Lately, war is on everyone’s mind. Clearly the Bush Administration is hell-bent on a collision course with Iraq. Daily, the prospect of war against Iraq makes front-page headlines. Nightly, it leads the network newscasts, and is the subject of voluble debate on cable news and opinion programs.

On the for end of the spectrum are those who shout jingoistic slogans, challenge opponents’ patriotism, accuse treason, and argue war as the only viable solution.

On the against end of the spectrum there are those that paint Bush and his supporters as mindless warmongers. Others argue that our president is motivated by a personal agenda to avenge Bush Sr.’s legacy and conclude a long-standing vendetta against the Iraqi leader. Still, others point to individual and Republican political motives, war to strengthen slumping political ratings, divert attention from a struggling economy and un-addressed domestic concerns, and bolster party support for mid-term elections.

With no shortage of arguments on either side, I have yet to hear the question posed:Is war ever justifiable? Given what Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and the Dali Lama have accomplished for human advancement through political non-violence, how can war ever be considered a legitimate enterprise?

Well, let’s consult the record.

In the late 18th century, a rag-tag band of colonists united to challenge the tyrannous laws which governed their lives. Considered ruffians, outlaws, and reckless disturbers of the peace by the European establishment of their time, these insurrectionists, with names like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Samuel Adams, were committed to the radical idea that it is not only the right, but the duty of every man to be free. To the willingness of these audacious men to make war and die for this principle, we, and the citizens of the other democracies of the world, owe our priceless freedom. Today, though still not universal, government of the people, by the people, and for the people is the standard of the world.

Was it worth fighting for? You bet.

How about World War II? Were we wrong as a nation to join the Allies in 1941, after Pearl Harbor, and fight to vanquish Hitler, Nazism, and its attendant human rights atrocities? Few would argue this point.To those that question Saddam Hussein’s legitimacy as a global menace, I say again, consult the record. History is replete with bad men, very bad men, who will employ any means-unprovoked aggression; despotism; oppression; torture, rape, mutilation, and murder; genocide; and yes, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons-to pursue their own mad quest for power, control, and self-defecation. Saddam Hussein has proven by his actions that he is such a man. He attacked Kuwait in 1992 without provocation. In Kuwait City his soldiers committed abominable atrocities against Kuwaiti civilians: men were lined up and shot to death, women were gang raped in the streets, children dismembered. Missiles were fired randomly at Israel. After the war, he used poison gas on 1.5 million Iraqi Kurds (his own people!) to quell rebellion. Head scientists from his weapons development program, that have since defected, such as Khidr Abd Al-Abbas Hamzah, in his book Saddam’s Bombmaker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda, warn us that Hussein was and is actively seeking nuclear technology with the intent of deploying it. Since the Gulf War, he has openly and belligerently refused to cooperate with weapons inspections mandated by the United Nations. What more proof could the nay-sayers at home and abroad possibly need that Saddam Hussein is a dangerous threat to world stability?

No doubt, war is a despicable thing: soldiers are wounded, maimed, and killed; bombs destroy homes, schools, churches, and hospitals; innocent civilians-women and children, the poor, the aged, the blind, and the sick-are helpless casualties; human beings suffer and die in unspeakable ways. How can such a thing ever be justified? It’s a hard question, but next time you enter the war debate and are tempted to simplify and argue that all war is wrong, and dismiss President Bush and his administration as self-serving warmongers and political opportunists, stop and consider that there may be occasional higher purposes that justify war. Perhaps the horrible loss and suffering that accompanies war in the present is offset by potential greater loss and suffering in the future.