AMERICAS FUTURE

Critics of the war in Iraq have been correct on a number of issues. They believed the United Nations inspectors who said no weapons of mass destruction

existed. They feared that an urban battle in Baghdad could lead to a protracted guerilla war.

They questioned the apparent lack of post-war planning —that is, beyond the extensive preparation for Americans to step in and make money off the new economy.

Critics trusted Middle Eastern scholars more than the White House when it came to considering a post-Saddam government. Those familiar with the area said that civil war was more likely to develop than a flourishing democracy.

Critics said that the capture of Saddam would make no difference in the insurgency’s efforts, and they felt the same about the handing over of power to an interim government, about the Jan. 30 election, and every other vaunted “turning point” in the war.

Opponents of the war took the absence of a link between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks at face value. They have watched one justification for the war after another fall by the wayside, as little more than propaganda. Last month, retired Army Lt. Col. William Odom referred to the invasion of Iraq as the “greatest strategic disaster in United States history.”

For those who aren’t paying close attention to this out-of-sight, out-of-mind conf ict, 22 U.S. troops have died in the first eight days of October along with dozens of Iraqis.

Many critics of the war have long suspected that our attack in March 2003 had a lot to do with oil, since Iraq sits on an ocean of petroleum. While the president would never admit to that, he said last month that oil is now a reason why we have to stay. If we leave, the enemy gets the oil. Now we’re locked in.

We’re spending more than one billion dollars of taxpayers’ money every week to support this mistake. We’re spending $177 million a day to protect a rapidly shrinking resource that will run out in a few decades. We’re spending $7.4 million every hour for an asset that’s increasingly going to the booming economies of China and India. Will the next great war become a battle for the dead-end resource of oil?

Think of what $5 billion a month could do in the search for alternatives to petroleum fuel. This is the war the president should be fighting. Not a battle to enhance the future of prosperous oil companies, but instead a true and wise investment in this nation’s future.