Iraq - are all justifications dealt with properly?

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

For the purpose of sketching how the debate on Iraq has often been carried out, at least on this (UK) side of the Atlantic, I think it helpful to distinguish between three types of justification.

(A) Publicly professed justification
This is the set of reasons that were given publicly by policy makers: Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, he is a threat to western interests, a threat to other Arab interests, he has failed to accede to UN resolutions x, y andz, and may be connected to terrorists etc…

b Real political justifications[/b]
This is the set of reasons really held by policy makers. It may or may not be the case that they are the same as the publicly professed justifications. But many on the left argue that they are not. They argue that the real reasons are of the following sort: to pursue oil profits, secure oil supplies, gain strategic control of the area, spread US hegemony etc… To support their claims, the left point to lack of consistency, patterns of other foreign policy behaviour etc…

b Other justifications[/b]
This is the set of other reasons that can be offered in support of the war. The most common other justification offered is that it is good on humanitarian grounds to liberate an entire people from a particularly evil dictator - one who has murdered, terrorised and tortured so many of his own people.

My contention is that those who oppose the war have often failed to deal adequately with (C). The debate usually moves along in the following fashion.

Firstly, a strong attack is made on (A). This is usually successful and is now becoming even more successful following the recent reports on intelligence. In the UK, the Butler report published today adds weight to this attack. For the sake of arguement let us allow that this case can be demolished completely and that even the defence that “we had good reason to believe this at the time in the light of the evidence before us…” will not stand up.

Then attempts are made to provide evidence that (B) is different to (A), that there are real reasons, different from the professed reasons, and that these are dishonourable.

So far so good for those opposing the war. My problem comes with the next common move.

When those who oppose war are presented with (C), they commonly make some curious moves. Here are some examples of what I frequently observe.

The “not the stated reason” attack
This is not what policy makers argued therefore they cannot rely on this justification.

Well yes, this may show cynical political manouvering but it does not actually undermine (C) in any way. Others have argued this, and the justification needs to be examined on its own terms.

The “I’m a long term opponent of Saddam” attack
I was marching against Saddam when you were selling him weapons.

Yes, some evidence for establishing that politicians can be hypocrites. But again this in no way undermines (C)

The “Aha what about other dictators?” attack

Again, good evidence of hypocrisy and evidence that (B) may be self interest. But this does not undermine (C). There are those who argue that the best way to support the majority of oppressed peoples is, where possible, to remove the regimes that oppress them. This argument needs to be addressed on its own terms.

What do you feel?

2

Very pleased with your cogent post. I’m certain that I could understand it and be stimulated into a thoughtful answer and learn from the process, but I’m too tired right now to bother. Just wanted to let you know I like this kind of thing, tracking very common and very egregiously bad tactics in everyday discourse at every level of eduction.

3

Well, you have a good point. I’m going to try to lay out some legitimate anti-war arguements that deal with C.

  1. The war has a high humanitian price. It seems claims of the invasion being clean a surgical may only really apply when compareing it to other wars. Aparently, civilians died.

  2. It is not clear that America can achive lasting stability in the region through these methods. The reigion hasn’t setteled, and we are still not sure if the region will be settled in a good way. I still half expect a new revolutionary leader to control Iraq in another 30 years.

  3. One with a clear head could have predicted both 1. and 2. before invasion. It seems that to work out the hedonic calculus: the good of successfully stabilizeing the region G, times the probablilty of the same P, minus all the tradgety of the actualy invasion C, may well have been less than zero; a no go.

  4. the best As long as we have the military under the heading of the department of defence, each indivisual soilder should have the ability to decide yes or no for humanintarian missions. Many people when joining up consider the duty of defending the nation moral, and the risk of dieing in such situations well worth it for the many benefits of service. This whole desicion matrix would change if it was clear that troops would be used for such noble task.

To make it simple the National Guard should never be used as the U.S. Paladin service. If we decide that’s something we want to do we should put one together and advertise it as such.

[These do not nessisarly reperesent the views of the poster, but rather the best arguments he can think of at the moment for a particular side of a particular issue.]

4

I’m moving this to the social sciences forum. Feel free to Pm Ben, myself, or any of the staff with any questions.

