Robert H. Whealey ’52 submitted this opinion piece for the April BatesNews alumni and parent newsletter.

On 1 March 2003, I spoke at an anti-war rally at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, explaining why as a diplomatic historian, I used war and peace as a major theme in every course I taught for 40 years.

In 1938, when I was eight years old growing up on Long Island, my friends and I flipped bubble gum "war cards." They showed such horrors as Japanese soldiers stabbing Chinese, and Axis planes raining bombs on Spain. I did not want to fight in any trench in France, for I had heard my father recount his bad experiences in World War I. But in 1940 I wanted to join the Eagle Squadron of the RAF to shoot down Messerschmidt 109s. When the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the news did not surprise me. I wanted to be like John Wayne shooting down "Japs" over Wake Island, and later I joined the Air Scouts.

On 6 August 1945, when the United States bombed Hiroshima, I was a 15-year-old newspaper boy with 93 customers. So as I delivered their papers, I saw the mushroom cloud pictured 93 times. When I told a friend, "I guess that world history will be from Adam to Atom," I began to give up my eight year old, black and white mentality about the glory of war.

When the Korean War broke out in June 1950, I had just finished my sophomore year at Bates and agreed with President Truman in fighting Kim Il Sung. But I found the Korean War baffling. Why did the war begin, and why did it drag on from 1951 to July 1953? I switched from a science major to history hoping to learn how to prevent World War III.

When I was finally drafted in January 1955, I was posted on educational duty in Germany at 7th Army Headquarters for a year. Then I benefited from a good GI Bill which helped finance my Ph.D. I answered my country's call; I was no hero, but simply lucky.

I became a dove on the Indochina conflict in May 1964, while still teaching at the University of Maine, before the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of August 1964. My study of international law convinced me that President Johnson used the naval incident to fool Congress. I got involved in the teach-in movement at Ohio University, which led me to run for Congress in 1972 on a McGovern peace ticket.

In the early 1990s, a colleague introduced me to a dovish alternative to the hawkish VFW and American Legion. Veterans for Peace was founded in 1991 in the aftermath of the Gulf War.

In 2003 George W. Bush is pressing another Presidentially decreed war, against Iraq. This could become another dead end like Vietnam, when the U.S. executive branch of government floundered for 14 years without clear war aims.

Iraq since 1991 has been effectively contained by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force in Kuwait, Qatar and other bases in the Persian Gulf. Saddam Hussein, a tyrant at home, faces a powerful Turkey on the north and a powerful Iran on the east. The U.S. Air Force has bombed Iraq sporadically for 12 years. Iraq's nuclear program is still experimental, behind that of the eight proven nuclear powers. Poison gas or biological agents are difficult to use effectively without killing your own people and leading to massive retaliation.

An American invasion all the way to Baghdad will alienate the Arab League, the Muslim nations, and the European Union. The Bush administration has ignored the United Nations Charter, particularly Article 2 which stipulates that all nations refrain from war.

The U.S. claims to be a democracy based on the consent of the governed. How can the Bush administration ask American youth to sacrifice their lives for the advantage of international banks, global oil companies, American arms manufactures and the Sharon government in Israel?

American occupation of Iraq would not ensure democracy among the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds lumped together, under the Iraqi flag, in an artificial state created by the British Colonial Office in 1920. Saddam Hussein aspires to unite all Arabs with Baghdad as a capital, but that ambition is opposed by Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt among others. Furthermore, democracy must grow within a state. Democratic values cannot be imposed from the outside.

In our democratic republic, the government is the servant of "we, the people." It is up to this generation to work for peace.

My favorite politician, Benjamin Franklin said, in effect: “There has never been a war that could not have been prevented. And there has never been a war, which, once having broken out, could not have been shortened. In short, there has never been a good war or a bad peace.”

Robert H. Whealey
Associate Professor Emeritus
Department of History
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
whealey@ohio.edu