan, Capra urged Americans to stand up and fight to defend democracy. The films have been called propaganda partly because they were financed by the U.S. government but also because they are deeply affecting and motivational. Even then America needed a reason to go to war, and who better than Capra to articulate it?

In those days, when Capra asked everyday people on the street why we fought, the answer was simple. The Axis powers were a threat to humanity, and opposing them was a moral imperative. Today the reasons seem far less clear.

What are we fighting for? I have asked nearly 200 Americans this question. Almost always the first answer out of anyone's mouth is "Freedom." In one way, that's natural, because for much of our history, and despite our shortcomings, America has been a staging ground in the global quest for freedom. At the same time, hearing identical answers to a complex question is troubling in a democracy. So I pressed further. "What does that mean to you?" I asked, and right away I discovered people's doubts. Just beneath the veneer of "freedom," clouds have gathered. I spoke to a nine-year-old kid who knew the word Halliburton and said, "It's the people who start the wars who know what they're fighting about." I spoke to a middle-aged store owner in Kansas who said he thought we were fighting for our ideals, or at least he hoped so. Everywhere I went, I found people struggling to reconcile their hopes for America with the reality they see. This sense of conflict deeply affected me and my film.

More than three years have passed since the start of the Iraq war, and there have been many developments—from the hopes represented by purple fingers to the danger of civil war to scandals here at home and rising new tensions abroad. In the Capra tradition, the interviews that follow represent a cross section of people sharing their thoughts during a time of war. I am grateful to them for their openness and for allowing me to capture their voices at this critical moment.

Senator Lindsey Graham Republican South Carolina

Why are we fighting? I think we were dealt a blow that knocked us to our knees. We got up rightfully angry and committed to not letting it happen again.

I've served as a military officer and military lawyer for 20 years and have been on active duty for six and a half years while also serving in Congress. This interaction with men and women in uniform has helped me understand how the war is playing out among the National Guard and Reserves when the cameras are off. So there's the Lindsey Graham who's part of the Republican team and the Lindsey Graham with experiences outside politics, formed through nonpolitical associations.

Men and women in the U.S. military have pledged their allegiance to the Constitution in a unique way but are also human beings. As we debate why we went into Iraq and when we should leave, most military people would probably appreciate more coverage of the good things they're doing, but they don't feel threatened by the debate. Questioning policy and having an honest debate do not destroy morale. The American way is to question.

Some initial decisions about interpreting the torture statute were way out of bounds. If they became our country's policy, 60 years of protections we've adhered to would be eroded. Some Americans don't care what we do to these detainees. I understand that on an emotional level, but I've spent 20-plus years sticking to a set of values that rejects that way of thinking. If we permit the president to allow an interrogation method that is clearly outside international norms, what prevents the presidents of Syria and Iran from making those same findings against our people? The stakes are high.

One thing the United States had going for it during World War II was unity of purpose. We are not a unified nation on Iraq. The president bears some responsibility for that. Preemption is a doctrine we've come up with in the war on terror: Hit them before they hit us. But one of the cornerstones of preemption is you've got to be right. Making unsupported statements about weapons of mass destruction is a body blow. Some people think they were used and manipulated. Some think this is a war not of necessity but of choice. I understand where they're coming from.

The bottom line is, in confronting my enemy there is a line in the name of safety that, if crossed, blurs the distinction between me and my enemy. In this war military force has very limited application. We cannot win this war through imperial power. If it is viewed as an exercise of imperial power by the U.S. to do away with all who oppose us, we will surely lose. If we're seen as an agent of good that is empowering moderate forces against intolerance and aiding those who are being oppressed, we will win.

Amy Goodman Host, Radio Talk Show Democracy now!

War is gore. It is suffering. It is death. It is hospitals overrun with wounded. That's what war is, and that's what we should see on television: the unfiltered war. We're not getting this.

The Pentagon has refined its control of the media to an unprecedented level. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the media-watchdog group, looked at the nightly newscasts on NBC, ABC, CBS and PBS in the week leading up to Secretary Powell's appearance before the UN Security Council and in the week afterward. During that period 393 interviews were conducted about war. Of those, only three featured antiwar voices. Three of 393—that is not a balanced media. That is a media cheerleading for war.

Once the war began, the networks put retired military officers on the air to give blow-by-blow descriptions of events from the Pentagon's point of view. Where were the peace activists? Where were the diplomats? Where were the doctors? We asked CNN's Aaron Brown where these voices were. He said, "I admit we came late to the peace movement. But once the war starts, those voices are irrelevant." Irrelevant? How else would the Vietnam war have ended?

