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

Heh, heh. 'Hitlery Channel'.

I agree word for word with Danaan.

I remember, at the time, I was cheering for the allies as if it was D-Day. I see it as the last time the U.S. were clearly, squarely the good guys. But of course, it was always going to be followed up on, so it also marked the beginning of the new world order. Kuwait was freed but troops stayed and some Saudis couldn't handle that. Saddam got his reputation as the new enemy of the U.S. and was faced with the son of the guy who'd gone to war with him, who clearly has a chip on his shoulder. That first Gulf War created the Iraq War.

It's anniversary time soon isn't it? I remember how folks didn't know what stand to take. War is bad... Liberation is good... Massive Attack changed their name to Massive. The Rolling Stones did a dodgy song about it.

 

I don't see how the Gulf War lead to the Iraq War. Saddam didn't get himself a reputation for being America's enemy....we smashed him down, left him to rot, and then we all forgot about him for most of the 1990's (save for the occasional bombing raid). IMO, the big leap from Gulf War 1 to Gulf War 2 was George W. Bush.

 

That's were you're oversimplyfing things. Sure, the public might "have forgotten about Iraq during most of the 90's," but that was hardly the extent of it.

You do know that upwards of 50,000 troops had to rotate through Saudi Arabia every 7 months in order to enforce the no-fly zones, correct? While it wasn't a massive single movement of troops like the Gulf war, or Iraq War, stop and think in terms of 50,000 troops every 7 months for 12 years. In strict numbers, the time between the two Iraqi conflicts consumed 1.2 million US troops.

In 1996, the Khobar Towers complex was bombed, which had 391 troops either killed or wounded. The entire reason, and only purpose of Khobar Towers was to house the troops that contained Iraq.

In 1998, Desert Fox was initiated, which was really the precursor to 2003's invasion. Desert Fox involved 31,000 troops on it's own. That operation was the first use of force after the Iraq Liberation Act was passed in the US and signed into law by Clinton. If Congress didn't pass the bill and Clinton sign it into law in 1998, the 2003 invasion wouldn't have had its own built in authority, and the debate wouldn't have been so one sided.

If anything, Iraq represented a steady escalation of military force for the US from 1992 until 2003, even if no one was really paying attention. While the Gulf War might not have been directly responsible for the Iraq War, the unequal distribution of force was. The Gulf War was a UN mission that had and international focus. The problem was that the international community washed their hands of actually following things through and left it to the US. At any rate, you can't ignore everything that built up in Iraq between the two conflicts.

 

I was cheering, too. The first war that was broadcasted live on CNN.

Though I'd actually have to say that the last time the US were squarely the good guys was actually Kosovo 1999. I know that many protested that action, but lets face it: the war in ex-Yugoslavia was not exactly Europe's finest hour, and it really took the US/Nato putting its foot down before the war in Bosnia was resolved, and the Kosovo intervention was the end of that situation, when the authoritarian government of Milosevic in Serbia was finally dealt with. Now, some 10 years later, there is peace in Bosnia (though it's still messy), the ethnic tensions along the border of Kosovo have been handled in a predominantly constructive fashion, and Serbia is slowly democratizing, all of this thanks to the presence of military forces that could enforce peace. When people say that democracy cannot be brought about through the use of military means, they seem to forget the end of WWII and the Balkans - sometimes military force is necessary (though never sufficient) because it is necessary to have a central power that has monopoly on force within a given territory to achieve democracy.

 

Yeah, you're right. I'd forgotten about Kosovo... maybe because it was just air raids.

 

That's were you're oversimplyfing things. Sure, the public might "have forgotten about Iraq during most of the 90's," but that was hardly the extent of it.

Mr.44 I actually think what you're doing though, is obfuscating things. True, that the public in whatever country might have "forgotten about Iraq" makes no discernable argument for or against later international involvement, neither, I think, do the facts you go on to state.

You do know that upwards of 50,000 troops had to rotate through Saudi Arabia every 7 months in order to enforce the no-fly zones, correct? While it wasn't a massive single movement of troops like the Gulf war, or Iraq War, stop and think in terms of 50,000 troops every 7 months for 12 years. In strict numbers, the time between the two Iraqi conflicts consumed 1.2 million US troops.

This is true. But this is also what the US signed on for in the treaty that they signed to end the Gulf War. Or at least the forseeable consequences of it.


In 1996, the Khobar Towers complex was bombed, which had 391 troops either killed or wounded. The entire reason, and only purpose of Khobar Towers was to house the troops that contained Iraq.

Also true, but Iraq itself had nothing meaningful to do with that bombing. That was carried out by extremists essentially unconnected to Saddam Hussein.

As an analogy, if the French were putting in a buildup prior to WWI along the German border and native belgians or Luxebougians began attacking the installations becuase they somehow violated the soverignty of either of those coutnries -- which in this analogy they wouldn't becuase those nations agreed -- regardless, that wouldn't make Germany, the primary adversary to the French, culpable for the losses the French were sustaining due to thier policy. And that's taking a situation where we knew what Germany is to become.


