"The best lack all conviction," WB Yeats
wrote in his poem The Second Coming, "while the worst are full of passionate intensity".

As the world contemplates war with Iraq, there is much passionate intensity. Most is from the anti-war side, though there is passion too from
those who insist that something must be done about Saddam Hussein, even if that means going to war without further United Nations mandate. Yet more probably still lack conviction, the majority that Prime
Minister John Howard thinks have not yet made up their minds. Many probably never will, at least until hindsight kicks in, because the questions are so complex and the answers so uncertain.

And on the fundamental question -- can there be a just war? -- there is no right answer because it will depend on individual moral viewpoint. Most people, however, would probably say World War II was just
-- though would the Allies have gone to war if Hitler had confined his atrocities to within his borders? Most would probably say Vietnam was not.
Our Prime Minister, Mr Howard accepts the concept of the just war. Given that, he's right to say that the question is whether the concept applies to Iraq.
The next question is probably: Will the cost in human life and misery be greater without war? This cannot be answered with certainty because it requires
predictions, but that doesn't mean that honest and expert attempts should not be made.

In Iraq's case, George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard say yes because Saddam Hussein has dreadful weapons which he may use on his neighbours or, worse, give to international terrorists -- a truly terrifying prospect. If we don't act now, they say, the cost of acting later will be much greater. There is, in this argument, a seductive parallel with World War II.

The world has been so deluged with information, and hefty doses of rhetoric, about Iraq's weapons. It is too much, too complex; it may sound compelling, but it is beyond most people's capacity to analyse with confidence.

What do we need? Some geopolitical equivalent of the criminal justice test of proof beyond reasonable doubt? It's possible we have something approaching that on the questions of weapons; almost certainly we do not on the second leg
of the argument, the danger of them falling into terrorists' hands. Evidence of Iraq-al-Qaeda links look tenuous.

There are secondary justifications for war. The main one -- which for political reasons gets a lot of
emphasis, though none of the main advocates claim to be a sufficient cause -- is the terrible things Saddam Hussein has done to his own people. Here the parallel with Rwanda, where the world shut its eyes and a million people were slaughtered, is compelling. But do you go to war over past sins, however heinous? And how sure are we that the death and misery from war will be less than
the Saddam's future atrocities? Or, how much faith have we in the smart technologies of death that are supposed to spare civilians?

The other important reason is the integrity and effectiveness of the United Nations as the world's main guardian of its security. Here the parallel is with the collapse of the League of Nations as the world slipped towards World War II. The argument this time goes beyond Iraq. As Mr Howard says, if
the UN can't deal with Iraq, what hope is there of its dealing with North Korea? But should ordinary Iraqis and the soldiers of many nations die for an institution, or because of a threat from the other side of the world?

The other worrying question is American motives.
Oil, though central to the first Gulf War, may be a red herring. But what of vengeance, post-September 11? Christians are told that vengeance is the province of the Lord. Yet there is, in the
American psyche, a religious fervour that overlaps with public policy and is a source of both strength and danger. Jihads, under other names, are not an Islamic monopoly.

In pondering all this, and no doubt much more, it's hardly surprising that there is much uncertainty -- or that, when there is uncertainty, the verdict is against war.

The leaders, of course, have no such luxury. They must make a decision and argue it, whatever private doubts they may have.

By Don Woolford AAP dw/sb/cd/ts
21.2.03