Re: How colleges can respond to the war

These are probably more suitable for higher ed than K-12, or at least lower
K-12, but here are some resources that I like a lot and regularly recommend:

Sites like www.Commondreams.org  and www.workingforchange.com  have tons of
great topical articles, and because they're short, timely, and generally
well-written, they're easy to use in the classroom.
Other good resources on Iraq
Stephen Zunes Nation article
[The best concise summary on why not to go to war.] Also see Zunes's
excellent new book Tinderbox: US Middle East Policy and the Roots of
Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2002)
http://www.commoncouragepress.com/index.cfm?action=book&bookid=226  Best
book on the Middle East that I'd recommend
Veteran British reporter Dilip Hiro has an excellent new book on the current
situation in Iraq, building on several earlier books on Iraq.
http://www.nationbooks.org/book.mhtml?t=hiro

Institute for Public Accuracy line-by-line critique of Bush's October speech
on why we need to go to war: Bush Speech
Excellent description, by William Rivers Pitt, of a talk by former UN
weapons inspector Scott Ritter
http://www.truthout.com/docs_02/07.25A.wrp.iraq.htm
Pitt also has a short booklength interview with Ritter called War on Iraq.
See:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1893956385/qid=1035512598/sr=2-1/ref=
sr_2_1/103-8836074-8743837
Retired Marine General Anthony Zinni on why not to go to war with Iraq.
Zinni

Some relevant articles of mine:
If War Comes. How the peace movement can keep on acting even if we go to war
with Iraq. And act so our efforts will matter either way.
Reclaiming our Courage. www.workingforchange.com
How to find our courage to keep on in the face of difficult

And finally, if people haven't seen it, an amazing editorial from the
current Business Week which because it is Business Week works very well with
conservative students because they can't dismiss it as radical fringe... I
don't know whether the URL will stay current, so here's the actual piece.

FROM BUSINESS WEEK ONLINE Marh 24, 2003

BEYOND THE WAR
By Bruce Nussbaum

[NL]Commentary: The High Price of Bad Diplomacy
Mismanaging the runup to war will do more than squander goodwill and damage
alliances
The U.S. has already lost the prewar battle over Iraq, whatever the outcome
of a further U.N. vote. Even if it wins a fig-leaf majority vote in the
Security Council, America will be entering its first preemptive war faced
with opposition from nearly all of its allies and much of the rest of the
planet. A world that rallied to America's side in unprecedented
demonstrations of support after September 11 increasingly perceives the U.S.
itself as a great danger to peace. How did things come to this? The failure
of the Bush Administration to manage its diplomacy is staggering, and the
price paid, even if the war ends quickly, could be higher than anyone now
anticipates.

The political effect of this foreign policy imbroglio is already obvious. It
can be measured in tattered alliances and global tensions, eroding support
for President George W. Bush, and big changes throughout the Middle East.
What remains unclear are the economic consequences. In the end, they may be
far more significant.

Uncertainty is anathema to investment and growth. Much of the current
weakness in the U.S. and the global economy is due to the immediate
questions surrounding an Iraq war. Yet the Bush foreign policy of unilateral
preemption is so ill-defined and open-ended that it could weigh heavily on
the global economy well after the bombing stops. Look at the
Administration's agenda. The war in Iraq will be followed by an occupation
that could last years, cost many billions of dollars, and involve tens of
thousands of occupying troops. That's a big price to pay if bungled
diplomacy means that the U.S. bears most of the financial burden. Then
there's dealing with North Korea's rush to build nuclear bombs. And Iran's
play for nukes.

The prospect of America taking on this long list of crises -- and perhaps
others -- with little international support is making people everywhere
jittery. They fear that, beyond the war in Iraq, the global economy may be
continuously threatened by political and military unrest. It is not a
picture conducive to worldwide economic growth and prosperity. The first
decade of the new century is beginning to feel like the 1970s, when the
turmoil of the Vietnam War cast a long shadow over the U.S. economy.

It may even get worse than that. Chief executives are beginning to worry
that globalization may not be compatible with a foreign policy of unilateral
preemption. Can capital, trade, and labor flow smoothly when the world's
only superpower maintains such a confusing and threatening stance? U.S.
corporations may soon find it more difficult to function in a multilateral
economic arena when their overseas business partners and governments
perceive America to be acting outside the bounds of international law and
institutions.

How did the U.S. lose the prewar? Conventional wisdom holds that September
11 changed everything in U.S. foreign policy. It certainly did with regard
to Mexico. Before the attacks, President Bush and Mexican President Vicente
Fox were close friends on the verge of a new bilateral agreement
liberalizing Mexican immigration to America. Bush made a rare trip outside
the U.S. to Fox's ranch and had lunch with Fox's mother. After September 11,
Bush abruptly ended all talks, hurting Fox politically in his own country.
The message was clear: The most critical issue for the President of Mexico
was no longer of any concern to the President of the U.S. Fast-forward two
years, and the U.S. is heavy-handedly demanding that Mexico deliver its vote
in the Security Council for a second resolution on Iraq. Instead of caving,
as Washington assumed, Mexico is resisting. Bush alienated a friend and is
paying the price.

But the seeds of the current diplomatic disaster were planted in the first
year of the Bush Administration, well before September 11. That's when
Washington defined its foreign policy, which has come to be seen as the
three "D's" -- disdain, disregard, and disrespect for treaties, allies, and
friends. In those early months, the Administration managed to insult the
heads of both North and South Korea, an amazing policy feat. Bush was quoted
as saying North Korea's Prime Minister was a "pygmy," and later said "I
loathe Kim Jong Il." And Bush humiliated South Korea's Kim Dae Jung on his
visit to the White House by publicly repudiating his opening to the North, a
popular policy at home.

