From a netfriend:

This may sound a bit direct so I hope you take it just as dialogue: I think you might have been sucked into the rhetoric of this as an "inevitable war"! The truth is there is nothing inevitable about it at all. The only thing inevitable was Bush's determination to go to war ... without ever offering just cause.

1. War would be inevitable if Hussein initiated aggression. That hasn't happened and didn't look likely in the short term.

2. War would be inevitable if there was proof that Hussein was responsible for the development of terrorist attacks, or supplying weapons of mass destruction for terrorist attacks. This has in no way been proven.

The third reason for war is the one I believe could have been the way of peace. The third reason for war was that the people of Iraq are so impoverished and brutalised. Now I think the same thing is going on here as when the oil was put on Jesus. "This could have been given to the poor!" With Jesus response, "There will be poor always". That is, a moral case was raised that missed the point. The options were reduced to force the issue.

The reality is that there are many countries in the world where the plight of the people are much worse than in Iraq. These countries are in a political context such that it would be much easier to provide real relief and positive help than to the people of Iraq. Take Bangladesh for example.

What if America decided to vest its energy to create a show case of what it can do with its economic might to transform a poor country into a secure, healthy country, maintaining at the same time that countries political, economic, and religious integrity?