Our job is a simple one: stop them.

• Author: Zinn, Howard
• Position: It Seems to Me

Democracy flies out the window as soon as war comes along. So when officials in Washington talk about democracy, either here or abroad, as they take this country to war, they don't mean it. They don't want democracy; they want to run things themselves. They want to decide whether we go to war. They want to decide the lives and deaths of people in this country, and they certainly want to decide the lives and deaths of people in Iraq and all over the Middle East.

Faced with this attitude, our job is just a simple one: to stop them.

I am not going to go into the Bush arguments, if that's what they are. No, don't make me do that.

Don't make me point out the U.S. violations of international law.

Don't make me point out that even if Saddam Hussein has not gone along with this resolution or that resolution of the U.N. Security Council, the United States is about to violate the fundamental charter of the United Nations, which declares that nations may not initiate wars.

No, don't make me do that.

Don't make me point out how this fear of weapons of mass destruction does not extend to the United States. Bush officials think if they use that phrase "weapons of mass destruction" again and again and again that people will cower, cower, cower. Never mind that Iraq is a fifth-rate military power and not even the strongest military in the region. Israel, with 200 nuclear weapons, has that distinction. Bush is not demanding that Ariel Sharon rid himself of his weapons of mass destruction or face "regime change."

The media are a pitiful lot. They don't give us any history, they don't give us any analysis, they don't tell us anything. They don't raise the most basic questions: Who has the most weapons of mass destruction in the world by far? Who has used weapons of mass destruction more than any other nation? Who has killed more people in this world with weapons of mass destruction than any other nation? The answer: the United States.

Please, I don't want to hear anything more about Saddam Hussein's possibly making a nuclear bomb in two years, in five years, nobody knows. We have 10,000 nuclear weapons.

No, I don't want to talk about that. It's not worth talking about.

I'd like to make a few general points about war. I was a bombardier in the Air Force during World War II. I say this not to indicate that I am an expert on war--although, in fact, I am. People who've served in the military, they have a thousand different viewpoints, so nobody can say, "Oh, I...