Tim Russert interviewed Donald Rumsfeld on Meet the Press and showed the famous handshake between Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein. I thought, Finally Rumsfeld is going to be confronted on why he had been normalizing relations with Saddam, knowing he had used poison gas. So what did Russert ask him? "Mr. Secretary, you got to know Saddam Hussein. Where do you think he might be right now? What do you think he might be thinking?"

The media does not just let politicians off the hook but provides a forum for their message. What does George Bush's statement "You're with us or you are with the terrorists" mean to journalists? It means you have to make a decision. If the media stood up even for a moment, the standoff would end with the press winning. The politicians need the press more than the press needs the politicians.

Ethan Hawke Actor, Writer, Director

Something in us creates these wars. You can say this war is about oil, but consistency over time means it's not about specific political issues. Something else is going on.

I'm from Texas. I love cowboy hats and riding horses. No American idealizes all that more than I do. But when I see George W. Bush walking around in his cowboy hat, I feel it's time for some new kind of masculine identity.

Masculine identity has been ruling the world for a long time. You could make a case that it was needed at one time to keep people safe, build buildings, make roads and conquer nature. But that masculine thing has also led us to war. Men like to fight. Men like to feel as if their dicks are big. But because of globalization, I think in some fundamental way "Might makes right" is over. We're now realizing how interconnected we are.

My brother is a Green Beret in Afghanistan. I remember our parents taking us on trips to the Lincoln Memorial. We both wore shoulder holsters with toy guns, and we scoped out bad guys. He ended up really doing that, and I ended up pretending to. In the (continued on page 112)Iraq(continued from page 58) movie Training Day, I pretend to be a tough guy. But when I see photos of my brother and his friends in Afghanistan, they're posturing and posing. We're all playacting the idea of a man who can't be fucked with, who stands up for what he believes. Yet history is full of guys coming back from war saying, "God, I was kind of pretending all that, and then my buddy really got shot."

One of the great things about my brother is he's willing to put his life on the line for his beliefs. I wish our government was more responsible with his willingness to do that.

Dr. Jane Goodall Primate Researcher

As far as aggression and war are concerned, there is a great connection between chimpanzees and humans. If we assume a common ancestor existed about 6 million years ago—a sort of ape-like, human-like creature—then the behavior humans and chimpanzees share today was possibly present in that common ancestor.

I was born in England in 1934. I remember vividly the day Britain declared war on Nazi Germany. Although I wasn't old enough to understand war per se, I remember bombs falling and people being killed. Later we had U.S. troops stationed outside our house, and we took one of them in. Then he went off and got killed. So I certainly understood war very early.

I first came to Gombe, Tanzania in 1960, but not until almost 10 years into our study were we able to follow the chimps from the central part of their range. That's when I came to the realization that a primitive kind of war was going on among them. It was shocking and horrifying. The chimps could be extraordinarily brutal. I had thought they were similar to people but nicer. This made them seem even more like us. What's fascinating is that chimps' behavior during wartime differs completely from their behavior during normal periods. They may try to twist an arm off another chimp or drink blood coming from the nose of one of their victims. There are gang attacks. They leave victims to die of their wounds. They don't do these things ordinarily.

Many people have criticized me for talking about aggressive incidents among chimps. They're afraid we'll have people saying, "Well, we've inherited aggressive tendencies, and therefore war and violence are part of our makeup, inevitable." I absolutely believe we've inherited aggressive tendencies, but we also have a far more sophisticated brain. We can control our genetic behavior to some extent. Most important, we've inherited characteristics of love and compassion and altruism. We have a far better sense of morality, so theoretically we can decide we don't have to go to war.

All we can do with our chimp data is say chimpanzees are more like us than any other living creature. And their aggressive patterns—swaggering and shaking the fist and throwing rocks and stomping and kicking—are very like ours. However, I would say the difference between our modern warfare and chimpanzee warfare is that ours is calculated, planned, armed warfare, whereas with the chimpanzees it's just something that happens. A chimp could never plan to torture anyone. So I would say our bad is worse, but equally our good is better.

Jessica Lynch College Student, Former Soldier

I didn't feel like a hero, coming home. When I was a soldier it was just my duty to put on that uniform and go fight for our freedom. I think the Iraqis who risked their lives to help an American girl, and the American soldiers who risked their lives to rescue me, were heroes.

