I think your academic friend is pretty sensible...

I know a lot of people dismiss war arguments based on broken treaties to be legalistic and outside the bounds of Just War theory, though.
Joe | 05.31.03 - 6:57 pm | #

That essentially takes us back to the "Is not cooperating with weapons inspectors sent to destroy WMD and WMD capability a sound case for just war, or are we morally obligated to wait and see if they use them or not before resorting to war?" argument.
Joe | 05.31.03 - 7:06 pm | #

See, liberals can shift their arguments around to fit their preconceptions too! They say we won't win without heavy casualties and massive collateral damage: we win without heavy casualties or massive collateral damage, and the liberal says that we haven't found the WMD that we promised we find. If we find them, they'll say that the existence of WMD wasn't enough to make the case for war in the first place. If you ask what would make the case for war in the first place, more than a few of them will say, well, with the existence of WMD, I'm not sure there's such a thing as a just war anymore.

Like the argument-shifting conservatives, they may have a point at every step, but it doesn't quite hang together the way an argument ought to.
Joe | 05.31.03 - 7:17 pm | #

A good article and good news.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp...- 2003May31.html
Marc C Porter | 05.31.03 - 10:05 pm | #

I brought this topic up with the most "connected" person I know just this evening. He said to keep in mind that we haven't even found most of the weapons that the UN certified were present *in January* in Iraq. I was really surprised. (Can't keep something in mind that I didn't know...)
Jane M | 05.31.03 - 11:09 pm | #

Your friend's argument boils down to this: "OK, so we can't prove that Saddam had WMDs. But there's no proof that he _didn't_ have WMDs either. So there!"

Sorry, the burden of proof here falls on those who believe the war was justified.
Rob | 05.31.03 - 11:23 pm | #

This just a rehash of the excuses that the administration and neocon pundits and apologists for the war have been making for weeks, and it is weak, weak, weak.

First, as has been argued ad nauseam, enforcement of U.N. Resolution 1441 and the safety of the “international community” was the U.N.’s legal affair, not that of the U.S. Second, and more crucially, this argument expands Just War criteria not just to include preemptive attack beyond there is an verifiable imminent threat to the U.S., and beyond even when there is immediate potential to threaten, but to the point of absolute absurdity: to when there is the potential to create the potential to threaten. Now, what would St. Augustine have to say about that, eh? The pope?

Anyway, it is becoming apparent, as our own humiliated and outraged spooks and spies have begun to speak out, that the neocon Cabal within the administration was cynically cherry-picking available information on the WMDs to provide a public pretext for the invasion and occupation they had planned long before. See, e.g., http://asia.reuters.com/ newsArti...storyID=2854511 And see also http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/ 3...10a123d5e72a5bc
T. Marzen | 05.31.03 - 11:31 pm | #

All the suicide vests they found are good enough for me.

My own pet theory is that they were players in as much as they were providing oil to Syria and North Korea. I suspect if all the full story is ever known, we will find that Iraq is the money (oil or direct payment), know-how, and direct/indirect cause for a lot of the nastiness in the Middle East since the Gulf War. Sadaam was out to ruin our day.

It is kind of interesting how North Korea, Palestine, and Syria are playing a different tune. How different is yet to be seen.

I still say God help us if we do anything short but improve the quality of life dramatically for the Iraqi people. Our partisan politics being what they are, I can already here the folks saying: we need to spend the money here in the US. All I can say if we don't finish the job by giving them freedom and higher standard of living, we will spend the money in the US alright: rebuilding after more terrorist attacks or financing the next war.

All the protestors who were ready to risk life and limb -- where are they know when the Iraqi people need food and water delivered?
Therese | 06.01.03 - 12:12 am | #

Sorry, the burden of proof here falls on those who believe the war was justified.

Ummm, actually if you read the UN resolutions, it's not. Weapons inspectors were never supposed to wander around while Saddam's regime played a giant shell game; the burden of proof was on Saddam to show compliance with UN Resolutions. He didn't, so by those resolutions, any member nation could enforce them. A number of them did.
Stephen | Homepage | 06.01.03 - 1:33 am | #

I would say, nice try but no cigar. It's late, and tomorrow is a heavy ministry day so I will make this brief (muffled cheers from the back of the room . . .).

