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It strikes me that, as is right and good , the Switchboard has covered most of the threads on the march to war (tm), but I think there may be a place for a thread on the ethical and/or moral position of the whole exercise here.
As such, Let me kick off with a few thoughts. The last war identifiable pretty much unanimously as a just, or at least justifiable, war was the Second World War. However, the sheer nastiness of the plansa nd the processes of the "bad" guys makes this comparatively easy to identify. that is to say, Hitler was not just a bad guy in the sense of a leader of an opposing nation, but an *unbelievably* bad guy, with a mechanism in place for violating international law but also embarking on genocide against non-combatants, and there were thus compelling reasons (some of which did not become entirely clear at the time, but have been used subsequently) for continued opposition.
Now, few will claim that Saddam Hussein is not a dictator, or that he has not committed acts of horrible violence against both his own people and citizens of other sovereign states, or that he should for the good of all be replaced by a regime that cares about its people, and loves kittens and puppies.
However, unlike Hitler, Iraq has no means to threaten the borders of other surrounding nations - bad wars and sanctions have etiolated its military strength - and its neighbours, except slightly ludicrously for Turkey, are not asking for help against Iraqi territorial aggression. So, the argument is instead that, by providing enemies of the US with weapons of mass destruction, Iraq is posing a transglobal threat - that is, threatening the borders of a country without a common border. This is difficult to prove, of course, and comes up against one of the big problems of this particular war - that there is always a better example of a malefactor. Thus, unstable parts of the former Soviet Union have nuclear material and in some cases nuclear weapons that they are either unwilling or unable to keep out of the hands of potential terrorists. North Korea has openly said that it is escalating its nuclear programme. Israel has been in violation of UN resolution 242 for far longer than Iraq has been in violation of 1441. Robert Mugabe is denying democratic rule in Zimbabwe and threatening the lives of his people, and so on.
So why Iraq? Is there an ethical argument for when war is a just action generally, and can it be applied here specifically?
Some thought starters. See what you think about these theses. War is an acceptable response if:
1) A clear and present threat can be established to a member of the international community. What this means is an intewresting question. A massing of troops on a border? An actual aggressive act? Or providing other hostile groups with men and materiel? One of the major ethical problems withthe currently proposed war appears to be the absence of a clearly-stated casus belli.
2) A threat to the people of a country by its own leaders or military is defined as so great that the international community is compelled to act to protect the continued viability of the state. I'm thinking here of a place like Sierra Leone, where UN intervention to stabilise the country possibly averted enormous bloodshed, and also situations like Rwanda or possibly Zimbabwe where either government policy or the loss of control by government threatens massive casualties that cannot be prevented except by military means.
3) A set of clear aims can be established as both credible and justified. This is another problem with the current situation. Desert Storm had a specific and credible aim (the removal of Iraqi military influence and the credible threat of Iraqi reoccupation from Kuwait). It did not extend to the removal from power of Saddam Hussein through a military action moving deep inside Baghdad, partly because it was not within its remit, and partly because the forces assembled were not judged to be strong enough to do so, and the success of the first stage and commensurate weakness and weakening of the Iraqi forces rather caught everyone out.
4) Civilian casualties are recognised as unacceptable. In a perfect world, this would mean that the life of somebody who is paid to risk his or her life in battle is held to be more expendable than a civilian of the enemy side's people (this is a complex question, and deserves revisiting). Failing that, it means a set of rules of engagement oriented towards establishing theatres of conflict as far from civilian populations as possible, the discriminate use of area weapons, and so on.
This engagement's aims seem to be Protean at best. Logically, it is to enforce UN resolution 1441. However, since the US seems to bang on about SH's gassing of his own people endlessly, presumably another objective is the protection of the Iraqi people, with a concern for their welfare made perhaps more touching by the last decade's sanctions regime. Christ loves more the one sheep that loses its path and is found again...Also, of course, another objective seems increasingly to be regime change, although there is no clear description of what would follow this regime change, or who would run it, or any number of other traditionally important questions.
What do you think? Is there an ethical case for war ever, and if so what conditions need to be fulfilled before war can be embarked upon in the conviction that war is just, generally and in this specific circumstance? |
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