I'm from a little town called Palestine, West Virginia. Ever since I was small I had plans to go to college and become a kindergarten teacher. I didn't know a lot about the military. One day after high school some recruiters told us how we could travel. That was my hooking point, and my brother and I joined up.

When we left Kuwait and crossed into Iraq, we ended up on the wrong road and were ambushed. The last thing I remember is going really fast. Then I blanked out. I was told that from the time of the ambush to the time I awoke was approximately three hours, and in that time I was raped and beaten and left pretty much lifeless. What made those people do that to me and then turn me over to the good people, we will never know.

I awoke in a hospital, surrounded by Iraqis. I was very scared and in a state of shock. I had no idea where I was or why I was surrounded by Iraqis and not with my unit. As time passed I began to kind of trust them. They did the best they could. One old lady sang to me and rubbed talcum powder on my back. That was very kind of her. They actually tried to return me to the Americans. They put me in an ambulance and headed toward one of the checkpoints. But the ambulance was fired on, so we turned back.

One night I heard helicopters and a lot of noise. I didn't know if it was U.S. soldiers or Saddam's Fedayeen. My scariest moment was not knowing who was outside that door. Then they were yelling my name: "Where's Private Lynch?" They were American soldiers and told me they were there to take me home.

Now I'm just an ordinary girl trying to make it through college. But after three years of our military being in Iraq, I think we have forgotten why we're there. At times I feel people even forget we have troops there. But there are plenty of reasons why we're in Iraq. One definitely is September 11; whether Iraq had something to do with what happened that day, I don't know. And I do think oil plays a part in it. And freedom. I guess it all comes back to freedom.

I'm not going to say whether we should be over there or not, because obviously I was a soldier and that's what I signed up for. My best friend was killed in this war—that should probably never have happened. I lost her that day with me in Iraq, and I will never have her back. But I don't think I'm against the war. I'm not totally for it, but I'm not against it. I want my friends home, but we have a job to do there right now.

If I could turn back time and do it all over again? Yeah, I would definitely join the Army. I would hope the outcome of that fateful day would change, but I would do it again.

Dana Priest Reporter, The Washington Post; Winner, 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting

In the march to war and in the heat of battle, the news media always tends to rally behind the cause. That's never going to be different. When the stakes are high and American lives are at risk, it's hard to get critical stories on the front page. That's not a good thing. But I don't feel this is a particularly compromised moment for fairness and accuracy in reporting.

Fundamentally, we fight because we think it's the right way to maintain U.S. power and safety in the world. I don't think people go to war because they like violence. However, it's easier to go to war than it should be, because government bureaucracy has created a dominant military force. Alternatives to fighting don't look realistic, because we haven't made realistic alternatives. (continued on page 126)Iraq(continued from page 112) When you fashion the government so that the military is the only effective tool to get something done, you're always going to choose a military option.

The buildup of the military as the strongest element in the foreign-policy tool kit really got going under Clinton. He allowed the emasculation of the State Department. He came in not knowing how to salute, with aides who knew nothing about the military. Then he did the gay thing, which pissed off the military. So Clinton made amends by letting it do what it wanted, and the State Department became demoralized and under-funded. When Bush came in we had a weak diplomatic corps and a strong military institution. After 9/11 it became 10 times as strong.

Bush put Donald Rumsfeld in charge, and he understood the military had run amok. Rumsfeld said, "I am the boss here, and you guys are subservient to me." So civilian rule of the military was restored, which is a good thing, in theory. The bad part is they threw the baby out with the bathwater. They said, "Civilians rule, period. We're going to undervalue what the military tells us, because it has parochial interests."

When the military started to tell Rumsfeld this Iraq business was not going to be easy, he wrote it off. He and his whole cadre ignored basic truths developed over every postwar scenario since World War II. The military revolted in an amazing way.

The argument that the media didn't do its job is made only by Democrats. The right's argument against the media is that we've committed treason and should be locked up. It seems people have lost sight of our function, which is not to advocate for or against war; it's to try to figure out what the government is doing and whether it's telling the truth. Then you can decide if you want to go to war or not.

Inside The Washington Post the WMD issue was huge. It was a hard story to report because all the information was classified, but the reporters were consumed with trying to figure out whether the information was right or wrong. Look at what the media has done to uncover the interrogations and abuses. The media did all that.

Then, of course, we did run up against our own issues, against editors who—how shall I say it?—didn't position the stories where they should have been, though they appeared. As an editor, you have this incredible power to make a big impact depending on the placement of the story.

