Another bloody stoush, that’s what*. And, because it’s a stoush, everyone’s getting very snarly with each other, the ad hominem attacks are flying and the accusations of ad hominem attacks are flying too. Next time I’m either going to cut it back to twelve words or pad it out to fourteen and maybe things will work out better.
I was going to respond to comments from j_p_z, and GregM with a lengthy comment of my own, but in the two minutes or so that it took me to outline it in my head, I realised that it would run to fairly epic lengths, well beyond the three paragraph limit. Adding two paragraphs of digressive (or discursive) introduction hasn’t helped matters any either.
Back in my personal blogging mesozoic, I woke up one morning thinking “It’s about time I started writing some serious stuff”; the result was a famously inconclusive and indecisive (and in- something else) series of posts, examining the then proposed war in Iraq using the principles of just war theory. Maybe now is as good a time to finish that series, because it’s a failure that’s been nagging at me, on and off, for the best part of three years.
To begin, here are the requirements for a just declaration of war, as I lifted them from that Aquinas bloke:
- having just cause,
- being declared by a proper authority,
- possessing right intention,
- having a reasonable chance of success,
- the end being proportional to the means used
A lot of the argument in the stoush has been about whether getting rid of Saddam was a good thing. And if it was a good thing, surely that justifies the war. Well no, actually, as a simple example from Christian morality might illustrate. Is it good for a parent to forgive the murderer of their child? Yes. Is it just for the law to forgive the same murderer? No. Similarly, getting rid of Saddam was a good idea, for many reasons, but those reasons are insufficient to establish that it was just of doing so. That has to be decided in the framework of those constraints on the behaviour of nations which we laughingly refer to as International Law.
Leaving aside the United Nations and its questionable authority, relations between nations need to be governed at least by the prudent consideration of the possible consequences of adopting a doctrine of pre-emptive war and regime change and, like it or not, sensible governments deal with each other on the basis “well, we’ll let you run your country your way as long as you leave us to run ours our way.” Which from this leftist’s point of view, really sucks. What sucks even more is when the government of your own country hasn’t the gumption to assert its rights, vis-a-vis other nations, in the interests of maintaining neighbourly relation. It might also suck if a government were spouting a lot of sanctimonious rhetoric about freeing the people of one nation from a mad tyrant and the world from the threat of terrorism, while cutting deals with another mad tyrant whose minions are given to boiling people alive, in pursuit of the latter ideal.
j_p_z offers this after the event justification of the US’ actions in Iraq:
- ultimately the Iraq war, for good or ill, is a matter of long-term policy, not strict ‘logic’ (nor morals either, really, for that matter) and
- the ‘aftermath’ of the war cannot really be said to have even happened yet; the strategy is long term (see point 1).
Don’t expect results immediately. Look at South Korea in 1955; then in 1975; then today. And while you’re looking, don’t forget to compare it to North Korea. And don’t forget that the goal is global in scale, (and long-term, ironically, the goal is in fact peaceful), and does not have strict minute reference to the immediate, this-year well-being of the Iraqi people (though their future well-being is in fact a part of the strategy).
Ultimately the Iraq war may be a matter of long term policy, but there is no evidence that it was viewed that way at its inception. Here’s a blast from the recent, but seemingly forgotten, past:
States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.
We will work closely with our coalition to deny terrorists and their state sponsors the materials, technology, and expertise to make and deliver weapons of mass destruction. We will develop and deploy effective missile defenses to protect America and our allies from sudden attack. (Applause.) And all nations should know: America will do what is necessary to ensure our nation’s security.
(George W Bush, State of the Union Address, 2002)
In May 2002 that was followed by a speech in which Bush declared his doctrine of “pre-emption” and by 2003, Bush’s State of the Union Address made it pretty clear that the war was on. You’ll find the rest of the details in the “just cause” link. The ultimate issue of long-term policy wasn’t even in consideration. As Franky Fukuyama wrote recently, cleaning up this FUBAR will require a new team. The way the US polls are running that’s most likely to be a team of Democrats.
The aftermath of a war starts immediately the war is over. If it hasn’t started yet the war is still on – and clearly isn’t a war on Saddam and his regime any more. They’re gone. How long exactly are we supposed to wait for results – a few decades apparently? Which means, in the interim, several changes of US Administration with, at best, an eight year planning time-frame for policy on Iraq, given the electoral cycle.
Years ago, in a small paperback on economics (author and title forgotten) I read an interesting little argument on the fallacy that war is good for a country’s economy. People look at the new buildings that go up once the rubble is cleared and see bright spanky newness alongside dingy oldness and think isn’t that wonderful. And of all the jobs and economic activity that the reconstruction generated. What they forget is that the old dingy stuff that was bombed into rubble was accumulated wealth – so all the economic activity is about replacing what’s lost. Which about wraps it up for South Korea, on my part.
