In its March 2003 edition, the NAMBLA Bulletin published an editorial, which follows, criticizing America’s invasion of Iraq.  Though circumstances have changed, our opinion about the wrongfulness of the war against Iraq has not.

It does not take extraordinary mental powers to predict that the current U.S. administration will engage in a war with Iraq regardless of world opinion or even logic and good sense. By the time this Bulletin finds its way into readers’ hands, the U.S. military may very well have already begun attacking. Miracles do happen, but aborting the administration’s hell-bent plans is about as likely as George W. Bush becoming a born again Buddhist. It is quite obvious that the administration’s arguments for attacking Iraq do not hang together. The illogical nature of the rationales presented has been expounded at great length in other media, and we will spare you the repetition.

The question certainly does not hang on whether Saddam Hussein is a good or bad guy. We will not insult readers’ intelligence by pointing out the many even worse dictators who have not been targeted or the ones current and past American administrations have hypocritically supported. The issue that troubles us is one of humanity. Experience tells us that not only will huge numbers of civilians be killed or maimed in an American invasion, but also that the after effects of war will be equally devastating.

Youngsters who were schooled during the height of the Cold War were taught the civics lesson that the end never justifies the means. This was to counter Communism’s stated hopes of building better societies regardless of the means employed. Yet this is exactly what the current administration is suggesting. Where in the Vietnam War troops were told that they had to destroy villages in order to save them, we are now hearing that we have to destroy a country in order to save it. Even if one were to accept the un-American notion that the ends do after all justify the means, the hubris exhibited by the proponents of war against Iraq is beyond comprehension. There is absolutely no indication that plans to restructure an extremely complex society such as Iraq will work and prevent the much greater misery that experience tells us will ensue.

NAMBLA has consistently spoken out against unwise use of the powers of the U.S. military, but the extent of our voice is limited. It is perhaps time that a child somewhere at the edge of some jingoistic parade yells out in a ringing voice, "The emperor has no heart."
 

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