I'm an optimist by virtue of having gotten to know the whole range of people in the military and in the elected national-security apparatus, and they are all trying to do what they think is right. They are all searching for ways to make this country safer. They're all working toward a value most of us would agree on. So though I see people making bad calculations, the system still has enough checks and enough contrarians that things will change over time. They're changing right now.

Cornel West Professor of Religion, Princeton University

It's difficult for Americans to be honest about our wars because we're rarely honest about being an empire. When you're so far removed from the reality of your own situation that you refuse to see your country's imperial, expansionist policies for what they are and see only such thin clichés as "manifest destiny" and "democratizing the world," this is a real problem. Yet it is impossible not to see the U.S. as a kind of empire. It's not the same as the Roman, British or Ottoman empires, but everyone in the world recognizes what we are. Go back to the founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson called America an empire of liberty.

What separates the American empire is this elevated self-understanding and self-image—freedom, democracy, equality. We're also a unique empire in that we tend not to want to occupy. Iraq is an anomaly in this sense. Bush is forcing Americans to recognize just how imperial we are. At the expense of all those innocent American soldiers and Iraqi brothers and sisters, he is shattering illusions.

America has grown wealthy. We've grown big. We've grown old. But we've yet to grow up. And growing up means looking in the mirror unflinchingly and acknowledging our imperial status.

My first recollection of American war was twofold. The civil rights movement was a kind of civil war. The four young sisters killed in Birmingham in September 1963 were really war victims, as was Martin Luther King. Then came Watts, Newark, Detroit. Outside our borders, of course, it was Vietnam.

My family was a Christian one deeply rooted in the King legacy, which meant always looking for the best in America. Still, we always knew there were levels of mendacity and hypocrisy shot through America's past and present. Knowing this required the ability to hold America's ideals and hypocrisies together in the mind and retain the ability to function.

In the context of Vietnam we saw the best of America in those willing to tell the truth about it. People like Eugene McCarthy meant much. King after 1967 meant much. What is great about America has been those particular American persons and institutions that have focused on the humanity of those most vulnerable, reminding the country of its underside.

American goodness is a little different, something you find on the ground among those whom Sly Stone called everyday people. It's not as visible and salient as it ought to be, but it is a countervailing force. It's one reason the Karl Roves of the empire haven't completely taken over even though our political system is so hemorrhaged. Russell Feingold says the American political system can be characterized as legalized bribery and normalized corruption. With such a system in place, the decency at work below has tremendous difficulty surfacing. But that doesn't mean it's not there.

War stands in the way of America's democratic values because resorting to violence to resolve conflict has repercussions far beyond simply the war. When brother Martin used to say the bombs dropped in Vietnam landed in the ghettos, he was not talking just about the budget. He was talking about a mentality. Think of the gang-sterization of American society—the way our young people increasingly believe you resolve conflict with guns. Think of domestic violence escalating exponentially with cowardly men attacking vulnerable women. Consider the prison-industrial complex, in which you deal with problems by putting them away in violent, highly militarized sites.

Now from the very center of the American empire comes an aggressive new militarism and increasing authoritarianism with the Patriot Act and the spying and the lying and the justifying of torture of other human beings. It's a culture of violence. And no democracy can survive a culture of violence and militarism, because democracy is fundamentally about ensuring that ordinary people impose constraints on the arbitrary use of power from above.

Sister Ardeth Platte Antiwar Protester

I'm a religious sister, 70 years old, an ordinary citizen committed to witness what I believe is the righteous way for this country, no matter the consequences.

October 6, 2002 was our Feast of the Holy Rosary. That day two other sisters and I donned hazmat suits and went to a Minuteman III missile silo in Colorado. The president was threatening to use weapons of mass destruction on "axis of evil" countries. We felt from our reading that this was a clear violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty of 1970 and a threat to murder God's people. We felt led by the Holy Spirit to stop a crime.

Missile silos are all in farmers' fields. To enter the site, we cut a link in a farmer's gate. We chose one out in the open so that anyone could see us. We wanted this to be a public act. We intended to expose, inspect and disarm—symbolically, lovingly—a weapon of mass destruction.

We used two major symbols: our own blood and hammers. Isaiah 2:4 says, "They shall hammer their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning 12 hooks. Nations shall not lift up sword against another nation, nor shall they train for war anymore."

We made crosses for the victims with our blood on the silo lid, then tapped gently on the silo with our hammers and prayed, "Oh God, teach us to be peacemakers in a hostile world."