Here’s the section of GregM’s comment that had me combing my personal archive of Potemkin posts, looking for those old just war posts:
… It may turn out that for Iraq it would have been better to leave them at the mercy of their sociopath leader to control and to kill at his will rather than remove him from power.
If it turns out that Iraq falls into a worse condition than under Saddam and that can be traced to errors in American policy or its implementation then I won’t defend that because I believe those errors had reasonably forseeable consequences.
Despite a lot of effort to get good news stories out of Iraq, the impression I get is that things are at least as bad as they were under Saddam and in some respects worse. Even with the best will in the world it’s impossible to fight a war, shock and awe style, without civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure.
Shorter Gummo: We told you so. When are you buggers going to bloody listen? (And incidentally, we’d all like people to stop peddling the myth that opposition to the war in Iraq is a symptom of evil (yet naive), anti-American, Saddam-apologetic leftism. I think that Owen Harries, for one, would be grateful for that).
* – Plus a long discursive post that doesn’t get anywhere near where you wanted to go and a bloody long fight with WordPress to get it published.
Perhaps the corollary is that if you post 1300 words you get 1 comment?
Okay, you rambled a bit, but that’s not what infuriates me about what you’re writing.
It’s that you need to at all. That there are ostensibly intelligent people who still need convincing of the stupidity of this war’s inception and conduct. Who still accuse anyone critical of the Coalition of being pro-Saddam.
It’s just plain retarded.
Well, I didn’t need to write it David. I chose to, because I was feeling bugged by stuff. And then it went a bit pear-shaped with all those distracting “and what about …” thoughts.
Kim,
Maybe I should’ve posted this as a comment, epic proportions notwithstanding. That way a certain recent event might have been contained
Oh I know, Gummo. I didn’t mean to come across all negative.
I do it too, more than I’d care to admit. But walking that line between preaching to the converted and talking to a brick wall is so very frustrating. Doing both at the same time = even more so.
But if we stop, I guess complacency and illogic win out, so keep it up. If the only collateral damage is me and WordPress getting tied in knots, that’s not too bad.
I was just joking, Gummo. It’s well worth posting as a post. I have a feeling that the other discussion may have just about run its course though – and today seems like a quiet day on the blog for comments.
do strike tags work?KIm,
I were responding in kind
Wish me bloody gravatar would turn up…
Maybe with a bit of hard work, we could get it up to 13 comments before your gravatar turns up…
I’m always amazed (and a little relieved) at how many Christian organisations worldwide did come out against the Iraq war for just (geddit? huh? huh?) the reasons Gummo outlined. Those that supported seemed to do so for much more…
batshit fundamentalistechatological reasons (although, happily, the Rapture Index has fallen to a stable 145 from its 2002 spike of 179).If Christianity Today is anything to go by, the Just War argument for the invasion seems to have stemmed from a willingness to believe that the Administration wouldn’t lie about something so important. In that sense, for some people it is/was all about faith, rather than an Aquinasian balance of reasoning.
why?
Is
thirteen
a lucky number of comments or something?
Gummo — in classic internet fashion, I just spent a lot of time writing a thoughtful (or at least I hoped thoughtful) response to yr post, and then it wouldn’t transfer properly. And then it disappeared. Oh well. The Lord and the Internet seem to dislike wordy expositions.
Haven’t the heart to try again right this minute, but long story short… you’ve raised some interesting points, but my responses to ‘em are perhaps weirder than what you’d expect. Maybe I’ll try again later, after a few more glasses of the potent and nefarious Cabernet of Doctor Caligari…
I am dense. Forgive me.
I’ll add four points to the ones I have already made. First, I suspect that many of the “I told you this would end in tears” crowd say the same about every military action. People who continually cry wolf don’t deserve to be taken seriously.
Second, I don’t think we can judge whether the Iraq war is a success or failure yet. I doubt such a judgement can be made within the next ten years. I reckon we are only in the second chapter of a very long book.
Third, I still haven’t heard even one anti-war commentator offer an alternative scenario that is even remotely convincing.
Fourth, lefties will continue to face an anti-American bias charge while they dissect to death everything America does whilst largely ignoring other equally newsworthy events. For instance, the ratio of lefite blog posts/comments on Iraq vis-a-vis Zimbabwe/North Korea/Congo/Sudan must run at about 50 to 1.
