To the Editor:

Eli Muller ’03 claims in his piece (“Why fighting for oil isn’t so preposterous,” 11/7) that the mantra “No war for Oil” has been the rallying cry of anti-war activists. He misstates the slogan and in so doing misses its point entirely in the rest of his article. One need look no further than the buttons on countless Yalies’ backpacks and jackets to know that the slogan in reference is “No Blood for Oil.” The difference is crucial to understanding the message behind the slogan. “No Blood for Oil” highlights the fact that Bush is asking members of our armed forces to kill and to risk being killed, that he is asking the American people to finance the violent, bloody deaths of thousands of people in order to secure control of a natural resource that does not belong to us. As Muller points out, oil is an extremely valuable resource the world over. But if the war is to be about someone else’s oil, then why has this motivation been absent from the wide array of hypocritical ideological arguments the Bush administration has put forward to justify a war on Iraq? If taxpayers are to pay for a war that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars at the expense of our schools and health care, we deserve to know the true reasons behind it. If the Bush administration cared about democracy, the so-called war on terrorism, and nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction half as much as it pretends to in its call for war on Iraq, it might do well to start by being honest with the American people.

Chesa Boudin ’03

November 7, 2002