What makes a justified/morally correct war? Now discussing the 2003 US invasion of Iraq

Well, the invasion of Kuwait was fairly unique in recent history. I can think of few other times in recent history where a big nation simply tried to annex a smaller one. I think we would have intervened militarily if Iraq invaded Jordan, but there's no parallel in post-cold war history to say one way or the other.

We can't be the world's police, intervening in any case of oppression. But if we're going to overthrow a government, than that regime's human rights record is relevant. It is a side issue, but a significant one.

"Our enemies send other people's children on missions of suicide and murder. They embrace tyranny and death as a cause and a creed. We stand for a different choice, made long ago, on the day of our founding. We affirm it again today. We choose freedom and the dignity of every life." --Bush's 2nd State of the Union Address.

Yes, that bloodthirsty rhetoric was completely inappropriate for a head of state.

 

[

"Our enemies send other people's children on missions of suicide and murder. They embrace tyranny and death as a cause and a creed. We stand for a different choice, made long ago, on the day of our founding. We affirm it again today. We choose freedom and the dignity of every life." --Bush's 2nd State of the Union Address.

Yes, that bloodthirsty rhetoric was completely inappropriate for a head of state.[/quote]

Any different to this? http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_speech

Before FDR then introduced mass internment for Japanese Americans including the forfeiture of their property

 

Right, like that war in Iraq and tax breaks to (mostly) the wealthiest people in the US hardly qualifies. If you're talking about just his behavior in Afghanistan, then he was just stupid.

Except this wasn't a state; it was a terrorist group. The attack on 9/11 was the first international terrorist attack in history, but it was still a terrorist group. You use very different political and strategic tactics for different kinds of enemies. Declaring war on Afghanistan was exactly what Al Qaeda wanted.

The problem was Afghanistan offered nothing that Bush or his cronies wanted, so they said 'let's bomb Iraq.' I don't think that Bush was really evil, but his willingness to be a puppet for his cronies to get huge contracts at the expense of the American taxpayer was just as bad.

I don't approve of the way the US went about hunting down AQ. It was their intent to draw the US into a war where it would bleed itself to death. They did the same thing with the Soviet Union before its collapse and they did the same thing to the US.

 

I think, just as in the case of WWII, taking to the offense against the Taliban did not necessarily make the people prosecuting the war "good".

I don't know who in the administration was centered on Afghanistan particularly, but it wasn't those with the most power. Richard Clarke? Colin Powell? Recent history has proven these men to have thier eye on the ball. Unfotunately their superiors had other plans -- which is not to say that the later war, Iraq, might not turn out to be the greater success and more in the long run might be achieved... although once again that owes more to figures outside the administration (John McCain, David Petreus) than the actual leaders in charge.

However, unlike Iraq, the international law side of things is much more clear-cut becuase the US was not tied to a previous agreement, and Afghanistan itself was under foreign sway (although the Taliban by this point had a broad indigenous appeal). The US was essentially justified in taking it on, as disinterested as many in the White House would prove to be.

I'm not sure we can necessarily say thier disinterest is the cause of the war continuing on effectively today and the resurgence of the Taliban: that might have happened anyway. Capturing or killing Osama Bin Laden or Mullah Omar will not necessarily fix the problems over there. Still, the attitudes of the neo-con circles didn't help.

Let's not mince words about the Taliban though. Reprehensible is a stronger word than saturn5 gives credit for. True they were not "as bad" as Hitler in terms of body count, but that may merely have been because they lacked central control. Unfotunately those they originally fought against were rarely better: certain warlords who fought against the Taliban were rather worse (one in particular had acquired the habit -- used in the Afghan War - of tying his prisoners to tank treads and rolling it over them). Had these men had the same control over thier country as Hitler, they probably would have been even less humane than he was (after all the Germans could be plenty human: if you didn't happen to be of the wrong racial background).