After 45 minutes the military and the FBI came, 18 vehicles and a helicopter. They surrounded us with guns, handcuffed us and put us facedown on the ground. We were in federal jail for a week, then charged with sabotage of national defense materials, facing 30 years.

International-law professors testified at our hearing. They said under Nuremberg we were doing what citizens can do to resist crimes committed by our government. The judge determined we could not use international law or Nuremberg principles as arguments. Stripped of those defenses, we were found guilty.

Sister Jackie got 30 months. Sister Carol got 33 months. I got 41 months. We believe our actions were legal and that we had a duty to do this. War is a sin. Every pope throughout history has declared we should not participate in war. I feel my church has not fully absorbed that awareness. I don't think clerics in the U.S. stood strongly enough against the Iraq war and the bombings of Afghanistan. I'm sorry to say that.

Ted Chapman Trucker of the Year 2005

War is no more than a fight out here on the road. If you're doing something to me or one of my friends and I step in, that's just the smallest amount of war that can be. And that just escalates into what's in Iraq, you see?

I truck. I've been trucking for 52 years. For the past 35 years, I ran out of North Carolina to California. Won Trucker of the Year 2005. A 51-year safe-driving record. Drove 6.5 million miles without an accident.

If you go to Iraq right now and interview 75,000 of the 140,000 boys over there, they'll tell you they're there for freedom. Others will say we're there for oil. I'd say it's for both of them. I'd bet my life it's for both.

The U.S. has always fought for freedom. I don't care if you're black or white, if it weren't for the wars we've had, you wouldn't have the freedom you have to be driving that truck, to marry who you want, to worship the God you wish. There's nothing like freedom. At the same time, we need that oil. The most disastrous thing ever to happen would be if all foreign countries would cut off our oil right now.

I'm an old country boy. When that 9/11 deal came, if George Bush had sat on his butt and said nothing, there would have been hundreds of thousands in the U.S. raising hell. Now President Bush says God is on his side because it's his belief. I don't think God's got a thing to do with it. The Book of John says the only way God deals with a man is spiritually. Wars are man's decision. God doesn't deal in wars.

Dr. Mohamed Elbaradei Director General, International Atomic Energy Agency; Winner, 2005 Nobel Peace Prize

I don't think we fight about religion or race but from a sense of insecurity. Human beings are like any species. Put them under severe conditions and you bring out the worst in them. Two billion people in the world live on less than $2 a day. Almost three quarters of a billion people go to bed hungry. In the past 10 years 12 million people have died in developing countries as a result of armed conflict. Poverty creates the lack of good governance, and organized crime and terrorism.

We shut our eyes to the underlying causes of war. We see the symptoms, but by then it's too late. You then have to confront the problem through force, which is not a solution. You still need to sit together and address the issues.

The only viable forum for global cooperation is the UN. It is not perfect. It has corruption. Some dictators are sitting at the UN. But the UN is every member state getting together. It reflects the reality of our world, however imperfectly.

We need to learn some lessons from the Iraq war. I did not see Iraq as a clear and present danger. You obviously have to fight authoritarian regimes, but fighting doesn't mean you go to war against every dictator. During the war at least 100,000 Iraqis and more than 2,000 Americans have died. Is that the price we want to pay to get rid of every dictator?

In the Muslim world there's a lot of cynicism about U.S. motives. We all grew up with great admiration for the U.S. and what it represents: liberty, freedom of speech, a sense of fairness, due process. People still look to the U.S. to lead by example. If that leadership is not exercised, you get into a situation of chaos.

What's still so great about the U.S. is that it can correct itself. We have seen that a number of times—in Vietnam, in Watergate. The important thing is to learn from the mistakes and move forward. The debate right now about the war, which was not there two years ago, is very healthy. It's the beginning of the system correcting itself.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson Former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell

We fight to protect our ideals. I could give you a host of uses of force I wouldn't support at all. But by and large I've supported some conflicts because they protected freedom, the human condition and the dignity of humans in general.

I spent a year in Vietnam. I believed the communists were attempting to subvert another people. I gave my men rah-rah talks saying we were fighting for freedom and democracy. My research since has indicated that Vietnam was a civil war. We intervened in another people's war under the misperception that we were rolling back communism. I look on my participation in the Vietnam war with some regret.

When you ask people to kill for the state, particularly for a democracy, you're asking them to do something that's not necessarily out of their character—because every man can be a beast—but something contrary to their upbringing and education. When you do that you need every rule, every tool in your kit bag, to keep them from going overboard.