At the same time, the U.S. simply walked away from both the Kyoto global
warming treaty, infuriating the Europeans, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty, angering the Russians. A personal rapport between Bush and Russian
President Vladimir V. Putin papered over the humiliation felt by Russia. In
exchange for help in the war in Afghanistan, the Administration did give
Moscow a green light in Chechnya. But it never made the effort in Congress
to lift the Jackson-Vanik trade restrictions on Russia imposed during the
Cold War. In short, Washington treated Russia as cavalierly as it treated
Mexico and Europe. Now, bolstered by new oil riches and courted by France
and Germany, Russia is trying to regain some of its luster as a world power
by threatening to veto a second U.N. resolution on Iraq. The White House has
been surprised by the move -- yet another diplomatic miscalculation.

September 11 did matter greatly, of course, in redirecting U.S. foreign
policy. Into the breach opened by the first massive act of terrorism against
the country, the Bush Administration published The National Security
Strategy of the United States of America, a formal codification of the White
House's intentions. It rightly stated that two new realities of life --
terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction -- are
restructuring the global order. The Cold War foreign policies of containment
and mutually assured destruction can't work when suicidal fanatics, rather
than rational states, are the major threat to America. The document also
says these policies can't work when terrorists can get access to biological,
chemical, and nuclear weapons from failing states or dictatorships. But the
Bush Administration's prescription was a Pax Americana that broke
traditional norms of international behavior. Since the Treaty of Westphalia
in 1648, the concept of the sovereignty of states has been sacrosanct.
Nations are open to attack only when they actually do something to threaten
another country. An imperial America acting alone to spread democracy by the
sword may appeal to a handful of neocon ideologues, but it doesn't sit well
with many Americans -- and especially not with people around the world.

The Bush Doctrine, laid out in the national security paper, has three
tenets: that unilateral measures are better than international treaties and
organizations in dealing with global problems; that no country or
combination of countries will ever be allowed to challenge U.S. military
dominance; and that the U.S. is free to take preemptive action against
terrorists and states that have weapons of large-scale destruction. In
short, it's my way or the highway. As a foreign policy, it is both
arrogant -- certain to generate opposition by even the most friendly of
countries -- and corrosive, certain to undermine multilateral institutions
and agreements, including those in the economic sphere. Worse still, it is
ill-constructed and confusing, making for a more, not less, uncertain and
dangerous world.

The Bush Doctrine never defines just when the U.S. will act preemptively and
take sovereignty away from a nation. That vagueness is apparent in the first
test case of the preemption policy -- Iraq. The White House has said Iraq
was helping the terrorists of al Qaeda. Then it argued that Iraq had to be
disarmed because of the threat of proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction. Then the Administration said a change in Iraqi regime was
required to disarm the country. It has offered the grand vision of
establishing democracy in Iraq. Washington is now suggesting that regime
change and democracy in Iraq would help settle the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. This jumble of reasons has undermined the credibility of the
entire invasion, even though there are strong grounds to disarm Iraq. After
all, Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who gases his own people, wages war on his
neighbors, and builds weapons of mass destruction that terrorists could
potentially bring to Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Berlin -- and
elsewhere.

North Korea adds further confusion to the Bush Doctrine. Washington insists
it has no intention of preempting Pyongyang's nascent nuclear arsenal and
wants regional powers -- China, South Korea, and Japan -- to take the lead
in negotiations. But if preemption works in Iraq, why not North Korea? And
what about Iran? These questions can only make the world, and the world
economy, more volatile and uncertain.

The U.S. will win militarily in Iraq, but a victory in the period after the
war is still in question. Whether the damage done by inept diplomacy will be
long-lasting and deep will depend on whether the Bush Administration acts
magnanimously and invites those nations who opposed the war to help rebuild
Iraq. Holding grudges, as the White House has done against Germany, will be
expensive. There are thousands of German troops in Afghanistan and Bosnia
maintaining the peace.

President Bush might want to take some advice from his father, who clearly
offered it up in a rare public speech at Tufts University in late February.
Looking back at his effort at healing his relationship with Jordan, which
sided with Iraq in the first Gulf War, the elder Bush said: "I think there's
a message in that for those who today say, How can we ever put things
together? The answer is: You've got to reach out to the other person. You've
got to convince them that long-term friendship should trump short-term
adversity."

But that implies a belief that long-term friendships are important -- a
belief that it is not clear George W. Bush shares. From the outset, the Bush
White House has emphasized hard power -- the military. Yet the U.S. derives
much of its influence from leading a global political economy based
primarily on American values. Since the end of the Cold War, the world has
been moving toward this integrated system of democratic capitalism.
Terrorism and the need to fight it don't change that. In fact, a
multilateral effort to combat terrorism should reinforce this unity. To win
the postwar in Iraq, America needs a multilateral foreign policy shared by
its allies and feared by its enemies.

It is true that the Bush Administration did, belatedly, go to the Security
Council and did receive a unanimous vote for Resolution 1441, which calls
for Iraq to disarm or face the consequences. But then, of course, Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made the diplomatic gaffe of publicly insulting
France and Germany by calling them "Old Europe." This stoked anti-American
fires across Europe. France went on to disown 1441. Had it not, the U.S.
might now be poised to fight as part of multilateral U.N. military force.

The price the Bush Administration is paying for its failed diplomacy is
high, and it promises to rise even further. A world divided between
multilateral economic and unilateral security policies is an uncertain and
risky place. It is not likely to encourage economic growth or prosperity.
The Administration risks turning what was once trumpeted as the American
Century into the Anti-American Century.

Nussbaum is the Editorial page editor.