 

Tax breaks to the rich is classic Reganism, give benefits to the wealth creators and they create more wealth. Tax them prohibitively and they just move abroad or don't bother to create wealth which is only going to be taken away from them. Make the rich richer and let the poor ride on their coatails. But that's another topic. And is it wrong to topple a vile dictatorship and replace it with a shaky but viable democracy? (Israel aside the only one in the middle east). But these are discussions for the Liberation of Iraq post which will come after Afghanistan so keep them until then.

Not the first international terrorist attack by any means, IRA, Jap Red Army, Black September etc got there first, not even the first by AQ (the USS Cole, the African embassy bombings that killed hundreds). The Taliban sheltered AQ, George W actually asked them to give them up and they said no, it would be impossible to effectively deal with AQ and leave the Taliban in charge (like trying to fight the Nazis without making war on the rest of Germany).

I very much doubt there was any Master Plan to 'suck the West in'. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and the Mujahadeen fought them because they were there. Pretty much the same with us. But since the liberation of Afghanistan we have butchered both the Taliban and AQ in vast numbers and severely degraded their abilities, if that was their plan it was an incedibly bad one

 

Not the first international terrorist attack by any means, IRA, Jap Red Army, Black September etc got there first, not even the first by AQ (the USS Cole, the African embassy bombings that killed hundreds). The Taliban sheltered AQ, George W actually asked them to give them up and they said no, it would be impossible to effectively deal with AQ and leave the Taliban in charge (like trying to fight the Nazis without making war on the rest of Germany).

Actually IIRC the Taliban said they would give up Bin Laden but that they had conditions on doing so. The conditions were not particularly outrageous. The US demanded his unconditional release.

Of course, this was a cynical negotiation on both sides. The US had no intention, as stated, of meeting any conditions on the matter. They knew meeting any such condition would not go over well domestically.

Additionally though the Taliban likely knew this. And even if they didn't they were most likely negotiating in bad faith. They more than likely had no intention of handing over Bin Laden (which the US knew) and had the US been silly enough to actually negotiate the Taliban would have found some imperfection in their dealings with the US to justify breaking off diplomacy and not handing over Bin Laden.

However, it would be incorrect to say the Taliban literally refused to hand him over. It's more correct to say they tried a song and dance routine so they'd appear in thier region as the victims.

 

You'd best stop doubting. That's exactly what happened.

Read The Search for Al Qeada by Bruce Reidel. He explains this in great detail by evaluating the motives of the top four Al Qeada leaders.

So we just attacked Germany because it was there? We just attacked Japan because it was there?

We're in Afghanistan because of the stupidity of our leaders by going after people who had nothing to do with 9/11 on top of those who were directly responsible.

Actually it succeeded beyond their wildest dreams when we decided to go out and bomb Iraq. Now eight years and two trillion dollars we sacrificed with no end in sight... I'd hardly say that the US emerged victorious.

If their goal was to survive, then maybe you could call it as such. But it wasn't their goal; it was to hurt the US. And that's exactly what they did.

Only Al Qaeda wasn't a state. Germany and Japan both declared war on the US and we naturally responded with force. If Al Qeada were to hide themselves within France, does that mean we would have the right to occupy France and bomb the hell out of them? You don't destroy terrorists with massive armies in a WWIII scenario because no one in the right mind would engage the US on their terms. That's why they hide amongst civilians and blend in with the population.

 

Any different to this? http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_speech

Before FDR then introduced mass internment for Japanese Americans including the forfeiture of their property[/quote]

I was actually being ironic... Bush and the members of his administration frequently invoked high-minded ideals such as democracy and freedom as justifications for the war in Afghanistan. In that speech Bush also highlighted the liberation of Afghan women. Security, prevention of future attacks, and justice were also invoked, but he rarely if ever advocated "revenge."

Well, the disinterest/ineptness of the top leadership does not necessarily affect the justice or legitimacy of the cause.

The Taliban wasn't a state or government either; or not a recognized one. A better analogy would be if Nazi Germany imploded, leaving Vichy France alone trying to survive against a growing insurgency. A new republic emerges, and is recognized by the international community, but a gang of far-right Christian zealots seize control of most of the country. They blow up some Roman ruins, are widely disliked, and are only recognized by the cynical Spanish government.

