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A mood of frustration, sorrow and anger seemed to descend on Professor Donaldson. She shook her head a few times before proceeding.

"The Coalition leaders were too preoccupied with their power and technological wizardry. Their moral arrogance, ignorance, carelessness, heedlessness, biases, presumptions, and hatreds would not permit them to consider the possibilities that were staring them in the face.

"Apparently, nobody sat down and said: 'we are about to kill hundreds of thousands of people, more than half of whom are innocent civilians, including hundreds of thousands of children. Is there some way in which this can be avoided?'

"Seemingly, nobody sat down and reflected: 'We are about to create about 5 million refugees, forcing many, if not most of them, into extremely marginal and tenuous subsistence conditions. Is there something we could do to avoid disrupting the lives of millions of innocent bystanders?'

"Presumably, nobody sat down and had the insight to realize we are about to set in motion forces that will substantially degrade the ecological viability of thousands of cubic miles of air, water, land and life forms. Is there any alternative plan which would permit us to avoid this?

"Unfortunately, nobody seems to have sat down and realized: we are about to unnecessarily expose tens of thousands of American soldiers and their unborn children, as well as thousands of Iraqis and others, to toxic chemical, biological and radioactive agents. These agents will debilitate, deform and kill them. Can we find some solution to the problem that would avoid such a tragedy?

She turned and looked directly at Dr. Clarke. The words which followed were directed toward him, but the arguments conveyed by those words were directed toward the thinking of the leaders of the Coalition, along with the thinking of those who supported the perspective she was critiquing.

"Dr. Clarke, the power of life, death and destruction was entirely in the discretionary hands of the Coalition forces and their political leaders. It was their decision to unleash those forces. They could have refrained from doing so, but they didn't.

"From the very moment that Iraq invaded Kuwait, there were a large number of efforts of negotiation and diplomacy on the part of Jordan, the PLO, Algeria, France, and, even, Iraq to find a peaceful solution to the invasion. From the beginning, Kuwait and the United States were impervious to all of these overtures.

"Hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives. Hundreds of thousands more people were wounded. Millions of lives were displaced. Incalculable damage was done to the environment. Billions of dollars that could have been used to solve the crisis in a peaceful and just manner were wasted on war."

In a dramatic gesture, Dr. Donaldson flung her arms out to her sides. Her whole body looked like it was posing a question.

"And, why did this all come about?" she asked, as her voice gave expression to what her body already was asking. Responding to her own question, she said:"

All the destruction, death and horror came about as a result of unresolved disputes over: (a) two islands by the name of Warba and Bubiyan which would have provided the Iraqis with access to the sea; (b) several miles of border clarification involving the Rumaila oil field, and (c) 10 billion dollars of debt incurred by Iraq from Kuwait while the former was, among other things, effectively serving and protecting western interests, especially those of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, during the Iran-Iraq, eight year war."

The tone of her voice became both incensed as well as imploring. "Wouldn't it have been quicker, cheaper, more peaceful, more effective, less destructive, and, therefore, ultimately, more just to say to the Iraqis: 'Here, take the islands, forget about the debt, and we'll readjust the border of the Rumaila oil field in a way that will be largely in your favour?' Wouldn't this have been something of a bargain when compared to the actual costs of death, destruction, disease, displacement, debt and ecological degradation that resulted from the war?"

Dr. Donaldson left her questions to hang suspended above the hearts of her audience, hoping they would act like a moral counterpart to the sword of Damocles. She quickly surveyed the audience, scratched her head, smoothed her hair in the spot just scratched, and shrugged.

"Perhaps, some of you may be thinking: how naive and impractical. Why give up two islands, an oil field and 10 billion dollars to a murdering dictator?

"Such people, I believe, are working on the assumption that property, possessions and money are more important than ecology, people and sharing. We all are far too preoccupied with trying to figure out how to kick people off the life raft of existence than we are concerned with finding ways to make room so that more people can be given safety on that raft.

"Suggestions which propose a sharing of resources and land among all the people of Earth are not what is impractical and naive. What is impractical and naive is the belief that we are ever going to solve our problems through greed, selfishness and hostility."

Professor Donaldson sighed slightly. She scanned the audience again. This time her sweep was slower, almost geared to make personal contact with different individuals in the audience.

Eventually, she spoke again. "And, for those of you in the audience who feel all of the foregoing is 20-20 hindsight, there is one simple question I have for you. If we didn't know the extent of the death and destruction that we were going to cause in the Gulf War, then why did we go ahead and act in ignorance without careful consideration of the terrible consequences of our actions?"

Almost as soon as she had raised her question, she began shaking her head in a deliberate, but emphatic, manner. She stopped the movement, seemed to reflect for a few seconds and, then, shook her head in an emphatic manner a few more times.

"However, I do not believe we can escape behind a mea culpa of ignorance in relation to the ramifications of our decisions in the Gulf War. Politicians and military officials are very good at constructing computer models concerning the likely outcomes of different military strategies.

"The people who were in charge of the Coalition knew what they were doing. They knew the human, ecological, and infra structural damage which they intended to inflict. In fact, it was their precise, technical knowledge of the devastating effects of their intended actions that was the motivation shaping all of their decisions for 43 terrible days.

"Personally speaking, I find this knowing willingness to inflict almost unimaginable pain, suffering, death and destruction on both the innocent and the not-so-innocent to be far more horrifying and worrisome than any such act done out of ill-considered blindness. However, whether we did what we did with cold calculation or with blind, unthinking foolishness, we have a terrible complicity in the tragedy of the Gulf War."

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