Often in your platoon the best killers, your best warriors, are those who will become your beast. They become people who will kill children and burn villages. So I have a particularly poignant understanding of the tools the lieutenant on the ground needs to keep people from going beyond the laws of war, as was done in Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Afghanistan and Guantánamo.

Nietzsche said, "If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." You go around the world to fight monsters. Be careful you don't become a monster. Do you recall any debates about torture in the years of the Cold War, when we really were under colossal threat? We are doing things now we didn't do even then. We didn't have the most powerful vice president in our history over on the Hill, pressuring congressmen to vote for torture. For me that was the straw that broke the camel's back. That's what made me go public.

After 31 years in the military, 16 working for Colin Powell, it was very difficult for me to speak out because it's estranged me from one of my dearest friends in the world. A lot of people think I'm still speaking for Colin Powell, but I'm not. We disagree fundamentally on a couple of substantive issues. For example, I believe, in the decisions regarding detainee abuse, that the president was unwitting and aloof from the details. Secretary Powell and I disagree about that. There are some substantive differences in our beliefs.

In the case of the Iraq war, what happened to diplomatic, economic, informational and other instruments of national power? Why did the military have to lead this change in policy? My critics will say it had to be abrupt, it had to be sudden. But if our real reason for going to war in the Middle East was to bring freedom to Iraq and by doing so help Lebanon, Syria, Israel and others, why didn't we say that?

Others will say, "Look, we're sitting on top of a quarter to a third of the known oil reserves in the world." That is very important. As long as the Western world drinks oil at the current rate, someone's got to make sure oil is being delivered. I can envision a day when, if the Middle East doesn't straighten itself out, we would bring back conscription and mobilize the country and whatever coalition we could, take the Arabian Peninsula and administer it in a trusteeship for the benefit of the entire world.

Today we are an empire. We have the potential to be an empire for good or an empire for bad. If it's an empire of force, it will fracture and fall apart. If it's an empire of knowledge, trade and ideas—and uses the military instrument only occasionally and as necessary—it could last for a long time.

Senator John McCain Republican, Arizona

The whole issue now is preemptive war. The Bush doctrine is that preemptive strikes or conflicts, never contemplated in the past, now have to be contemplated under certain scenarios.

The greatest fear we have since September 11 is that some terrorist organization could get hold of a weapon of mass destruction and use it. So this leads now to the argument that if the threat is imminent we need to act militarily before tremendous damage is inflicted on us. Launching a preemptive strike against a nation that is an imminent danger and about to strike the U.S. is something everybody agrees with. Launching a preemptive military attack against a country that is not an imminent threat and losing American lives brings into question the whole neoconservative movement.

Neoconservatives sprang up in the 1970s after the Vietnam war, when there was a perception that liberals were dismantling our intelligence capabilities, destroying our military, being soft on communism, etc. And they have gradually evolved—and in some ways I am one, in some ways—in that the U.S. is the greatest force for good in the world. And we have an obligation, not to go out and fight and start wars and conflicts and intervene but certainly to do everything we can to spread democracy and freedom throughout the world. That seems to me not an unreasonable thing for the most influential and powerful nation in the world to be engaged in. Where the debate and controversy begin is how far does the United States go and when does it go from a force for good to a force of imperialism. As a result of the war in Iraq there are many allegations that the neocons cooked the books and made the case for war from flawed intelligence.

The deciding factor before launching a preemptive conflict is that there be a real, grave and imminent threat. That case apparently is under great question now, regarding the war in Iraq. But fundamentally I agree with the so-called neoconservatives because I believe we can do a better job of helping people achieve democracy and freedom, and we should exercise this influence for good. But not by launching preemptive strikes and unseating people and doing bad things. By doing good things.

I think those who draw too great a comparison between this situation and Vietnam have forgotten many fundamental aspects of the Vietnam war. We were losing 350 Americans a week there. The Vietnamese were supplied by major superpowers—China and the Soviet Union. They had porous borders.

Iraq is dramatically different. Except for the loss of young Americans it is not a comparable situation. I don't know if you could draw a scenario in which we could have prevailed militarily in Vietnam given the circumstances under which we were fighting. I have every belief that we can and will prevail in Iraq.

The war will be won when we have a functioning—even a badly functioning—democracy in Iraq. But I expect the U.S. to be there militarily for a long time, to provide security. Very tough. But if we get a democracy functioning in Iraq, the days of the despots and the days of the religious extremists in the Middle East will be gone. It's a matter of time.