The fact is, the Northern Alliance had as much claim to Afghanistan as the Taliban, if not more. We were well within our rights to ally with them and help them retake their country. Having restored the legitimate government, or as close as you can get anyways, we were acting ethically when we committed modest forces to help defend the country while it got back on its feet. You can question the wisdom of the intervention in Afghanistan, but I don't see much ground for questioning its morality or legitimacy.

 

Well, the disinterest/ineptness of the top leadership does not necessarily affect the justice or legitimacy of the cause.

That's true. So in the context of the actual ultimate question of the thread, you're right.

I do think it's important though, to understand who or what deserves credit for that and who or what does not. If you want to say the US as a country, I see no problem with that.

However I'm someone that does believe that just becuase the US happened to be fighting the Nazis that didn't necessarily mean the US was "good". Certainly not evil, but not necessarily good, either. So given that, and given the sort of man FDR was, you can only imagine my opinions of the Bush Jr. White House.


God, I hated that guy. Dammit, I still hate him. So many times I feel like Will Smith dragging that alien through the Desert in Independance Day, every now and again getting worked up to go back and kick him some more. Nixon was horrible, but at least he knew what he'd done, had suffered for it and was miserable.

 

So you're saying that AQ and OBL had nothing to do with 9/11? That's novel.

 

impossible to effectively deal with AQ and leave the Taliban in charge (like trying to fight the Nazis without making war on the rest of Germany).[/quote]

Only Al Qaeda wasn't a state. Germany and Japan both declared war on the US and we naturally responded with force. If Al Qeada were to hide themselves within France, does that mean we would have the right to occupy France and bomb the hell out of them? You don't destroy terrorists with massive armies in a WWIII scenario because no one in the right mind would engage the US on their terms. That's why they hide amongst civilians and blend in with the population.[/quote]

Motives of AQ were to destroy the west and I doubt we have any more motive than that. Saying they wanted to suck the West into a war and get butchered by Predators/The Green Berets seems a pretty bad strategy, like Japan they woke a slumbering giant. Impossible to take on AQ without invading Afghanistan, AQ would have just sheltered amongst the civilian population, the only way to root them out was troops on the ground and the Taliban wouldn't allow that. We either invaded or just sat there whilst they made their plans and hit us again (as indeed happened in Cambodia and Laos during Vietnam and their goverments opposed the Communists). And 8 years isn't a long time for counterinsurgency, took Britain 25 years to defeat the IRA and they're pathetic, wouldn't have lasted a day against the Soviets (although arguably we wasted the first 6 years looking for a political compromise which wasn't there).

Well Saddam got hung, Iraq has re-entered the civilized world, is not longer a threat to her neighbours, no longer produces WMDs, no longer sponsors terrorism, is one of the few democracies in the middle east which no longer oppresses and slaughters it's own people, people no longer dying because of UN sanctions...no, you've got me doing now, SAVE IT UNTIL THE LIBERATION OF IRAQ THREAD, it's coming after this one.

 

Ooops. So much for careful reading Sorry. My bad. Moving along...

 

Ok, time to bite the bullet!

Justified? No, the reasons given for invasion of Iraq was Saddam's development of weapons of mass destruction and the likelihood that they would be provided to terrorist groups or used against friendly nations. But Saddam had suspended his WMD programme because he found it impossible to carry on under UN sanctions. When questioned before being executed he stated that he'd continued to obstruct the investigators because he wanted to give the impression to Iran and others that he was still secretly in possession of them. He firmly believed that the allies were bluffing and would only launch air strikes. The allies relied on Iraqi dissidents to provide human intelligence (technical intel gathering had missed the WMDs in the first gulf war and it had proven impossible to establish viable agents in a vicious tyranny) and they told us what we wanted to hear in order to get their nation liberated (and I don't blame them frankly, I think we'd all have done the same in their shoes).
Would Saddam have continued to work for WMDs if left in power? Yes, absolutely.

