The Guardian has a series of columns they have gathered under the title If not war then what?
The question is the most important one. Zadie Smith writes that it is a fallacious question; Ronan Bennett claims to answer it but doesn't; I haven't read all of the shorter notes, but most of them fall into the usual categories of clean-hands, no-betters, and why-nows. I'm dismissing those, in my arrogant way, because they don't answer the question. That's why I'm so disappointed. I'm looking for a better alternative than invasion, one that has some possibility of actually happening, that seems like it would have a good chance of leaving the world in a better position a year or five years from now than a war could. And it's awfully depressing that I haven't found one. I keep hoping that one of the smarter, better-informed, more creative, or just more persistant people out there come up with something.
The problem is that the choice isn't between war and peace. It's not even between, as someone put it recently, war now or war later. It's between war now, on our terms, or the possibility of war later on terms we can't foresee but dread, but perhaps the possibility of war on better terms, or even no war at all, but with the possibility of each of those things extraordinarily difficult to estimate.
Thank you,
-Vardibidian.