As the debate on war with Iraq began several months ago, we were bombarded with many arguments both for and against war in Iraq.

The anti-war protestors who participated in the “Books Not Bombs” march on Bascom made several claims: War will lead to destabilization of the region, increased mass hatred of America in the Arab world, increased threats of terrorist acts against the United States, long-term occupation, and Israeli involvement in the conflict, among others.

The Bush Administration, as well as others favoring war, had their own case to make: War is the only way to eliminate huge amounts of weapons of mass destruction, and only war will prevent the continued human-rights abuses by Hussein against the Iraqi people. (It would seem that evidence has not justified the former reason.)

In the interest of honesty, I should say that I initially found myself on the side of the anti-war protestors, and I participated in the march on Bascom. I have three friends in Iraq right now, and I did not want to see them walking down the streets of Baghdad with M-16s as every single Iraqi in the city tried to kill them. (As it turns out, history has proven me wrong as well.)

But as the debate on war progressed, I found myself watching the political pundits scrutinize each other’s arguments in the typically shallow fashion that characterizes our broadcast discussions.

That was until I saw Pat Buchanan, one of this country’s most irrational conservatives, put together an argument that actually made sense to me. I actually found myself agreeing with Pat Buchanan. Then I ran to the bathroom as I felt my sesame chicken coming back up.

What was this fantastic argument that changed the mind of this anti-war protestor? He pointed to reports by Amnesty International as to the egregious human-rights abuses perpetrated by Saddam Hussein and his regime since the first Gulf war.

It was as if a dagger had been cast into the bleeding hearts of the anti-war protestors — for once, the liberals, who championed human rights the world over, were arguing against the defense of those same human rights.

So many liberals like me looked in disgust at Western governments for relaxing trade barriers with China even though the Chinese government took appalling steps to silence political dissidents. We decried the prolonged decision to take action in Yugoslavia, where Slobodan Milosevic carried out the kind of ethnic cleansing Europe had not seen since Hitler. And now, as we stood on Bascom decrying the Bush administration with even more vehemence than we did those administrations before him, we found ourselves actually fighting against actions to protect human rights. It was a compelling case, and I could not help but feel like a hypocrite.

But then I took a step back at who was posing this argument: Pat Buchanan. Where was he when the Indonesian government killed thousands of political dissidents? He and his conservative pals did not seem to have a problem with continuing our trade with them. Where were the conservatives when they chose to relax trade restrictions on China? We heard no mention of human rights from the likes of conservatives then. When were they ever waving around reports from Amnesty International as if human rights actually guided conservative foreign-policy agendas? (Amnesty International, it should be noted, frequently criticizes the United States for capital punishment. A recent report cited Wisconsin’s own “Supermax” prisons as a particularly abysmal violation of basic human rights by a Western power.)

Then it all hit me. As the saying goes, “War is the continuation of politics by other means” (Carl von Clausewitz). The conservatives and Republicans who wanted to justify war in Iraq were doing so with just as much hypocrisy as the liberals and Democrats who oppose it. The American liberals talk up the importance of human rights, but instead of carrying that dialogue into decisive action, they shirked at the possibility of supporting Bush in a war against Iraq. Likewise, American conservatives sought to justify the war as a defense of human rights, but only when it seems to serve some other political purpose.

If the liberals opposing war wish to be intellectually sound, they will have to either abandon their ideal of upholding human rights or find the will to carry that principle into action. If the conservatives favoring war have any hope of being intellectually honest, they should either give the true reason behind this war in Iraq or undergo a dramatic shift towards universal enforcement of human rights through active military action.

Hypocrisy comes in many forms. War is one of them.

Paul Temple ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in political science and philosophy.