Usually, I don't imagine getting arrested, but now I contemplate it as a political strategy.

The editorial in Friday's Portland Press Herald - which suggests protesting war is a legitimate civil right, but those who break laws while protesting must accept the consequences - seemed so inarguable and reasonable, that I wanted to share why I might be willing to do that.

Just as the president of the United States, with the approval of Congress, has an arguable right to wage war; and just as the citizens of Iraq had the right to risk their lives in accepting or rejecting Ba'ath party laws in order to stand up for what they most deeply believe in; so citizens of the United States of America have the right to stand up for what we believe, even if we break a law.

In breaking a law, we risk our freedom. What could be worse? It is worse to put lives at risk.

Maybe war saves lives. That's what some people tell me. And it so happens that today this war seems to have gone well. A total of 100 or so Americans and thousands of Iraqi civilians and soldiers have died so far in the invasion of Iraq, but these deaths are an expense we are encouraged to accept.

So it is in spite of the confident attitude of our government and military leaders, in spite of sports-like media coverage, that on a Casco Bay Lines ferry recently conversations about the war exposed a tremendous anxiety about all this killing.

We hope this war is preventing worse evil, yet it doesn't really appear that widespread anger against the American agenda is being reduced or resolved. This war doesn't make us feel safer, even though we are told we are "winning" - indeed, that we "have won."

President Bush wants change, the Israelis and the Palestinians want change, the people of North and South Korea and Asia want change. War is not the only way to initiate change. Or maybe, in spite of Bush's call for "regime change," perhaps this war is really about an effort to prevent change, and guarding for the United States our position as principal consumer of global resources.

Those who are pro-war seem to compare this to World War II, while those in the peace movement are comparing it to Vietnam. However, this war is truly unlike any other because for the first time we are fighting over a very dubious "governmental right" to build and maintain weapons of mass destruction. That "right" can exist only in direct opposition to every other human right.

War buys the very worst quality of life. Maybe Bush and my pro-war neighbors are right; maybe this war is sacrificing the few in order to save the lives of many. Maybe our nation has the restraint to build, but not use, our weapons of mass destruction. Maybe the future will be more peaceful because this time we have dropped tens of billions of dollars worth of bombs between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. But if that is not the case, then we are all being betrayed.

Not all laws, not all governments, not all policies are just. In spite of all that has happened in our country in the past few years - from the controversial election of George Bush to the controversial start of this war - I've held out hope that I can participate in public policy-making without breaking any laws.

But recently I too find myself contemplating acts of civil disobedience - acts like joining a "die-in" in the street, or interrupting a meeting with groans and cries - in order to remind our leaders of what it looks and sounds like when innocent people are hit with ammunition.

And if I truly believe that a non-violent illegal act will positively influence public policies in ways that protect life or reduce human suffering - as acts of civil disobedience have done in human rights movements of the past - then I not only have a right to break those laws, I have an ethical obligation to do it.

Jenny Ruth Yasi is a resident of Peaks Island, Maine.

###