There's no doubt that the size of the postwar challenge in Iraq was grossly underestimated. There were premature celebrations of victory. That doesn't change the fact that we must prevail. We cannot afford to lose in Iraq. But certainly the American people were not fully informed.

Steve Earle Singer, Songwriter

Why are we fighting? I think as soon as there weren't warrior kings anymore, as soon as the people who decided to have a war weren't in harm's way, the whole political and social dynamics of war changed.

The first time I was aware of the Vietnam war was probably in 1962. My dad was in the Army and later became an air traffic controller. I grew up in military towns. A lot of times my dad would be the only man on the block because the war was going on. I saw a lot of stress on military families, a lot of drinking, a lot of wives whose husbands were gone and a lot of kids who were home alone.

In high school I had an Air Force tropical fatigues shirt with an American flag sewn upside down on the back. My dad and I butted heads over that. A lot of it was about my behaving too much like my uncle, who had gotten busted once, but a lot of it was my dad being worried about losing his kid. As the war dragged on and I got closer and closer to draft age, and friends of mine started getting drafted and not coming back, my dad felt conflicted. Eventually he believed he had been lied to about why the war was being fought and its progress as it wore on. He even told me one day, "You know what? You might want to think about going to Canada." The Vietnam war didn't end because I opposed it; it ended because people like my dad came to oppose it. People just got sick of sending their kids.

We lost that war, and we didn't lose it by proxy to the Soviets. We lost the war to the Vietnamese people. They kicked our asses. And you know something? Go to Vietnam for two hours today and you'll figure out that if the martians landed there tomorrow, the Vietnamese would kick their asses, too. They'd go back down in the tunnels and stay there as long as it takes.

And you know what else? When they got done kicking the martians' asses, they wouldn't be mad at them, either. They're not mad at us. They've been getting occupied by everybody in the world for 1,000 years, you know? We were a speed bump. We were there for only 10 years. The French were there for 100. The Chinese, 1,000. The Vietnamese people are smart. They're not going to waste this period of relative peace and prosperity by being mad at anybody.

It's about karma. When you go fucking people over and trying to make other people live the way you think they ought to live, it bites you in the ass. The Brits are still hated in a lot of places because of the way they carried themselves when they were the world's most powerful country. So how we treat people during our moment is important.

Look at Iraq. Why are we there? We went because it was attackable, it had large oil reserves, and the Saudis were untouchable because of their relationship with the U.S. government. Plenty of people are oppressed and dying all over the world, and we don't lift a finger to help. They just don't happen to have any oil. This is about maintaining a global community that we control financially. It's just another type of colonialism.

James Der Derian Director of Global Security Program, Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University

I study war as a question of security. For many people, nuclear proliferation is the most important security issue. For others it may be global warming or avian flu. Getting killed in a conventional war is moving toward the bottom of the list.

My first encounter with war was during the Cuban missile crisis. I was all of six years old when my father showed me a makeshift fallout shelter with bottled water and canned food. He said, "If we have a nuclear war, you'll have to come down here with your mother and your sisters. You'll be in charge." It was terrifying and surreal. This first impression of war made its way into my current research: trying to understand how simulation blurs into reality and lowers the threshold for going to war.

War is at the avant-garde of the technological revolution. Today, with the help of Silicon Valley, technology makes it possible to fight from a distance, to make war look clean and discriminate. You rarely see the bodies. Yet anybody who studies war knows that things rarely go according to plan.

With globalization and the permeability of borders has come a diffusion of threats. Security can neither be guaranteed by a sovereign state nor understood by a single science. Understanding security requires knowledge of economics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, biology and theology.

Global security today is not about securing borders. It's about learning to live with globalization: the acceleration of information flows, population flows, pollutant flows, criminal flows, everything. If you put all your faith in the military solution, you will never have an adequate civilian alternative. If you pick up the sword to fight the dragon, you have to be ready to become the dragon—and realize it won't be easy to morph back into the domestic creature you once were.

Nathan Price Cabdriver, Washington, D.C.

I've been driving a cab for 34 years in the nation's capital. Driving here gives you a special kind of insight. You hear things in the front seat of a cab in D.C. that you don't necessarily read in the newspapers or magazines. In the 1970s and 1980s we used to ride a few people from Congress around, but we don't ride that many congressmen anymore. I guess now they have private transportation.

I was in the Air Force during Vietnam, stationed in Alaska. We were told there were very few deaths in Vietnam. The same thing was reported to the American press. Then all of a sudden, in the beginning of 1966, on the tarmac at Elmendorf Air Force Base I saw all these unpainted aircraft filled with so many dead bodies.

