While I’m asking questions, could someone explain to me in a non-agonistic manner what the reasoning behind the description of the war in Iraq as “illegal and immoral” is? I’d really like to know.
The Congress gave the president extremely broad powers in fall of 2002; in the United States acts of Congress overrule international treaties. That would seem to me to bring the “illegal” part into question.
If one believed that war was unconditionally immoral, I could understand the “immoral” part, too. I’ve read conflicting opinions from just war moral theologians on the subject.
While I don’t give a damn about the argument, I suppose the illegal argument could rest on the general idea that the American government’s action was an act of aggression based on falsehood, and as such ‘illegal’ in the context of the UN charter.
If one feels strongly about the UN charter re aggressive war then the mere fact of US congressional action would be unimpressive to say the least.
Alternatively, from a domestic point of view, I would suppose that one might take a view that the American administration’s false pretexts were conscious, deliberate and so the entire domestic process was invalid. I suppose this might be convincing as a political-moral argument, if not a truly legal one.
But I am suppose your question is rhetorical, as it doesn’t take more than a few moments of reflexion to discern these two strains of thought (although one has to confess that those making such are rarely coherent in doing so, the illegal and immoral argument being made as a political statement).
While I personally find the general argument tedious and besides the point, it does strike one that from an international perspective, it is easy and intellectually coherent to view the Iraq war as a poorly justified or unjustified war of aggression on the part of the US and thus ‘illegal’ and immoral, without making all wars (or even an eventual war with Iraq) either illegal or immoral.
Of course that is from an international perspective.
But the entire argument becomes rather tedious and besides the point (except as perhaps a lesson regarding any future efforts).
My understanding is that the hostilities of the first Gulf war ended in a conditional cease-fire. Iraq agreed to fulfill a variety of conditions in return for an end to combat. Twelve years later, Iraq still had NOT done so.
if my understanding of the cease-fire is correct, the invasion of Iraq was actually a resumption of hostilities based on Iraq’s continued violation of cease-fire conditions.
Yes, Lounsbury is correct to use the international perspective, as the illegal part of the argument must generally be based on the belief that somehow, UN deliberations trump individual sovereign prerogatives.
This sentiment seems to place more authority to what is generally called International Law than is warranted. I see the common myth that the UN is somehow a universal government as being an effort towards a type of World Federalism, although the UN carries no more legitimacy than the individual constituents give it.
The turnabout here is that for all the accusations of illegality, there is no real mechanism by which the supposed illegality can be punished, so the complaint is a pipedream.
On morality, well, I don’t get that one. Many of the same people who insist that the Iraq campaign is immoral, demand that something “be done” in Darfur. Presumably, that something would include the use of force.
Well, while again I haven’t much use for the “illegal and immoral” yammering at present, the view of the the war as ‘illegal’ in a loose sense with respect to the general framework of UN guideline/rules about legitimate use of force strikes me as more or less well-founded.
What that practically means is a seperate question, but certainly the PR consequences have been rather negative for the US globally, and illustrate I would say the utility of constructing legitimacy for one’s actions. The US administration and some significant portion of the US Right seems to be afflicted with a belief that they are ipso facto legitimate or there are no costs involved. (Or in the alternative it is necessary to pay such costs)
The silly cease fire argument repeated above certainly didn’t impress anyone who was not already convinced – a bad sign for the convincingness of one’s argument and position.
In any event, most of its usage at present seems to be either purely rhetorical or something of an emotive ploy or merely knee-jerking on the Left end of the spectrum.
The Dar Fur situation, I would presume, is imagined differently with all the right moves to “legitimate” and give “moral cover.” While personally I find the entire thing badly conceived, it’s easy enough to see a coherent line of thought if one steps back: (i) Moral use of force because of the presumed legitimisation, (ii) Moral because the promoters are ‘not interested in oil’ ™.
(i) might be moderate convincing in the right context, (ii) of course is pure idealism…. I find it contemptible idiocy that leads to disasters, but ….
Ah yes, further thought:
For those taking the idea of illegality rather literally and thinking of “prosecuting” the American government’s leadership, of course it is a rather absurd pipe dream.
Taking the idea of ‘legality’ as a form of formalising legitimacy, the argument makes rather more sense as persuasion and underlining the utility of formal legitimacy, versus the expense of unilateral (or close enough) action.