The problem comes down to the actual basis we claimed for our actions under international law. As you all may remember, we submitted the issue of Iraq to the UNSC in 1990, we accepted its jursidiction, accepted its authorization to use deadly force (UNSC 678, 1990 -- the only time in this whole affair that such actions were authorized -- go read all the resolutions -- a threat is not authorization) accepted that UNSC again had jurisdiction under the cease fire agreeement (UNSC 687, 1991), accepted, and often proposed the other resolutions up to UNSC 1441 last year. At that time Ambassador Negroponte after the adoption of 1441 specifically stated that the resolution did not offer authorization for armed force without additional action by UNSC. He did, however, state that the US reserved the right to opt to exercise its right to individual and collective defence under Art. 51 of the UN Charter. That is what we did.

What that means is that we claimed (and we certainly did that -- including statements by the VP the weekend before the war started that Iraq had a reconstituted nuclear program -- which is just not there) that because we had confirmed the presence of unconventional weapons and had a a reasonable belief that there was an imminent threat of their use -- or at least we claimed that. The legal issue whether a rusting trailer of dubious use and provenance (and that is in the CIA report as well) violated UN dual use technology guidelines was made quite moot by our actions. We opted out of UNSC jurisdiction over this issue, you can't wish it back now when it would be convenient.
Cmuncey | Homepage | 06.01.03 - 2:24 am | #

Certainly the emphasis was (and remains) on WMD technology. I believe from what we have seen, beginning before the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, that Iraq has indeed been on the WMD path.

Nevertheless, it seems a secondary concern to me. Saddam and his regime were in fact evil.

Now imagine if President Bush had gone to the U.N. and made a case of how evil Sadam is to his own people. As if they would care. No, in fact they would have laughed him out of the chamber.

So many want to paint this as the U.S. beating up on a lesser nation. Hardly.

How can we continue to be so asinine as to sit back and watch evil unfold and simply wish it weren't so? Have we not learned our lessons of history?

The United States has a substantial political history of isolating itself. However, to he who much has been given, much is expected. We have a duty to protect the innocent. All nations do. And yet, the U.N. fails consistently. But they always find time to peddle contraception and their idea of "family planning."

Great legacy. The U.N. is no moral authority, remember that.
Eric C. Bales | 06.01.03 - 4:01 am | #

Eric, this may well be why you would have gone into Iraq, but it does not match the facts of the current case on why the US went into Iraq. The emphasis was not on WMD's, it was the stated reason to justify the action. As the official representative of the executive branch said on the record (emphasis mine):

But make no mistake -- as I said earlier -- we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found. (Ari Fleischer, Press Briefing, April 10, 2003)

And let's just not go down the road on how evil Saddam is/was. There is no question and has been not question about that -- especially as most human rights organizations were warning about him throughout the 1980's. The US government at the time, though, was quite willing to ignore those reports and sell Iraq a variety of interesting technology (including loaning him the money to pay for it) right up to Saddam going too far into Kuwait. Just as today we are willing to include in the current "coalition" states with human rights records that read much like Iraq's -- such as Uzbekistan where various groups (including the UN, Eric, as well as Human Rights Watch and Ammnesty International) that report "systematice" use of torture. There are a rising number of apparent deaths of detainees from torture, and earlier this week, a report of two opponents of the current leader being boiled to death.

No question that there were WMD's in Iraq as late as the mid 1990's -- the UN, with our participation, destroyed tons of them. What there is a lack of is evidence that manufacture of those weapons were restarted after we pulled out in 1998.

And the UNSC is not a moral authority -- it was never supposed to be one. It is the international body that we legally bound ourselves to submit serious international disputes to unless issues of individual or collective self defence ere involved. It is a flawed organization and I can list a stack of changes I would like. But we chose that venue, and then we decided to operate outside of it, publicly and explicity citing an imminent threat.

And one lesson of history that many of our allies are considering again is what happens when international security organizations are neutralized by members abandoning them for their own convenience.
Cmuncey | Homepage | 06.01.03 - 10:30 am | #

Forgive the spelling -- haven't had coffee yet . . .
Cmuncey | Homepage | 06.01.03 - 10:32 am | #

And the grammar -- my word!
Cmuncey | Homepage | 06.01.03 - 10:34 am | #

I find interesting the movement to re-open a just war arguement. As far as reality on the ground is concerned, the concept is related to an old fashioned arguement over a controversial ruling by the umpires in the World Series.

The play is over, the game is over, the pennant is flying over someone's ball park: right now, it's Next Year. While the hot stove league argues over whether the ball was fair or foul, life moved on.

I've always been somewhat cynical about just war theory: either side can make a case (even the Nazis thought they were menaced by the Eastern Hordes) and generally does. And the arguement - either side - is generally ignored by the participants.

Question: has ANY war been decided by arguments based on just war? Has any war's outcome been substantially changed by the same set of arguments? Has ANY government (including the Papal States when in existence) based its military policy on just war arguments?

