COLUMN LEFT : Shedding the Mentality of War : Brinkmanship got us into this, but we could still step back from the edge of ground fighting.

I have opposed the application of offensive military force throughout the Persian Gulf crisis. I filed suit to protect against a unilateral decision by the President to use such force. I led the effort to continue economic sanctions in the place of a military offensive. I believe that negotiations and sanctions needed to be exhausted before we resorted to force.

When asked why I oppose the war now started, I invoke a speech that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered at the height of the Vietnam War. He warned that the bombs being dropped on the jungles of Vietnam were exploding in the ghettos and barrios of America. The significance of that statement lies in both its simplicity and its complexity. Its thrust is every bit as relevant today.

Simply put, King warned us that those bombs were killing the hopes and aspirations of many, particularly the poor, in this country. The pursuit of a military solution to the situation in Vietnam was at the direct expense of those Americans whose marginal existence depended to a great extent on federal programs.

Today, Dr. King would warn that the bombs falling in the Persian Gulf are exploding all across America. The middle and working classes now join the poor in feeling the effects of the nation’s misplaced spending priorities. Our crisis in health care, housing, education, environment and the “safety net” programs all will be aggravated by Gulf War expenses now ranging from $500 million to $1 billion a day. As a result of the misplaced spending priorities driven by the mentality and the actuality of war, the people of our nation face the greatest threat to the quality of their lives in modern times.

Dr. King also urged us to abandon the mentality of war. We are at war because an enormous gamble failed. A gamble of brinkmanship, driven by the mentality of war. During this crisis we have been taken to this brink, the next brink, and so on, with assurances that we would not have to leap any farther. Now we stare into the abyss, brought to the brink of what would, by all accounts, be an incredible slaughter of human beings--Americans, allies and Iraqis--in a ground attack combined with an unrestrained air assault on entrenched Iraqi positions in Kuwait and Iraq.

The economic sanctions continue, even though the war is having a negative effect on the resolve of the coalition enforcing them. As no strategic goods are allowed in and no oil is allowed out of Iraq, the country’s economy will continue to disintegrate under the weight of the sanctions, without an escalation of the war.

Dr. King also warned against our fascination with the technology of war. In the days since the beginning of this war, we have heard discussion of a kind of national “euphoria” as we collectively consumed the descriptions of the performance of our high-technology weaponry. We now face the more sober reality that even when the weaponry exceeds our expectations, the predictions of an early Iraqi capitulation have proved false.

I submit that an even more sober reflection is in order. We are actually experiencing a unique opportunity to look through a window at the future of war. Instead of becoming enamored of this technology, we should become profoundly frightened by it. As long as we remain fixated on perfecting the art and craft of war over the art and craft of diplomacy, we will remain caught in a spiral of violence that may escalate to the use of biological, chemical or even nuclear weapons.

The time to think beyond warfare is now. Otherwise, modern warfare may someday come to our own country, raining cruise missiles and high-technology death down on our own cities.

The harvest of a policy driven by the mentality of war finds fruit in increasingly anti-American Arab states. I agree with President Bush that America has a special role and a special responsibility in what he refers to as the “new world order.” However, I believe that the United States should lead by example in searching for alternatives to war.

The decision to resort to brinkmanship is a failure of that responsibility. Respect for all of the lives that are being--and would be--extinguished should surely be great enough to drive nations to negotiate a solution to the current crisis. In the long run, peace is not just the withdrawal from hostilities, peace is the withdrawal from the mentality of war.

Dr. King’s simple but profound statement lives with us today: eventually nations must peacefully coexist or violently annihilate each other. The search for peaceful coexistence is our moral obligation in the post-Cold War era.