ON THE EVE OF WAR: The thing about living in the United States is, sooner or later you start to believe all the superlatives about it, and you set a high standard of expectation regarding how it conducts its affairs. Sure, no nation in the world lives up to such lofty standards. But nonetheless, it’s still a disappointment when the good old U.S. of A. also fails to do so.

That pretty much sums up my feelings tonight about the upcoming invasion of Iraq. Sure, Saddam Hussein is a major bad guy who has killed many people and has violated all kinds of human rights. And yes, left to his own devices, he would continue to do a lot of harm. In an interdependent world such as we live in today, you can’t ignore such a man and hope he will go away. President Clinton probably ignored Iraq a bit too much; Clinton pretty much looked the other way when Iraq decided to terminate the UN inspection program. I’ll give George W. ultimate credit for giving the world a reality fix. Had we continued to ignore Saddam, he would have had some more nasty surprises up his sleeve for us.

But how you stop a nasty man of power also counts for something. Saddam Hussein is not simply a local phenomenon. What we do with Iraq and how we do it will influence our relations with all of the Islamic world. Iraq is an international problem, and requires an international solution. But international diplomacy is not one of President Bush’s strong points. (As the New York Times said in its March 18 editorial, “this war crowns a period of terrible diplomatic failure, Washington’s worst in at least a generation”.)

Gulf War II puts the US in a “might makes right” position. Instead of nurturing respect for our ideas about freedom and human rights and economic liberty, George W. Bush is now demanding world-wide respect at the point of a gun. I.e., we’re bigger and stronger than anyone else, so we’re gonna handle the situation our way.

Well, if this war works in the short run, it will work in the longer run. If the upcoming war in Iraq is over quickly, if there are no terrorist incidents at home, if oil prices calm down, if the federal deficit isn’t too badly inflated by the cost of the war, and more significantly, if Iraq can be put back together into a stable, self-governing nation, then the world will go along with us, however grudgingly. Nothing succeeds like success.

That’s what Mr. Bush seems to be betting on tonight. Perhaps for now, it’s a reasonable bet. But in the long run, might is a fickle thing. Sure, the world is not a place where liberty and human idealism run the show — not anytime soon, not in a world of such harshness, inequality and misunderstanding. But you’d hope that we could at least move towards a paradigm of shared economic interest. War isn’t a good way of promoting business, and thus should not become a preferred foreign policy option. It’s sad that such a business-savvy President like George W. Bush doesn’t seem to appreciate that. And let’s not even get into Mr. Bush’s admiration for the words and acts of Jesus.

As an eternal student with a conscience, I’d prefer to “study war no more”. But that doesn’t seem possible tonight. I just hope that the world will somehow learn, sooner or later, that lone-wolf warfare — and warfare in general — is not the preferred method to settle its problems.