More to reality point is our Greek Friend Thycidides: "The strong do what they can; the weak suffer what they must."

And so it goes...
Good Ole Charlie | 06.01.03 - 11:56 am | #

The existence of WMDs that imminently threatened the U.S. was the pretext on which the war would be sold to the U.N. and to America, whatever other basis might have existed. As Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz, a principal in the self-styled neocon Cabal behind the war, said in an interview in the most recent Vanity Fair magazine that, "for bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue –– weapons of mass destruction –– because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." Suggesting other rationales for the war, as many are now trying to do, are examples of bogus ex post facto reasoning.
T. Marzen | 06.01.03 - 3:15 pm | #

Mark -- your friend makes an interesting point. Iraq never had any intention of complying with the UN resolutions. Last week plans for missles with a range of 600 miles were discovered by the Brits. The UN mandated limit on their missiles was 150 km (approx. 90 miles). The Iraqis had worked through the research stage and were about to enter the development stage of the project. Although not WMD, the missile could have been modified to carry WMD and deliver it anywhere in the Middle East. The story didn't get much attention, but it's here for those who are interested.
I understand that not all will be interested. After all, if Ari Fleisher never mentioned this illegal missile program in a press conference, I'm surprised it can even exist! I suppose if we discovered an e-mail exchange between Saddam and Osama, with Saddam saying, "You are indeed an effective ally, good work destroying those Twin Towers," and Osama answering, "We couldn't have done it without your aid, oh faithful benefactor, Allah Akbar," that wouldn't justify the war either, right? I mean, Ari Fleisher never mentioned this in a press conference, ergo, it couldn't exist, could it?
Niall of Niles | 06.01.03 - 4:35 pm | #

Mike,

Sadly, it is looking more and more like a case for a just war was not made, and we were sold a bill of goods to garner public support for attacking Iraq.

I recall one pundit saying before the war that he was baffled why Saddam didn't just surrender the goods to ward off an attack he couldn't possibly withstand, arguing that he could easily restore any chemical or biological weapons he might have in less than a year. Assuming rationality, my guess is that the regime was so weak it did not want it's numerous enemies to become aware of it's vulnerability, and Saddam mistakenly relied on his European associates to hold off the United States.

It is really disturbing to hear some commenters justify the war because of the regime's undisputed evil. Following this criterion for other countries around the world we would end up in unending warfare.
TomM | 06.01.03 - 5:32 pm | #

Marzen, I hate to burst your bubble, but that quote of Wolfowitz from Vanity Fair was completely butchered. Click here for a treatment of that quote; the page includes a link to the full transcript of the Wolfowitz interview.

Q: Was that one of the arguments that was raised early on by you and others that Iraq actually does connect, not to connect the dots too much, but the relationship between Saudi Arabia, our troops being there, and bin Laden's rage about that, which he's built on so many years, also connects the World Trade Center attacks, that there's a logic of motive or something like that? Or does that read too much into --
Wolfowitz: No, I think it happens to be correct. The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but...there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two.... The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it. That second issue about links to terrorism is the one about which there's the most disagreement within the bureaucracy, even though I think everyone agrees that we killed 100 or so of an al Qaeda group in northern Iraq in this recent go-around, that we've arrested that al Qaeda guy in Baghdad who was connected to this guy Zarqawi whom Powell spoke about in his UN presentation.

Oh, that liberal media.
Stephen | Homepage | 06.01.03 - 10:42 pm | #

Stephen: Yes, the neocon line in its media is that Wolfowitz's statement was "butchered." But the truth is that WMD was the reason stated to the public and the U.N. for the war. Moreover, the full Wolfowitz statement you quote discounts both the al Queda connection and liberation of Iraq as reasons acceptable to the "bureaucracy" even if they were entertained as possible rationales.
T. Marzen | 06.01.03 - 11:29 pm | #

Good Ole Charlie:

The play may be over, the game may be over, and the pennant may be hanging (for now) in someone else's park, but there will be the next year's World Series, and if serious officiating mistakes were made, then continuing debate over "the call" is not only justified, but required, lest a similar bad call be made next time.
c matt | 06.02.03 - 6:25 pm | #

Yes, the neocon line in its media is that Wolfowitz's statement was "butchered."

And thanks to the power of the internet, the neocons have the transcript to back up their line.
Stephen | Homepage | 06.02.03 - 7:04 pm | #

WRT your friend in academe, what he said.
Ed the Roman | 11.01.06 - 5:46 pm | #