In 1998, Desert Fox was initiated, which was really the precursor to 2003's invasion. Desert Fox involved 31,000 troops on it's own. That operation was the first use of force after the Iraq Liberation Act was passed in the US and signed into law by Clinton. If Congress didn't pass the bill and Clinton sign it into law in 1998, the 2003 invasion wouldn't have had its own built in authority, and the debate wouldn't have been so one sided.

Well here we start to get to the divergence. What does, really, the Iraqi Liberation Act mean internationally and why would America be particularly so concerned with its passage? At this point Kuwait is not in danger. True, Saddam has not lived up to all his tenants of the treaty: however he had come to compliance on a particular extent of them and over time it became more and more likely that whatever he was in non-compliance over was extremely unlikely to be of any military value. What's more even when the UN inspectors left, they did so of thier own accord.

Whatever the US's prior relationship to Saddam, the Gulf War was undertaken with full UN support. The treaty signed to end the war was broken no more flagranty -- in fact, much less flagrantly -- than North Korea's antics following the armistance in 1953.

Upon signing the treaty with Saddam, the stance seems to be that the US reaction to the level of non-compliance they recieved from his regime was inordinate to the violations. Kuwait was liberated. Iraq was disarmed -- and to the extent it wasn't what remained seems of small concern. Saddam went on to repress his own people in the later revolts that challenged his power: however he was not prevented from doing this in the treaty that was signed to end the Gulf War that I am aware. If that were the case it would have been legal grounds for invasion only a year or so later. But that would have been an unprecedented inernational arrangement.

In other words, the US for some time had a policy of regime change and sought international legitimacy on this. But they were bound to the agreement they made. That's what made this difficult and had the appearance of unethical behavior. Firstly whatever Saddam does is to

 

Still, the Iraq Liberation Act was aimed more at supporting anti-Saddam groups within and without Iraq. The leap from subversion to military assault only occurred because Iraq was supposedly acquiring NBC weapons. But two things come into play here....the POTUS is in charge of our intelligence assets and we usually just have to take his word for it. But was our 43rd president a trustworthy man? The fact that we had just been hit by 9/11 also caused people (and Congressmen) to rally around the flag and muted most opposition to the war during a time when hard questions needed to be asked.

Annnyway....let's get back on-topic, unless you want to refute this as well =P

 

Again, save it for the liberation of Iraq topic which is coming after Afghanistan. What changed was 9/11, George Bush Jnr always said his nightmare was that one day Saddam would provide AQ with a suitcase full of anthrax that they'd open in Times Square. There was also the neocons hope that a free and democratic Iraq would lead to the reform of the middle east and drain the water in which AQ's guerilla fish swim

 

Which if he'd known anything at all about UBL and the Gulf War, would have seemed blatantly absurd even to him.

 

UBL?

 

Usama Bin Laden. One of his various name spelling conventions.

 

Yeah, you're right. I'd forgotten about Kosovo... maybe because it was just air raids.

I can personally guarantee that the the various Balkans operations were much more than just air raids. They certainly weren't open, shooting wars, but on the ground, it was about as textbook a "police action" as you can get without open hostilities.

 

Sure but Kosovo 1999 was just bombing runs on Serbia, right.

 

Ah. But I always thought it was Osama?

As for the Balkans it was a case of we can't back the good guys because we're not sure who they are. With the breakup of Yugoslavia it was a case of each group attempting to grab all it could. The serbs are normally cast as the bad guys but that's because they normally won, having most of the Yugoslav federal army and military industrial complex on their side. We were trying to impose peace on people who didn't want it

 

Nope. It started out as bombing runs - Clinton did not want another Somalia and wanted to make sure that Serbian armed forces were properly suppressed before putting boots on the ground. But after the bombing runs, he did indeed put boots on the ground - specifically on the border between Serbia proper and the Kosovar autonomous region (which was no longer very autonomous).

It's true that there was blame enough to throw around on everybody - politicians on all sides were really quick to job on the nationalist bandwagon. I think one reason we often point out Serbs is that they, IIRC, also started with the "ethnic cleansing" discourse as an explicit policy goal of their campaigns. I.e. the Serbish politicians thought they could use that word in a positive fashion (instead of genocide which is very blunt and loaded with bad meaning). They soon realized just how wrong they were when Western media picked the word up and used it in the fashion we are used to by now. Other factions did the same things, but with smaller budgets and without saying that they did. Before the ex-Yugoslavia wars, the word didn't exist.

Edit: Also the people wanted peace. The situation was radicalized by politicians, and after getting over a certain tipping point of radicalization, the violence became self-sustaining because of lawlessness and desire for vengeance.

 

Psch. I give up. From now on I'll just provide musical accompaniment.

 

Soooo....first Gulf War. I wouldn't say it was an immoral war, but there does exist the counterargument that if Kuwait didn't have oil then we wouldn't have bothered with military intervention. Yet on the flip side, we haven't had very many blatant violations of sovereignty by a strong military power against a smaller country involving tanks and all.