Of course, one can take even that more moderate (and I think useful line of thought) position and turn it into an absolute one bordering on the absurd.
I agree with everybody else here that it’s an academic question. If it’s a crime nobody can ever bring us to justice. If we stop being a superpower, even in the extreme case where we wind up under occupation, whatever happens to any of our people who have war crimes trials would pretty much have happened anyway under some other pretext.
But I can probably make the argument, as an academic exercise.
Back when Saddam invaded kuwait and pretty much the whole world united against him, what was the justification to fight Saddam?
He had two reasons to take kuwait. One was that the kuwaitis had been doing slant-drilling to steal his oil, and when he called them on it they laughed at him and admitted it and said they’d keep doing it even if he took them to the World Court about it. And the second was that kuwait was selling much more oil than their OPEC quota (some of it iraq’s oil) and they were keeping prices down. Iraq had lots of debts from the war with iran, and Saddam could not pay them –he couldn’t even pay the interest unless oil prices stayed high. Kuwait, by breaking their OPEC obligations, was destroying his country.
But we argued that he had no right to invade kuwait. It was a war of aggression. If he had a complaint with kuwait he should take it to the World Court and let them arbitrate it. (Never mind that the World Court had no particular way to enforfce a decision on kuwait.) Iraq had joined the UN, and the UN charter says no member may invade another. So the world was justified to attack the iraqi army and drive them out of kuwait and give kuwait back to its rightful owner, the King of kuwait.
So fast-foward a bit. The USA claims that iraq is building nuclear weapons which are a direct danger to us, and so we have the right to invade iraq to make them stop. The evidence we present for this claim is obviously bogus. The UN refuses to say it’s OK for us to invade iraq. We do it anyway. How is our right to invade iraq better than iraq’s right to invade kuwait?
Objectively the two invasions look rather similar. Both nations claim the right to invade to preserve their national survival. Both ignore their UN obligations. But it doesn’t look that way if you’re an american. If you’re american it looks like you’re calling the USA under Bush and iraq under Saddam morally equivalent. And they obviously aren’t. We’re the good guys. If muslims try to spread islam by force of arms, that’s bad because they’re wrong. If we try to spread democracy by force of arms that’s good because we’re right. When Saddam took over from the king of kuwait that was bad because Saddam was a bad guy and the king of kuwait was a good guy. When we took over from Saddam that was good because Saddam was a bad guy and Bremer was a good guy. When the UN approved going after Saddam the first time it proved he was a bad guy. When the UN refused to approve going after Saddam the second time it proved the UN was wrong. Etc etc.
See, some people figure that since we’re the good guys, it means anything we do is good. And other people figure that being the good guys means we’re supposed to actually act good. It’s two entirely different points of view. So when Saddam tortured some prisoners to death, it proved he was a bad guy. But when we tortured some prisoners to death it was the right thing to do because they were suspected terrorists and we saved US lives by getting information from them. When Saddam used poison gas it proved he was a bad guy. When we used white phosphorus in lethal concentrations we were killing insurgents and protecting US lives, which was a good thing. If Saddam had gotten nukes he would have threatened his neighbors with them, a very very bad thing. When we invaded iraq we publicly announced that if iraq used biological or chemical weapons on our troops we’d nuke them. This was a good thing because it stopped them from using biological or chemical weapons.
Once you accept that there is no moral equivalence and everything we do is good because we’re good, while everything our enemies do is bad because they’re bad, then it all gets simple and clear.
But if you aren’t american then it looks like we did a war of aggression that we tried to justify with lies. Just like Saddam but with more lies. And ever since WWII (and before, for that matter) we’ve been saying that wars of aggression are bad, that we support the victims and not the aggressors. We came up with this claim that democracies neverfight each other because democracies don’t do wars of aggression, and so nobody makes the first move. And just now, to people who aren’t american it looks like utter rank hypocrisy.
But of course really there’s no law against wars of aggression. We talk like there are international laws when the international laws are in our favor, but when they start to constrain us we point out that there’s no real law and no enforcement and we’re going to do whatever we want. And other countries will do whatever they want unless we stop them by main force.
J Thomas – I suppose he intervened so as to give us an illustration of the Left preciousness that so frequently characterises American-anti-Americanism.