Moral? Yes, Saddam's was a vile dictatorship which developed WMDs, used them on his own people, invaded his neighbours, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of his own people and sponsored terrorism worldwide (but not AQ as far as we know). Today Iraq is one of only 2 real democracies in the middle east, the oil wealth is very slowly trickling down to it's own people (although much still stolen through corruption), no longer victim to UN sanctions, it's people can come and go as they wish and enjoy freedom of speech etc
The horrific violence that followed the liberation has largely abated, Iraq's murder rate now far below that of Brazil, South Africa etc and if the present trends continue the violence will be a third down this year again. Even at it's height it was below what Iraq suffered in the Iran/Iraq war, invasion of Kuwait, subjugation of the Kurds and marsh Arabs etc Whilst the future of Iraq is far from rosy it's certainly more hopeful than it would havbe been if Saddam was still in power.

 

While I think Saddam's desire for WMDs is fairly well documented, I think the question of justified is much more centered on if we consider military involvement in a country that is not, at present, a direct threat to us is justifiable. I would contend that it is not, and that at the time, if you had to pick a country to invade, the one we'd be MOST justified in invading would be North Korea as they were at least trying to threaten the U.S., even if inefficiently (and I'm not saying that would've been justified, either).

I would also question the morality, given that the job was done poorly, and there was, depending on the party you look at, either no commitment to doing the job well, or no plan on how to finish it. To create that much conflict in a country, the focus should at least be to be quick, efficient, and with minimal impact to the people (I'm aware that minimal is still going to be very high). While there's something to be said for establishing a freer country, one can't ignore that the process to do so was, at several points, handled very very poorly by those planning it.

 

I think to liberate to North Korea would be a great thing but China wouldn't stand for it just as they didn't in the 50s. Also the neocons hope was that a free and democratic Iraq would help lead the reform of the Middle East, making an enviroment less hospitable for terrorists to operate in. Laudable aim and still might happen. Plus whilst North Korea certainly sponsors terrorism it does so only against South Korea, not internationally as Saddam did (funding suicide bombers in Gaza, sheltering Abu Nidal, sponsoring the Iranian arabs who took over the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980)

I think Bush's infamous 'mission accomplished' gaffe was forgiveable enough, Iraq had been liberated and Saddam deposed, the insugency was in it's infancy and largely ineffective and the TV was full of Iraqi people celebrating Saddam's demise. I always found it ironic that those who wished to 'move on' from Iraq because they cared so much about the Iraqi people (ie abandon them to be slaughtered just like the anti-Vietnam protesters couldn't care less about the millions massacered by the communists once the US abandoned Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia) were the same people who whined about George Bush Snr not going on to Bagdhad in the 90s?

One thing, the title of the thread is the US invasion fo Iraq, I prefer the term 'liberation' myself but it should really be Allied invasion, it wasn't just America

 

I think that's a very poor rationale for when military means should be used, built on quite old fashioned realist analysis on the world. By that rationale, Clinton was absolutely right in not doing anything in Rwanda - that country could never ever pose a threat to the US. He was also wrong to intervene in Kosovo, since Serbia also could pose no realistic threat to the US. Moreover, if that is the rationale for US military action, it stands to reason that it could be used to legitimize military means for other governments that are considerably less democratic, simply based on their threat assessment of their environment, which will very likely result in an escalation in the use of "legitimate" military force across the world. I think Americans seriously need to get out of their "we will use military means only when it's in our direct national security interest to do so" mentality and start boarding the responsbility to protect-train, the way Clinton tried to.

And btw, if Bush had used the Responsbility to protect argument for Iraq, rather than the national security argument, the argument would have been much more sustainable and not certainly not crumbled for lack of evidence the way the WMD rhetoric did.

 

Japan wasn't aiming to awake a sleeping giant; their intent was to destroy the US fleet at Pearl Harbor and to have their declaration of war precede hostilities. Had Japan's declaration of war not been delivered late, they would have attacked a legitimate military target during wartime. Had the US aircraft carriers and the harbor refueling stations been destroyed, in spite of a late declaration, it is very likely the US would have lost control of Hawaii before their economic power could deploy a force capable of defeating Japan.

