Bush’s war against Iraq again throws into question the intentions of his administration. Throughout Bush’s term in office, he has sugarcoated the destructive nature of almost all the initiatives he has undertaken, but now the ambiguous foundation for the Iraqi war has caused ordinary people across the globe to denounce Bush as their enemy.

Those who protest Bush’s actions do not suggest that Hussein is worthy of any defense. He has committed the most egregious acts of murder and repression on the impoverished people of Iraq, and therefore, no sensible and knowledgeable person is trying to apologize for or defend Hussein’s actions in any way.

However, like Hussein’s actions, Bush’s actions speak louder than his words. Bush has told us that U.S. soldiers are in Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people and bring democracy to them. Yet, the only successful model history provides for a military force to sidestep the people of a nation and single-handedly overthrow the leader of a country is a coup d’état.

Moreover, past wars like this one, waged in the name of but without the help of the people, have proven to be dismal failures. The Vietnam War was lost because we didn’t seek the support of the people of Vietnam, so they themselves rose up and defeated us. The U.S. government, acting alone, failed to depose Yugoslavia’s President Slobodan Milosevic by force, and only a mass movement of Serbian workers was able to do so. The success of the new Kuwaiti government following first Gulf War is a direct result of active Kuwaiti involvement in their own liberation.

We don’t know what to expect from the Iraqi people when the dust settles and it is time to leave them to their new government. Bush promises to bring democracy and self-determination to an oppressed people. But we fear, in the end, Iraqi people will not have the right to self-determination, but only the right to whatever the U.S. government determines. The reason the Bush administration has chosen to wage this war on Iraq is not because the country is more of a threat to the U.S., or more abusive to its people than other totalitarian regimes, but because the country has a wealth of natural resources, mainly water and oil.

The world sees that the war against Iraq is a war for oil and profit. The company Vice President Cheney worked for, Haliburton, and many other U.S. companies already have contracts with the U.S. government for control over Iraq’s oil. The Bush administration has no intention of making Iraq a democratic country but rather a puppet of U.S. interests. Yet in these times of profit by all means necessary, let us not forget the words of Abraham Lincoln: “Liberty before property, and man before the dollar.”