[casi] The Porky Pig Approach to Not Invading Iraq

["Suzy T. Kane" <suzytkane@DELETETHISstarband.net>]

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The following article will appear in the August 15, 2002, issue of the
monthly newspaper HORSE FLY, Taos, New Mexico:

THE PORKY PIG APPROACH ON NOT INVADING IRAQ
By Suzy T. Kane
     When I ask myself why I believe the United States should not invade
Iraq, as the Bush administration seems fixing to do, I find myself
wondering how my inner Porky Pig might put it.
A long time ago, when I was seven or eight years old, I read a Porky Pig
comic book that made a lasting impression on me.  In the story, as I
recall, the Acme Bubble Gum Company offered a prize-a trip around the
world-to the winner who, in twenty-five words or less, could fill in the
blank:  "I like Acme bubble gum because.."  Millions of contestants
wracked their brains for just the right argument, but Porky won the
prize!  He was depicted waving to the cheering crowds from an open car
celebrating his victory with a ticker-tape parade.  "I like Acme bubble
gum because," he wrote, "it is pretty good."
     That early in my life I am sure my vocabulary was not voluminous
enough to include the word "straightforward," but my nonverbal gut
delighted in Porky's sincerity.  His ingenuousness got right to the
obvious, non-padded point.
Porky would certainly not argue, as I would try to argue, that Iraq has
been cleared of any involvement in the events of 9/11.  Nor would Porky
cite the work of the United Nations Special Commission [UNSCOM] that
from 1991 to 1998 destroyed 90-95 per cent of Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction as well as the factories and equipment that produced them
and the long-range missiles that could deliver them.
Porky would not go to the lengths I would to point out that back in 1991
U.S.-led forces took the skies over Iraq in just the first week of the
Persian Gulf War.  He would not ask what kind of military threat Iraq
could possibly pose if its anti-aircraft capability is only 70 per cent
of what it was then and it's present anti-aircraft artillery can reach
only 6,000 feet anyway (why U.S. and British patrols in the no-fly zones
can bomb with impunity).
Porky would not plea that there is no legal justification for one
country to invade another for what it might do.  He would not have seen
Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise's movie "The Minority Report" that
illustrates the fallacy of punishing people "pre-crime" because they are
always free to choose differently than we might expect.
I would say that under cruel sanctions for the past eleven years, Iraq
is in an economic straitjacket, but Porky would not.  He probably could
not do the simple arithmetic to figure out that even with Iraq selling
all the oil it can, after U.N. deductions from its oil sales, what the
UN gives Iraq back to spend on its humanitarian and oil industry needs
boils down to about $300 per Iraqi per year.
Porky would probably not calculate that invading Iraq would be
expensive, but I would point out that according to Congressional
analysts, the U.S. war in Afghanistan is estimated to cost $10.2 billion
this year, not to mention the lives of scores of U.S. servicemen.  I
would also cite a Guardian report that estimates that 1,300 to 8,000
Afghans were killed directly by bombs and as many as 10,000 to 20,000
other Afghans died indirectly from disruption of aid deliveries,
exposure and malnutrition as they fled the bombs.
     No, my inner Porky Pig would get right down to brass tacks and fill
in the blank in twenty-five words or less like this:  the United States
should not invade Iraq because. . .bombs make children cry.
-END-




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