To the editor:

After a perfunctory debate, Congress has granted the president the power to make war against Iraq that he desired. If the president decides to order U.S. military forces to attack and overturn the regime of Saddam Hussein based on the inconclusive evidence offered so far of the need to do this, the United States will, in my view, have become the very evil we say we abhor and oppose. To invade Iraq is to thumb our noses at the rest of the world and to relinquish even the semblance of the kind of moral authority befitting the world’s only superpower.

As a Christian, a pastor, and in concert with the leaders of my denomination, the United Church of Christ, I appeal directly to the president not to use the war-making power Congress has granted, but rather to pursue diplomacy and the power of international law to solve the issue of Saddam Hussein.

Rev. Lewis E. Hinshaw III,

Lawrence