But the converse would be true for righty blog comments/posts. They’re stuck in the same paradigm because everyone has polarised the debate around the role of the US. Even when sometimes we try to make suggestions about what should now be done in Iraq, it gets dragged back to “were you for or against the evil Saddam?” (see the previous thread, and no, Steve, I’m not referring to you as I read your qualification). I referred on that thread to some discussion here about Darfur last year. I bet you couldn’t find anything at all about it on RWDB blogs, unless it was “the UN is evil/hopeless”. Similarly, the only mentions of Mugabe I’ve seen on RWDB blogs have been crackpot “Mugabe is a socialist therefore what’s happening is TEH FAULT OF THE LEFT”).
I for one would welcome more blog debate about Zimbabwe/Congo/Sudan.
I know chez nous we’ve had a very enjoyable stoush on Venezuela.
And I give you the same advice, Steve, that I always give to people who comment on the lack of coverage of some issue or other—get a blog.
Yes, but Venezuela is also rather an overdetermined topic from a left/right pov, Liam.
You’re only saying that because you’re a part of the hive mind, Kimbot.
I’ll have you know that my position on Venezuela is highly nuanced and complex.
[flounces]
…
Though I agree that the factor of polarisation around the US is common.
Heh. The contributions by EP are particularly nuanced
Liam, I’m not sure why you even bother giving oxygen to the Green Left crowd, as you did with your Venezuala link. These people have bugger all support, as the election results of Socialist Alliance candidates show (typically about 0.01% even in inner city electorates).
The way Socialist Alliance moral pygmies suck up to Venezuala, Vietnam and Cuba is just as vile as the way their Marxist elders feasted on the teat of Stalin, Great Leader Kim and even Pol Pot at one stage. I would love to see a psychological profile done on the core Socialist Alliance activists. I suspect it would yield a number of sociopathic, megalomaniac Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot and Stalin like types.
The modern Marxist Left disgusts me even more than neo-cons. I salute the Euston Manifesto crowd for trying to draw a sharp line between these filthy swine and the modern Left.
Steve, I agree. It’s probably because Liam’s a recent veteran of student politics where the trots are much more visible than just some cranks selling papers in the mall. They really shouldn’t even be dignified with the name “Marxist Left”. Down with the 4th International splittists and sectarians!
Second, I don’t think we can judge whether the Iraq war is a success or failure yet. I doubt such a judgement can be made within the next ten years. I reckon we are only in the second chapter of a very long book.
I repeat:
How long exactly are we supposed to wait for results – a few decades apparently? Which means, in the interim, several changes of US Administration with, at best, an eight year planning time-frame for policy on Iraq, given the electoral cycle.
So two years from now we get a new President, who either continues the Bush agenda for Iraq (whatever the Bush agenda is supposed to be) or devises a new one of his own. And with two years of his presidency left, Bush is still flirting with moving on Iran (or is he).
Oh and wait and see what happens in ten years time doesn’t strike me as a particularly plausible scenario either.
People who continually cry wolf don’t deserve to be taken seriously.
Cheap shot – that’s probably why I no longer take Bush and Howard seriously on the subject of Iraq. All that stuff about WMD was the biggest case of crying wolf I’ve seen for some time.
Otherwise, excellent comment Steve. You’ve got a bright future in the building industry ahead of you. As scaffolding.
Gummo, I suspect you were one of the hundreds of thousands of lefties who demonstreated against the US kicking Saddam out of Kuwait. Remember what a disaster that was supposed to be?
You need to learn patience, Gummo. I mean, even the Hundred Years War worked out alright in the long run.
In November 2002 John Fallows wrote a long and well-researched article The Fifty-first State? in the Atlantic Monthly asking the question:
He concluded that the US would be quite unable to deal with the aftermath because of cultural differences and an inability to come to terms with the tribalism within Iraqi society.
I think that’s right and it would not have changed too much if the US had been able and willing to put more troops on the ground.
He further argued that the analogy, common at the time, with Hitler, WW11 and appeasement was false and the more appropriate analogy was with WW1. His reason for this was that the outcomes of the war were essentially unforeseeable.
On these and other grounds I didn’t think the war was justifiable at the time.
The problem is that whatever the outcome, our further consideration of the justification of the decision to go to war must be referenced to the time that the decision was made, to the nature of the intentions, the chances of success etc in the light of the information available to the decision makers at that time.
In this regard, the more we know the worse it gets.
Once the Saddam regime had been destroyed the game changed. There was a clear responsibility on the part of the COW (includes us) to see things through. But the dilemma is that the US is no better suited to the task now than it was then and events have evolved that were indeed unforeseen by anyone that I know of.
I don’t know how to fix it from here. It has been pointed out that of the many US interventions in its own hemisphere only four have been successful in the long term. In these cases the period of occupation/support was about 10 years.
Recently I heard that the Americans were examining the British methodology in the successful counter-terrorism exercise in Malaya. But here again success took about 12 years, it was said. In Iraq I’m inclined to think that the American presence is part of the problem and they’ll have to go. But almost no-one says that that should happen now.
btw that was 412 words. I try to keep them short, but I didn’t sign up to a three paragraph policy. Anyway I’m plumb tuckered out and will try to return to my commenting furlogh now.
