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>http://www.helsinki-hs.net/news.asp?id=20030401IE3 >Foreign - Tuesday 1.4.2003 >Three price tags on war in Iraq >PERSPECTIVE >By Jaakko Kangasluoma >There are at least three price-tags attached to the >ongoing war in Iraq. They are already large, but still >a long way from being the final cost. >Measured in money terms, the war is expensive, but >So much for money. The second price is a political >one. >The third price to be paid is calculated in units of >human suffering. Thousands will die in Iraq, and in There is a fourth price: the spiritual price, the cost of losing whatever innocence the prosecuters of this war might yet have left. The Germans have not yet, even after a half century, finished paying the cost of conscience for allowing the Nazis to become the German nation. The U.S. has not yet paid off the spiritual price of the Vietnam war. This price drains the intellectual vitality of a nation, perverts the political process, and distorts the sense of perspective and propriety. Indeed, part of the reasons for the attack on Iraq is the blindness induced by a subcurrent of trying still to justify the Vietnam war, and deny the guilt. If Vietnam "normalized" the sense of the U.S. as aggressor and a nation above law, how much more then will the war on Iraq? Is there not a similar denial of guilt in the British psyche of Britain's role in the Middle East in setting up the artificial political boundaries which are disasterous even now. Karma, my friends: we cannot murder without becoming murderers, and that is a blight on the soul of a nation which is not easily healed. ________________________________________________________________ Sign Up for Juno Platinum Internet Access Today Only $9.95 per month! Visit www.juno.com _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk