It’s rare the written word can bring laughter to its reader. Therefore, it is with great gratitude to the Campus Antiwar Network that I write the following editorial. The opening line of an e-mail I recently received read, “End the occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine — No war for oil.” I guess spam is not the only garbage that appears in my inbox anymore.

Regardless of how anyone feels about these three situations, they are fundamentally different, and lumping them together proves the ignorance of the sender. Afghanistan was invaded by NATO and its allies in response to the Taliban training and harboring Al-Qaeda terrorists.

Iraq was invaded for a multitude of vague reasons ranging from weapons of mass destructions to spreading democracy to whatever garbage spewed from the former occupant of the White House. Iraq, however, was clearly no Afghanistan.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank are the result of an Israeli defense policy that implies that without population centers between the Jordan River and the Green Line, Israel does not have defendable boundaries. Many Israelis also believe because they won the land in a defensive war — it was given to them in the Balfour Declaration and is part of historic Israel — they are permitted to repopulate the area with Jews.

I am not defending or attacking any of these three operations; I am merely pointing out that none of them had anything to do with oil. Afghanistan and the West Bank have no oil resources, making the petroleum claim absurd. The Iraqi oil claim would not be so absurd if Iraq has surrendered it membership to OPEC (the monopoly that controls oil prices). Iraq, though, did no such thing. The imbecile who made this war for oil claim obviously forgot that oil over the summer was more expensive than Grey Goose.

The group also seems to overlook some other realities. Israel is not at war with the Fatah rulers of the West Bank, thus why the hell would a group called the Campus Antiwar Network have any interest in the situation? Is it really an “anti-war network” or an organization that randomly picks fashionable left-wing causes?

When focusing on Iraq, the group also seems to have completely overlooked the 16-month timetable for withdrawal. While it may not be the immediate end to the American occupation of Iraq that they wanted, it is petty and immature to continue berating something that has a definite end because you would like to see it happen a little sooner as opposed to a little later.

The Campus Antiwar Network should be above such petty propaganda, and instead of just latching on to catchy slogans, it should tell the truth about the situations. It is infuriating to see the collective intelligence of the student body belittled by the Campus Antiwar Network. The failure of the Campus Antiwar Network to help any situation should come as little surprise, however.

The Campus Antiwar Network plans marches around Memorial Union and shouts and sings anti-war songs. The group may be made up of the geographically challenged or just too idiotic to realize there are no publicly elected officials on Library Mall. These people have (not surprisingly) overlooked that we live in a representative democracy, therefore, a letter writing campaign or actively campaigning for anti-war candidates would be infinitely more useful than singing “Kumbaya” at the Union.

The lumping of these three distinct situations and the lying about the very nature of global conflicts leads me to the reasonable conclusion that the Campus Antiwar Network is completely useless. The group does nothing productive except send out misinformed e-mails and make its events tailored for convenience over change. The Campus Antiwar Network creates an insular order of people who can congratulate themselves on being progressive liberals who prefer self-given congratulation to true change.

Max Manasevit ([email protected]) is a freshman majoring in philosophy.