Thanks for Rapture Index ….. it’s handy to know just when to pray like the Devil and dig like Hell to get the nuke shelter a little bit deeper …. and when to sit back and enjoy what’s left of normality.
(Damn. Just noticed 2 words in what I wrote here that will get me filtered out of the computers of thousands of Concerned-And-Committeds …. no, make that 3).
I mean, even the Hundred Years War worked out alright in the long run.
Given that the Hundred Years war was started by Edward III as an attempt to win the throne of France (on the basis of a spurious claim of matrilineal inheritance) and ended with the English territories in France reduced to Calais the question is “worked out alright for who?”
And yes, I was one of those marchers – but I’ve since moderated my opinions on the Kuwait war, holding merely that Australia’s involvement was unnecessary and points to some serious problems with the constitution which are a hell of a lot more important than getting a republic. It’s funny where your mind takes you when you actually sit down to think about things, rather than responding with a quick assertion of your own intellectual and moral superiority.
It’s OK Steve – I uderstand that you don’t want to look at the issues, lest it trouble your sleep. Go ahead, condescend to me again. I can take it.
Steve Munn,
I really am eternally mystified how you can be a member of the Greens and hold the set of opinions you hold. Do you have anything in common with them?
Note: I am not trying to attack you about this, but I am curious how you reconcile it. I think you have a generally consistent worldview, even if I don’t always agree. Just seems a long way from the typical greens worldview.
By they way were there “hundreds of thousands” of demonstrators against Gulf War I. I remember at best hundreds, or maybe pushing thousands, but nothing like Gulf war II, but it was a long time ago and I was but a school boy.
Very good post from Brian. I’d heard the WWI analogy recently on Radio National.
There the point was made firmly that in each case it was a failure in diplomacy that led to such a catastrophe.
I still remember GWB saying just before the invasion, in a sort of John Wayne-Clint Eastwood style, “The time for negotiation is over.”
It sounded almost as silly as his later landing on an aircraft carrier with ‘Mission Accomplished’ banners in the background for the cameras.
When I think of some of the others in the Administration, I shouldn’t blame Bush too much. At the time I couldn’t avoid feelings of incongruity about having a leader, who was not especially brave and had never really known adversity or sacrifice, with fantasies of being some sort of wartime hero.
Steve Munn, this is not a criticism so much as an appeal to your knowledge of the South American area, which is clearly better than mine. But is Venezuela a dictatorship? The only scanty stuff I’ve read on the place suggests Chavez came to power democratically and has popular support. The US backed his opponents, but that doesn’t necessarily make Chavez a despot.
Steve Edney says: “I really am eternally mystified how you can be a member of the Greens and hold the set of opinions you hold. Do you have anything in common with them?”
Every political party needs a few mavericks, Steve.
Don, I do blame Bush for the decision to invade Iraq, because he made the final decision. I think the only guy who could have stopped him (possibly) was Tony Blair if he’d decided that the UK was not going to play along.
Bush also decided to set aside detailed plans for the afterwar administration that had been developed in the State Department under Colin Powell in favour of the pathetically naive approach we got under Rummy. Fallows did an article about this which I can’t find at the moment.
On Chavez, he was elected fair and square in 1998 and there have been repeated votes since then when he has comfortably got the numbers.
This could be because he uses of oil money in health, education and other programs to help the poor. In fact the Bolivarian missions are at the pointy end of what he’s doing. Of particular interest are the grass roots Bolivarian circles which are often cited as examples of participatory democracy. If you can get 2.3 million people to join out of a population of 25.7m you must be doing something right.
He’s been getting right up the nose of the Bushies, not only because he is selling discounted heating oil to the American poor. It goes way beyond that. He’s trying to export his revolution to other South American countries and is establishing state to state bartering deals that cut out the multinationals.
So I expect the Bushies will find some way of knocking him off soon. You can bet that they are working on it.
Thanks for that, Brian. I felt it was likely the case, but was a bit concerned when Steve M had bracketed Venezuela with Vietnam and Cuba.
Amen to that, but there’s a fine line between being a maverick and acting like a goose.
</topgun>
Yes Don and Brian, I accept that Venezuala is vastly different from Vietnam and Cuba. My main point was with Marxists elevating people and regimes to deity status and overlooking their crimes. Hugo is no saint and utters mad gibberish occasionally, like a desire to go nuclear as per Iran, but at least he is elected.
It will be very interesting to see how Venezuala develops.
Liam, better a goose than a pasty faced dork in a beret.
)
Dear God, Steve. You are such a smacked ass.