5

Ahh the topic I was born to debate.

Out of all the justifications publicly given for the war, the only one that stands up is that Saddam was a brutal tyrant.

Ignoring, for the moment, the lack of evidence showing any overt acts made towards the overthrow of any other brutal tyrants by the west (save for Hitler, but even then, the allies did not declare war until they were required to via treaties, and in the U.S., war was not declared until we were directly attacked by an ally of Hitler), I would argue that it is not our place to dictate to the world what is and what isn’t acceptable for a controlling regime.

Furthermore, I will add to this argument by asking, what is it that is so wrong with Saddam killing and torturing innocent people?

If it is just because Saddam did it, and that is all it requires, then the war was justified. But if we ask what makes it wrong for Saddam to kill and torture, but not others, we will see this argument as being specious.

Instead, let it be argued that it is innately wrong to kill and torture innocent people. By acting in this way, Saddam brings much misery and pain into the world.

If it is innately wrong to kill and torture innocent people, then America is wrong to kill innocent people while waging a war. America is also wrong to torture people after the conflict is supposedly over.

If America and it’s allies have done these things, and they have, then they too are acting wrongly, thus the war is wrong and cannot be justiied by moral prerogatives that have to be violated before they can be validated.

Let me clarify that point.
A moral justification for war is not just if one must violate the same codes one claims to uphold to further the war.
That is not morality, it is simple hypocrisy. Which perhaps explains why wars that lack any true ethical center are so strongly opposed in Democracies… the populace must be willing to see that the human cost for such a war is worth the expenditure.

I would argue that, until the false claims regarding WMDs and links to Al Qaeda were made post 9/11, most Americans felt that Saddam being contained in his own country was the morally right thing to do. Obviously, if he poses an imminent threat to us, then war is a matter of self defense, which goes further to answer the moral quandry such a war would create. But, since it is now apparent no such threat existed… what system of morality is there that can show that death and torture is worth death and torture?
What morality is it that says that if war is justified to remove a tyrant, and we are morally validated in waging such a war, the entire world shirked its responsibility by allowing Saddam to rule for over a decade after the first Gulf War?

Let us say that we have a moral duty to remove Saddam…
But even if the world had a duty to wage wars on Saddam, then it has a duty to wage war on all brutal tyrants. I suppose this is a rewording of the “aha what about other brutal dictators”. The point still stands. If you claim it is your duty to remove Saddam because he is a brutal dictator, then it is your duty to remove all other brutal dictators.

And why that is wrong?? Because, if you must kill and torture innocent people to install whatever regime you think is best, you are, in fact, no different from the brutal dictators you seek to replace.

Some will argue that it is goal of the war to install a democratic regime, which therefore justifies the war, because democracy is more fair than any other political system. I would point out that that is a matter of opinion, not necessarily a fact, and that those arguments should be recognized as such.

Well, I gave it a shot.

An

6

Been here only 5 minutes and I’m already meeting a higher level of discussion than that found in the public sphere. This is very heartening.

[size=150]Response to GateControlTheory [/size]

GCT 1 - Not Our Place
This “not our place” argument has an honourable tradition and rings most loudly for me in contexts where “we” have arrogantly tried to “educate” or “civilise” “the natives”. The British have a proud tradition of worthily trying to interfere in other people’s cultures. I admit wholeheartedly that in such cases it was certainly “not our place” to impose ourselves.
Now does this argument have limits? I think so. I do not believe that we are obliged to allow an oppressor complete autonomy, that we must respect a dictators right to do whatever he or she wants to do to his or her “own people”.

GCT 2 - Equivalent Wrongs

The argument goes roughly like this.
P1 - Torture and murder are wrong
P2 - Saddam tortured and murdered
Con 1 Therefore Saddam acted wrongly

Following the principle of consistency, applying the same argument to the US/UK invasion we get

P3 - Torture and murder are wrong
P4 - Bush & Blair tortured and murdered (by command)
Con 2 Therefore Bush & Blair acted wrongly (in prosecuting the war)

My main problem with this argument is that it fails to accord any weight to the notion that it is sometimes permissible to carry out terrible actions if those actions aim at certain highly desirable consequences. Bringing liberty to a whole nation, preventing further suffering well into the future (the Uday and Qusay regimes were likely to follow) are examples of such consequences. Unless one is a pacifist, one usually accepts that it is permissible to “violate the same codes one claims to uphold”. One can in certain circumstances justify killing (violating - thou shalt not kill) the enemy in order to prevent further killing (upholding - thou shalt not kill). But this is a point Gate comes close to allowing with

The question then becomes, to express it in similar terms - does the human cost outweigh the human gain? This brings us to the argument raised by Lostguy which I shall return to in response to him.

