oh, oh, there are no words, and too many

I'm at home, my parents' house, smiling and busy and continually close to tears. It isn't so much heightened emotion as a deep internal ache, downcast every time I'm forced to think of it and my imagination begins to overtake the headlines. My friends page is filled with eloquent and impassioned arguments, and I wasn't sure whether to mention it or not or just lie low; but my head and heart are full of it, united (for once) although I don't know what in. As usual there isn't a single answer, but today people are being forced into giving one and whichever answer they choose people are going to die.

I hate that I can't get my head around it. I feel disoriented by all these people trying to narrow it down to a single issue when really there are so many we'll never be aware of them all. I fully realise that Saddam needs to be got rid of and brutality ended in Iraq; the number of refugees we've seen testifies to that, the constant harrowing work at the Medical Foundation and everywhere else dedicated to dealing with the effects of torture. More than anything I want to see an end to suffering. But I can't bring myself to trust this war to do that.

Firstly, I mistrust Bush's motives. I don't think he's necessarily evil, but I certainly think he's ignorant. He's a product of the fundamentalist bible belt of southern USA (in the doctrine of which is included the idea that the takeover of Jerusalem by the Jews is a herald of the end times), and I suspect he believes he is doing absolutely the right thing, waging a religious war in all its patriotic glory, a true crusade. However I also think he is easily manipulated, and that the true reasons for this war are a combination of (arbitrary) revenge for terrorism and an attempt to increase the political, economic and moral power of America on the global stage. (This article, written by an Iraqi refugee who now lectures in Sociology at the London Metropolitan, is particularly worth reading.)

It makes my throat hurt to think about it; I don't think the US army will be as careful as they could be to reduce civilian casualties, I'm afraid for the continued suffering of Iraqis and I'm almost as afraid (terrible of me) that if Baghdad is bombed the cultural and religious centre of Iraq will be lost, along with so much art and architecture and history. I dread to think what will become of Iraq afterwards, a mixture of peasants as frightened of Americans as they were of Saddam and fierce anti-capitalists, all angered and bereaved, who have been under a dictatorship for years. In those circumstances is a democracy really possible? I dread that the country will simply end up under American hegemony, along with their oil and their independence. I don't trust this war, and I don't think America has the right to establish themselves as international police. And I'm frightened that if pushed Saddam will use whatever weapons he might have, and that America will respond, because her pride is so brittle and so nervy these days the slightest touch will provoke her. If a crack squad of US troops, utterly unknown to anyone, managed to infiltrate the capital and assassinate Saddam and his nearest associates, with no civilian losses and no armed combat, I would be much happier. I can't see why this is any more morally reprehensible than going in guns blazing, oblivious to who gets caught in the crossfire.

I am fairly instinctively anti-war. Every part of me cries out that violence is not an answer to violence. This war in particular fulfils none of the Augustinian standards for a just war - most notably that war should be a last resort, and much as I grieve for the horrors in Iraq under Saddam's regime I simply do not think every option to remove him has been explored yet. It's difficult to see how events will turn out and I truly sympathise with the British cabinet, trying to resolve in a limited time human crises which appear to be without a resolution.

Personally, unpersuaded as to the rightness of proceeding to war, it would be easy for me to take refuge in my own complacency, regarding myself as occupying the moral high ground. But there is no such comfortable position. The events unfolding are bound to lead every compassionate persion to a point of anguish. We have to face ambigious moral questions which do not permit easy moral analysis and I don't claim to have the answers. But my heart goes out to everyone who's had to have an answer - and everyone who'll have to answer for it.