What Al Qeada did was provoke the US into invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq was done by the sheer treasonous actions of Bush and his cronies, but they wanted to draw the US into war there as well. And in most perceptions, they've won. The US paid a heavy price for invading Iraq and Afghanistan, which was exactly what they wanted. Do you really think that they had to topple the US in order to say 'mission accomplished'? The US suffered much more damage than it inflicted upon AQ.

Read The Search for Al Qeada and you'll see the war should have been treated more as an investigation than as a military operation. They hid amongst the population because it negated our technological and military superiority over them.

And why haven't they? Why haven't they waged even a single attack against the US since 9/11? They still had the capacity to do so, even to this day... so why not stage another attack to show us they're still strong? My answer is because they don't need to. The US is already deeply engaged in Iraq, so there was no need to draw more attention to themselves. Once the US pulls out of Iraq and Afghanistan, I'll bet you $50 bucks and a box of doughnuts that we'll have another attack by the same terrorist organization... drawing us back into the Middle East.

Typical American thinking. I would call it a Pyrrhic victory at best.

Given as we learned how to counter another 9/11, we've enhanced security for passengers and pilots to keep that from happening again... I would say we succeeded in that.
Considering that Iraq never had nuclear weapons to begin with, I say the US was never under threat from Iraq.
Seeing as the war in Iraq isn't yet over, it would be premature to say 'mission accomplished' again.
Considering how much we sacrificed to hunt down AQ and needlessly go into Iraq, that adds to what the terrorists destroyed since 9/11. Definitely not a good exchange for loss of life or resources.
And considering the >100,000 civilians killed because of our invasions, I would definitely say the US has committed far more murders to innocent civilians than AQ could ever hope to achieve. That's a stain on our reputation which will last forever.

 

You bring up a good point. The fact is that those planning the invasion actually had motive to ensure the conflict wouldn't be solved quickly or efficiently. I don't think I have to go into detail about those huge government contracts for private investors providing equipment and supplies at the expense of the taxpayers. They may not have deliberately sought to sabotage the operation, but they certainly didn't have reason to see it through to the end. If you're providing resources and crew to rebuild the Iraq infrastructure, there would actually be a desire to have insurgents attack and destroy what was rebuilt. Because that just means more opportunity to take advantage of government contracts to rebuild what's destroyed.

In the end, the only ones who stood to gain anything from the Iraq war were those with big government contracts. And guess who sought to provide those contracts? Many of them planned out the Iraq war.

Wait, 'Iraq had been liberated' and 'insurgency still in its infancy'?

See a problem with this? I don't think people rise in active revolt after otherwise being liberated. The insurgency happened because the Iraqi people believed they had been invaded. The US were exactly those invaders and they caused much more destruction than good to the people for them to want to revolt against the US forces. In the end, we ended up generating more enemies fighting our men and women over there than if we had simply not invaded in the first place. We acted as positive feedback to inspire more to oppose the US.

What Bush did was treasonous at best.

 

This isn't entirely accurate AFAIK. If the post-invasion situation had been better planned (i.e. planned at all) then much of the insurgency could have been avoided, because many Iraqis did, indeed celebrate Saddam's fall as a liberation. One key factor that is commonly pointed out is the dogmatic disbanding of the Iraqi army. Instead of using this organization as boots on the ground to provide policing services during a period of transition (notwithstanding levels of corruption), it was disbanded and the personell turned into an real army of unemployed people, very disgruntled and with ready access to small arms. Perfect soil for recruiting insurgents.

 

Justified only by a single being's feeling of hatred, but that being happened to be president of the U.S.A. at that time. Morally utterly repugnant.

It would be interesting to compare who misused and misled the U.N. more: Saddam or Bush?

 

The problem with that is that this would pitch the world into one long continuous war against tyrannies everywhere. The war against Serbia was fought largely because it was on NATOs doorstep

 

The slumbering giant quote is from Admiral Yamamoto after Pearl Harbour (and how right he was!). George W thought that by ridding the world of Saddam it was in the US and the world's interests and he's probably right rather then

 

The invasion of Iraq was illegal, hypocritical and irresponsible.

 

How is it morally repugnant to free the Iraqi people and give the democracy?