Iraqi Justification: Invasion of Kuwait
He had two reasons to take kuwait. One was that the kuwaitis had been doing slant-drilling to steal his oil, and when he called them on it they laughed at him and admitted it and said they’d keep doing it even if he took them to the World Court about it.
Let’s rephrase this to something less… queerly spun.
Kuwait was accused by Iraq of drilling sideways into a field straddling the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border.
The Kuwaitis have always denied the accusation of illegally drilling. In public, whatever colourful stories are told.
Now, I would opine that probably they were, however, that hardly is cassus belli.
And the second was that kuwait was selling much more oil than their OPEC quota (some of it iraq’s oil) and they were keeping prices down.
This is just plain stupid.
All OPEC members were selling above quota (and that has always been the case, despite the mythology around OPEC quotas) – Kuwait was hardly even the worst scofflaw.
Iraq had lots of debts from the war with iran, and Saddam could not pay them –he couldn’t even pay the interest unless oil prices stayed high. Kuwait, by breaking their OPEC obligations, was destroying his country.
Bollocks.
First, of course, Sadaam indeed ran up massive debts from his little war of aggression against Iran (which had its own little trumped up pretexts), some even to Kuwait – but one should also note the Gulfies outright gave him vast amounts of funds (although also extended loans).
Kuwait behaving like every other OPEC member and paying only sketchy attention to its quotas again is harldy a cassus belli.
But we argued that he had no right to invade kuwait. It was a war of aggression.
We being virtually the entire internationally community, including the Arab League – leaving aside the weird American centrism of this comment.
If he had a complaint with kuwait he should take it to the World Court and let them arbitrate it. (Never mind that the World Court had no particular way to enforfce a decision on kuwait.)
Again a ludicrous comment, judgments against Kuwait could be executed through international asset siezures, etc.
Iraq – or Sadaam – desired to annex Kuwait, much as he had wanted to annex the Ahouaz area of Iran for his own power.
Giving credence to his trumped up pretexts (regardless of the Kuwait’s contemptible behaviour) is…. astonishing in its moral idiocy.
Iraq had joined the UN, and the UN charter says no member may invade another. So the world was justified to attack the iraqi army and drive them out of kuwait and give kuwait back to its rightful owner, the King of kuwait.
Emir, not King, but Kuwaiti people – citizens.
Now, if you want to inject snide comment get it right, and note the Kuwaitis charmingly disenfranchise a certain percentage of its native population (the Bidoun) as well as its charmingly nasty behaviour towards guest workers – although at the same time many made fortures.
So fast-foward a bit. The USA claims that iraq is building nuclear weapons which are a direct danger to us, and so we have the right to invade iraq to make them stop. The evidence we present for this claim is obviously bogus. The UN refuses to say it’s OK for us to invade iraq. We do it anyway. How is our right to invade iraq better than iraq’s right to invade kuwait?
The US at least had a pretext that was less transparently trumped up.
I presume the above was largely cobbled to make a point, but rather poorly done.
Iraq – or Sadaam – desired to annex Kuwait, much as he had wanted to annex the Ahouaz area of Iran for his own power.
Yes, of course.
Giving credence to his trumped up pretexts (regardless of the Kuwait’s contemptible behaviour) is…. astonishing in its moral idiocy.
What kind of morality is it to ignore what people say they want and psychoanalyse them to decide what they really want, and then judge them according to what we say they want? If you’re going to decide whether their cause is justified, surely you ought to do it based on their claimed justifications.
The US at least had a pretext that was less transparently trumped up.
It depends on what you’re willing to look at. The US claim was utterly transparently trumped up.
On the one hand we had the argument that he supported terrorists. This was based on the vague wrong belief that he was somehow connected to 9/11 or Al Qaeda. And then there was the bogus claim that he hired palestinian suicide bombers to kill themselves attacking israel.
On the other hand we had the false argument that he was making nuclear weapons.
On the third hand we had the true argument that we didn’t like iraq’s form of government.
If you want to psychoanalyse our real reasons. there are various possibilities — that we wanted the oil. Or that Rove wanted the political benefits of a quick victorious war. Or there’s Ledeen’s idea that every now and then we need to take some execrable third world nation and just throw it against the wall to show we can. Our military needed a great big live-fire exercise and nobody thought ahead to the occupation. Rove wanted to placate zionist voters by taking out the biggest remaining (though insignificant) threat to israel. Maybe we had a plan to defeat the entire arab world and this was the first step. But it would be just as silly to argue that one or more of these were our real reason to invade and therefore the invasion was wrong, as it is to make that same argument about iraq’s invasion of kuwait.
