April
4 , 2003
Front-Page
News
Rule of Law
Assistant
Professor of Philosophy James Harold asks an important question
about the war in Iraq in an op-ed piece titled “Here’s
Why the War Against Iraq Is Fundamentally Flawed,” which
appeared in the
March 25 Chicago Tribune. Suppose “that loss of
life on both sides is minimal and that peace and stability in
Iraq are achieved within weeks,” Harold asks. “Would
there then be anything wrong with this war?” According to
Harold, even given the best possible outcome to the current conflict,
the United States has set a dangerous precedent in the way it
went about undertaking the attack on Iraq. “The principle
forbidding war as a tool of foreign policy stands as the centerpiece
of virtually every international agreement,” Harold concludes.
“The future not just of the UN as a body but of real international
cooperation of any kind depends on not allowing ourselves to think
of war in cost/benefit terms. In coming to think of war as just
another strategy for resolving conflicts, we undermine the rule
of law and we lose track of the moral principles on which that
rule depends. And such a loss is not a mere cost to be factored
into one’s calculations—it is beyond price.”
Live from South Hadley What’s on the minds of America’s
college students? To answer that question, the Chicago Tribune
asked sixteen Chicago-reared students, including MHC’s
Shannon Winston-Dolan ’03, to write an essay on a subject
“that was animating the dormitory and cafeteria chatter
on their campuses.” Winston-Dolan’s contribution,
which ran under the headline “War: What Is It Good For?
Peace Signs Are Popping Up All Over,” was included in “Reporting
Live from Campus,” the cover story in the March 23 issue
of the Chicago Tribune Magazine. In her essay, written
before the U.S. launched its attack on Iraq, Winston-Dolan reports
that the majority of the campus opposed a preemptive war, and
describes her own participation in a peace rally in New York.
“When I asked students on campus for their reactions to
an impending war, many said it was much too brutal a solution
for a very complicated problem,” she writes. She acknowledges
that some students support President Bush’s decision to
go to war, and adds that “the issue of women and the draft
is a particularly interesting one at a women’s college.
When I asked students whether, if the draft were reinstated, women
should be drafted, everyone responded yes.”
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