GCT 3 - Variation on “aha what about other brutal dictators.” The point still stands

This doesn’t really undermine (C) it just points out one of its implications. I do not see why this implication needs to be rejected. For the argument to act as a reductio ad absurdum, Gate would have to establish this.

7

I should have composed my argument a little better. There are two horns.

  1. Moral Relativism: Who are we to judge what goes on in Iraq? Personally I do not favor this argument, but I will throw it out there as a clear alternative to the other horn.

  2. Moral Absolutes: It is always wrong to commit any act, directly or indirectly, which will result in the torture and/or death of innocent persons. This view calls for pacifism, and is the result of the logical necessity of saying “Saddam is a bad person because he kills people… killing people is bad. Starting a war in which we know people will be killed is bad also.”

The argument against this is that “good” and “bad” are matters of degree.
Thus:

“Removing Saddam by force is morally preferable rather than allowing him to stay.”

If it is preferable, then let it be noted as a preferance. A preferance is not a necessity. It becomes, in effect, a matter of personal choice. To this I ask, again, who are we to judge?

Either killing and torture is wrong or it is a matter of choice. If it is a matter of choice then NO moral weight can be attached to a war seeking to remove that choice from Saddam. As it is a war over personal preferance, and not a war over right and wrong.

To Clarify:
If it is not absolutely wrong to kill and torture, then whoever decides it is right or wrong is a matter of personal opinion. Since one opinion may be just as good as another, a war cannot be morally justified because of a difference of opinions.

If a war cannot by morally justified over a difference of opinions perhaps it can be justified because such a war will result in the end of torture and killing of innocents in Iraq. But to do that, one must kill innocents and apparently, torture people as well.

How exactly, can a war be morally justified when, as a result of such a war, the good can only be extablished by promoting the bad??

I don’t think it can.

As to necessity, it was claimed that Saddam posed an imminent threat to us. Thus it seemed the war was justified as a matter of self defense.
Self Defense is a morally acceptable position. My argument contends that it is, in fact, the only morally justifiable position. If you must wage a war the will result in the deaths of innocent people, it is only justified when adirect threat exists to the populace of your nation. I do not believe I am morally justified in taking the life of a man who is threatening to take the life of a stranger. Physically restrain him? Yes. Kill him? No.

Saddam was no threat to the west, but it can still be argued that he was an evil person. I ask now why is he evil?

I Saddam bad because what he does results in the deaths and torture of innocent people, and what he does is strictly for personal gain, and what he does can only be accomplished through lies? I believe so. It is wrong to do these things. However…

What morality is there in a war one must falsify evidence ( lets just say lie shall we) which will result in the deaths and torture of innocent people for the possible financial gain of those in power?

Oh, it is a war to remove a “bad” person.
Must morality require our leaders to act badly to prosecute a war?

And if, from these contradictions what results is still somehow good… might I ask what importance you place on the means?

The argument for the war as being morally just looks only at the end, and presupposes that that end is “good”. Let us say the end is good, does that excuse immoral means to arrive at a “good” end?

I do not think it does. Such an argument would open the floodgates to all sorts of madness. It would be “Good” for America if Japan did not compete with us economically… lets bomb them back into the stone age.

It would be “good” for the West if we got our oil for free, lets invade all oil producing nations in the Mid East, regardless of whether they have done anything to us or not, the end is good… the means do not matter.

I submit that the means do matter. Instead of waging a war to accomplish what, presupposing it is a good, is ultimately a regime change can be done without a war.

Perhaps the war is justifiable if it was the last resort… the only means possible. Alas, I do not believe other options were exhausted. As such, the last resort, war, was not justified.