Those who go to war and are wounded or see others wounded see the injustice of it. The Vietnam war put a lot of disillusionment into me. It made me question other wars. Just why do we go to war? And what impact does profiteering have on the soldiers? Does it cause wars to take longer than necessary?

They say the Crusades were a religious endeavor, but when you look at them closely, you may say the Crusades were about securing trade routes from the Far East to Europe. In the Civil War the North disagreed with the South over taxation of the slaves, who were free labor. After World War II there were stories about how we knew the attack on Pearl Harbor was coming. Who knows? But we did gain a toehold in Japan afterward, and a huge influx of Japanese products hit this country. Again, cheap labor.

When I look at the allegations about Halliburton and Bechtel, I wonder if the war is for democracy in the Middle East or for corporations that make huge sums of money and give it to politicians. It pisses me off that young men die for some old man, most likely white. I think about how very few members of Congress have children in the military or have served in war themselves. People who are higher-middle-income or higher-income, their children never have that threat of being killed in action. They're more likely to die of a self-induced drug overdose than in a war.

Tony Kushner Playwright; Screenwriter, Munich

I believe war is a political evil. There is aggression in human beings, and people at times behave badly. But I also believe people are basically decent and have a kind of collective moral genius that keeps us going as a species. It's in our interest to survive, and I think people don't want war.

I was born in 1956, Jewish and gay in the Deep South. Growing up in the 1960s I came to understand America's role in the world through the lens of the Vietnam war. I saw that a great deal of what was progressive and bountiful in American life came at the expense of people in countries where there was neither political progress nor bounty.

I'm enormously proud of American democracy. This country has given birth to globally significant instances of the spreading and franchising of justice and equality. And God knows, I think people with purple fingers are great. But democracy is difficult, and I don't think it can be exported through force, which is why I believe the war in Iraq is wrong.

Sometimes military action is necessary. Over the years in some ways I've actually become more militarist. I wasn't entirely opposed to NATO intervention in the Balkans. It's hard to say this, but I genuinely feel a military response to Milosevic was appropriate. I don't think military action against Saddam Hussein is inappropriate. I just don't think it should be unilateral, because I believe in the UN.

America acted more and more imperially toward the rest of the planet through the 20th century. But we're not suited to that kind of work in the way the British were in the 19th century. American democracy has created a new kind of human being, for whom the business of being an imperial power is not appropriate. We're not good at it. We do it ambivalently. It's antithetical to the American spirit, and consequently we tend to make a terrible mess when we try it.

What's fascinating is that preceding the Iraq invasion was the 60th anniversary of World War II and a lot of nostalgia for a time when we were fighting a "good war." And yes, if you overlook certain things like Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it's absolutely appropriate to look back with great pride at what American GIs did during World War II. But it's also very dangerous. When Bush started talking about attacking Saddam, the analogies were that Saddam was Hitler. "We're fighting World War II again," the right was saying. It even invented the term Islamofascists to make the comparison. But equating Iraq after 10 years of sanctions with Nazi Germany on the eve of World War II is demented.

It worked partly because being the economic center of the planet has had an unfortunate effect on America. It's hard to talk about this because ignorance is a complicated thing. I mean, everyone notices that everything you buy now is made in China. You can ask what that means in terms of Chinese slave labor or the fact that the U.S. long ago stopped being a producing economy. Or you can choose not to ask those questions. And we deprive people of the tools to ask questions meaningfully because most young people get a crappy education.

I don't know what art does. If it asks legitimate questions, as I think we do in Munich, it can do some good. Until writing Munich I'd never written anything in which anybody is killed. And watching the filmmakers perform the scenes, even though it's all ketchup and air pumps and things, was hard. When you talk about targeted assassination or torture, it's easy to say it. It's easy to write it. It doesn't cost you very much. But we made this movie because we felt it could do things to erase the kind of comforting distance between people and violence when they talk about it.

The thing that gives me agency in the world, since I'm not president of the United States, is an indirect power. I'm a playwright, a screenwriter, I guess. I can make people have arguments at cocktail parties or have nightmares or good dreams. I don't think I change the world through my plays. I contribute to the only place where I think trickle-down theory works: in the arts. You start ripples.

"In this war military force has very limited application. We cannot win this war through imperial power."—Senator Lindsey Graham

"History is full of guys saying, 'God, I was kind of pretending all that, and then my buddy really got shot.' "—Ethan Hawke

I would hope the outcome of that fateful day would change,but i would do it again"-Jessica Lynch