 

Soooo....first Gulf War. I wouldn't say it was an immoral war, but there does exist the counterargument that if Kuwait didn't have oil then we wouldn't have bothered with military intervention. Yet on the flip side, we haven't had very many blatant violations of sovereignty by a strong military power against a smaller country involving tanks and all.

Yes. It was outright annexation of another country not split between "North/South" at the end of WWII -- both notable military confrontation that involved likely annexation: Vietnam and Korea -- had that facet.

Nobody really bought Saddam's claim over Kuwait. Whatever the US's previous relationship with Saddam it was justified in moving against him to liberate the country. It's the later stuff where things get more dicey.

 

Again just because it was a war about oil doesn't make it wrong. Control over such a vast percentage of the world's oil supplies would have made Saddam powerful beyond belief. The successful conquest of Saudi Arabia would have made him unstoppable. We could not let that happen.

 

Not to mention the fact that people lived on top of those oil deposits. It's not like Kuwait was a blank spot on the map where nobody lived.

 

There is a lot of "war for oil" rhetoric going on when it comes to Western incursions into the Middle East, yet I can't recall ever seeing those who talk about that showing any numbers to the effect of Western powers actually gaining access to more oil. In the case of Iraq, most of the oil, AFAIK, is under Iraqi national control, not US control, so clearly any such war aims failed miserably. In the case of Kuwait, this might be more plausible than in the case of Iraq - Kuwait was an American ally and would probably have been more inclined to sell oil to the West than Iraq. But how big were the volumes, really? How big would the shortfalls have been, in the light of the oil from Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations that were still unoccupied. I just feel that the whole "war for oil" antics is another leftist device used to de-legitimize these interventions. I even heard similar claims about Kosovo - that the real reason for the NATO intervention was that the province of Kosovo sat on some really rare natural resources (unspeficied which, of course) that the West were going to annex for their own sinister purposes.

Let's face it: Kuwait is a textbook example of the UN Charter applied. Would the advocates of the "War for oil"-theory actually argue that the UN Charter should not be applied in this case? Why? Because Kuwait has oil? Because it was the US leading the invasion? If so, when would the application be seen as legitimate?

 

Ok, Afghanistan.

Justified? Yes, the Taliban regime sheltered Al Quaeda and plots against the West such as 9/11, the African embassy bombings, the attack of the USS Cole were all planned and organised in Afghanistan. George W actually didn't just wade in, he asked the Taliban to give them up and they refused.

Moral? God yes! The Taliban had a regime that would make Hitler/Stalin/Saddam blush. Banned kite flying and music, slit your throat if you didn't grow a beard or wear a burkha.

The regime that replaced it is deeply deeply flawed but still probably the most democratic and freedom minded goverment Afghanistan has ever had.

 

That, I don't know. How much do we really care about other nations' sovereignty? What if Saddam Hussein had invaded Jordan? Sure we'd have protested it, levied sanctions, but would we have intervened? I'm not saying that fighting the war over oil was wrong, it is a strategic material and dictators shouldn't be allowed to seize the world's supply of the stuff....but is it realistic to say that we care about other countries' sovereignty enough to lend them military aid?

I have to say I'm somewhat conflicted on this one. On one hand, I found George Bush to be a completely repulsive and immoral man who pandered to revenge-seekers and hollow patriotism. The problem with doing this is that when the country suffers from an act of great infamy, there are always those who will seek revenge while waving the American flag. It is therefore the president's ritualistic job to inform the public that any response is not about revenge, but justice. George Bush didn't do this, in fact he did the opposite. The Afghanistan war became about revenge when it should have been about bringing mass murderers to justice.

The Taliban were extremely reprehensible, yes, but isn't it convenient that we started talking about their atrocities only after 9/11? They committed many crimes against their own people, but at the end of the day this is a side issue and shouldn't be considered as a justification unless we're intervening primarily for humanitarian reasons.

Today's Afghanistan conflict however is a different war. Afghanistan's new democratic government is a by-product of the invasion, but it's one that's worth defending.

 

See, I was saying Afghanistan was a problem in spring of 2001. Oh how right I'd be.

That said, I don't think that, at least compared to Hitler, the Taliban was worse. And arguably not compared to the others, either.

 

You can say you dislike George W but I hardly think he's 'immoral'? And I don't think he or anyone was out for 'revenge' no more than the US was out for revenge after Pearl Harbour (where people were a lot more openly bloodthirsty) or the Korean War was revenge for the North's invasion. It was what was necessary to prevent further aggression. All George W Bush wanted to do was read some schoolkids a story about a goat, he never wanted any of this.

The Taliban were 'reprehensible'? Makes them sound like they were kids caught smoking or something, hideous as the various dictators of the world have been I've never heard of another who banned music or kite flying or sport? That of course was not the reason for the Allies to invade Afghanistan, the reason for that was to root out AQ thus preventing any more attacks.

So justified? Yes, helps prevent any more terrorist attacks by destroying AQ whom the Taliban are sheltering
But also moral in the sense that the regime we introduced in Afghanistan whilst hugely flawed is infinitely more libertarian and beneficial for it's people than the goverment it replaced.