8

[size=150]Response to Lostguy[/size]

Thank you, you have made some very good responses, particularly argument 4.

I would like to make some comments about arguments 1 and 4, as they seem the stronger of the 4.

Argument 1 – the high humanitarian price of war

This argument does indeed attempt to deal with (C), but to decide whether it deals effectively with (C) requires us to consider some further questions.

Utilitarian considerations
Q1 – How much death and suffering has occurred as a result of the war?
Q2 – How much death and suffering has been prevented as a result of the war?
Other utilitarian considerations could be included but perhaps these two questions bring out the most significant issues for Iraq.

Libertarian considerations
Q3 – How much value do we place on trying to secure the liberty of an oppressed people?

Some attempts at answers
Q1
It is difficult to gauge the total amount of suffering caused by the war but we do have a rough idea of the number of deaths caused. The highest figures I have seen can be found on the website infoshout.com/the_toll.htm So far, they claim a total death count of 44,177 people.

Q2
This is even more difficult to gauge.

Without sanctions
johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=378

With sanctionsThere are those who argue that containment was working and that this state of affairs should have continued. Those who argue that have to accept that sanctions also produced deaths that would have to be taken into account. It is well known that UNICEF has estimated that sanctions had resulted in the deaths of around 500,000 children.

Q3
This in my opinion cannot be added to some hedonic calculus, since liberty is an independent value, different from and not dependent on some utilitarian’s “happiness”. Liberty is a great value, and certainly worth fighting for. How much suffering is permissible to ensure liberty? is a difficult question and I don’t have an answer to it, perhaps someone else might like to try this one.

Argument 4 – no right to force a sacrifice on noble causes

I agree that this is a particularly strong argument. This argument brings into account the rights of those who have been charged with prosecuting the war on the ground, those who have been ordered to risk their lives for the cause of freeing an oppressed people. It may well be the case that the balance on the humanitarian case and the libertarian case comes out in favour of war, but this is not quite enough. These consequences can not be brought about by the flick of a switch, they have to be fought for by real people. The question is do we have the right to order those who have freely joined the armed forces to risk their lives, not for the defence of themselves, their families, and their country, but for the defence of people in other countries? I do not yet have a settled position on this. But I agree that it is the strongest argument against waging war in Iraq.

9

I have never been against invading Iraq for humanitarian reasons, as long as three things were true:

  1. We could be fairly certain to make life significantly better for Iraqis.

  2. The American people knew the real reasons for the war, and supported it.

  3. America had wide-spread international support on military, economic and moral fronts.

(1) never had much hope of materializing without (3) in my opinion–although if the Bush administration had devoted significantly greater attention to post-war planning, we would surely be reading about fewer stories like this.

(2) never obtained, and there is very good reaon to think that a majority of americans would not have supported the war if they didn’t think that Saddam posed a significant security threat (which of course he did not).

(3)…I don’t think I need to comment any further on this.

So while I can subscribe to the humanitarian merits of unseating a brutal dictatorship, I have to say that the way we in fact went to war was utterly without justification.

10

Really eh? Would you like me to make your life BETTER for you by invading your house and life illegally? Is it not you who decides how you will live your life? What’s the US doing in Iraq? Nonsense!

11

Well, yeah, the hedonic calculus is really hard to work out. In 100 years historians will probably have a decent idea.

However, your point on liberty. The first question is does America really have liberty? Alexis de toqville makes me question this. It seems we might have an oppresive democracy were the majority has its ways of scilenceing and marginizing the manority. A quick look through all the Blue laws makes you wonder how free America is.

The second question would be for me, isn’t there much better ways of giveing people liberty than invasion? (Assuming we are very free,) we are a free country because we rose up in revolt agianst our foreign agressor. If we really wanted a free and self governed Iraq wouldn’t the best thing be to find and fund internal dissidents with leadership potential?

But yeah, I think it comes down to the rights of the soiders. Especcialy when you consider than many were denyed good education (could not get into or afford college because of marginal local public schools and falures of economic policy) and they offered it if they only serve two-weekends a mounth and one week a year. Can someone say bait and switch? Ooh, we should get together a class action lawsuit, that would be fun!!