After the solemn memorial service in Houston for the Columbia shuttle crew, a CNN reporter, over a shot of their kids, said “it” couldn’t have sunk in yet. But isn’t that so of every death, especially sudden death, like astronauts or kids in Revelstoke? All deaths, young or old, expected or not, are similar and at the same time incommensurable, since each involves the obliteration of the universe, from one unique, irreplaceable point of view. We all sense, particularly during a life-threatening illness or a near-fatal brush, that the whole universe will be extinguished with our death, along with the amazing realization that this happens when anyone dies, since each person looks out on a horizon that contains the entire universe. Each life is in that way infinite, and each death, too. It’s all gone, every time. From this arises both reverence for life and awe at death.

That’s why I find it odd that the sense of profound national mourning over the shuttle deaths seemed to find no echo in the deaths that will inevitably result from the coming war on Iraq. American society has been massively preoccupied by the latter, interrupted briefly by the former, then back to war again — seamlessly. Yet a death is a death, and war, as British journalist Robert Fisk passionately insists, is not about winning or losing, it is about death. The estimates for this war range from thousands to half a million, mainly Iraqi, often civilian, but also attacking forces. No one knows, of course, but as Noam Chomsky points out, that is why one sees war as a last resort. (Not by the way, a pacifist view, where war is never a resort.) After an event like the shuttle disaster reminds you, societally, of the bottomlessness of death, how can you fail to make a link to the coming war and death, or at least give it some thought?

So I asked the people in The Globe library to see whether I’d missed some mentions. After a “wide search,” they found one, in The Guardian, quoting U.S. academic Jacqueline Rose: “A nation grieves because it is trying to put out of its mind the fact that it is about to be involved in the killing of up to 80,000 civilians in Iraq.” I don’t know whether she’s right, but at least she sought out a (dis)connection.

Now contrast this sense of war and death, with what can be called an unofficial version of official U.S. views. David Frum, former speechwriter for George W. Bush and author of an insider book on the president, raises “one big argument” in his National Post column to rebut opponents of war: “It is this: Why should the world put up with Saddam for one minute more?”

When I read this, I didn’t know whether to answer the question or just threaten him with a smackbottom. There are answers: because war will make future terror more, not less, likely, and a nuclear outburst possible, further inflame hatred and do Osama bin Laden’s recruiting for him. But what’s really astonishing is the callowness of the question, which nevertheless catches a facet of this moment in history, marked by one unchallenged superpower. War is not a momentous step but a matter of irritation, scratching an itch, in the Bush style — I am running out of patience with Saddam Hussein. Well, everybody runs out of patience, but most of the world is a bit grownup and doesn’t assume that whatever irritates it is the sole priority for action. For that matter, why should the world put up with David Frum? Well, there are reasons: I want to know what he thinks, juvenile as he can be; because the world has better things to worry about, including the danger of future terror and nuclear disaster.

Oh, and there’s another reason the world doesn’t react as he wishes. That’s because it opposes war, especially without UN support, according to polls everywhere, including the U.S. and the nations it has cajoled into line (Italy, eighty per cent against; Spain, seventy-five per cent; Portugal, ninety-six per cent; U.K., ninety per cent; Turkey, ninety per cent). In other words, because this war is undemocratic in a broad, not an electoral, sense; and democracy is supposed to be what separates “us” from the evil ones.

As for Colin Powell’s brief to the Security Council (Monday: memorial service; Wednesday: war-making), what is at stake is not whether Iraq is in breach, material or otherwise, of some resolution, or whether it is hiding weapons. For what it’s worth, and I may know as little as Secretary Powell, I think Iraq probably has a weapons program. It is whether these are sufficient reason or threat to the security of the world’s people to take the catastrophic step to war. That’s what counts, not some legal point-making as if the UN is moot court in law school. For lesser violations, there are other remedies, such as indicting Saddam at the International Criminal Court — if the United States would stop boycotting the thing.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.