We migjht have had all sorts of *reasons* to wage a war of aggression on iraq. But surely an argument whether we were morally or legally right should concentrate on our justications, shouldn’t it?
And our official justifications are if anything more bogus than Saddam’s reasons for taking out the Emir of Kuwait.
“…give kuwait back to its rightful owner, the King of kuwait.>
Emir, not King, but Kuwaiti people – citizens.
?? Are you arguing that Emir should translate to something other than King?
Now, if you want to inject snide comment get it right, and note the Kuwaitis charmingly disenfranchise a certain percentage of its native population (the Bidoun) as well as its charmingly nasty behaviour towards guest workers – although at the same time many made fortures.
Ah, perhaps you should look into this a little deeper. The Emir closely controls the courts. He allows elections for a parliament, but he dissolves the parliament whenever he wants. He does not allow any political parties or human rights groups.
It’s true the last time I heard of that he dissolved the parliament, it was officially because they refused to allow votes for women. But if the women voted would that make him less a king? When they got a new Parliament in 1991, the last one had been dissolved since 1986.
Britain gradually moved from a functioning king to a ceremonial king presiding over a democracy. Kuwait might someday do the same.
More bollocks
What kind of morality is it to ignore what people say they want and psychoanalyse them to decide what they really want, and then judge them according to what we say they want? If you’re going to decide whether their cause is justified, surely you ought to do it based on their claimed justifications.
It’s called using one’s brain, morality has fuck all to do with it. Accepting at face value a dictor’s pretexts illustrates moral bankruptcy however.
Sadaam clearly trumped up the Kuwaiti pretexts – the debts and the long standing Iraqi revanchism with respect to Kuwait.
It depends on what you’re willing to look at. The US claim was utterly transparently trumped up.
No, it wasn’t. The underlying claim of a threat due to having NBC weapons, although false, had a believable core, one many were willing to entertain – besides the knee jerking anti American factions – although not rush willy nilly into war over. It was a false claim, trumped up, but it wasn’t transparent.
I’m skipping over your boring typical Left recitation of the sins of the son, not being interested in such whanking on.
Emir, not King, but Kuwaiti people – citizens.
?? Are you arguing that Emir should translate to something other than King?
No, I am telling you.
Emir is not King – Malik is King. Emir can mean Commander or Prince or Ruler – generally prince is a good approximation.
Ah, perhaps you should look into this a little deeper. The Emir closely controls the courts. He allows elections for a parliament, but he dissolves the parliament whenever he wants. He does not allow any political parties or human rights groups.
I have no need to “look a into this a little closer” mate, I knew what an Emir was when you didn’t even know what al Qaeda meant.
Your boring whanking aside, the fairness of the Kuwaiti political system is not the point. the Al Sabah warm fuzziness is not the piont. The point is your snotty typical knee-jerking Left comment about giving it back to the King entirely ignores the citizens – who did in fact regain most if not all their assets, being in fact utterly robbed by Sadaam. While one might not be all that sympathetic to Kuwaiti citizens, for the reasons cited previously, they did get back their lands etc.
Of course one should note the Al Sabah have always had a consultative reltionship with the tribes and elders, so again imagining the Kuwaiti emiral system as European kingship just reflects your shallowness and knee jerking.
Your boring whanking aside, the fairness of the Kuwaiti political system is not the point. the Al Sabah warm fuzziness is not the piont. The point is your snotty typical knee-jerking Left comment
So much for non-agonistic.
Your point is you don’t like my attitude. Noted. You have demonstrated your utter failure to make a better point. Done.
On further reflection, this is precisely an example of what I was talking about.
I took the stand that the USA is good when it does good things and bad when it does bad things. That our invasion of iraq was very very similar to iraq’s invasion of kuwait.
There are differences — iraq was planning to make kuwait an iraqi province and presumably they would get to do the same meaningless voting that iraqi citizens got to do, instead of the meaningless voting that kuwaiti citizens did. But the USA has not invited iraq to become a US state, instead we are setting up a puppet government.
Iraq waged a war of aggression against kuwait over trumped-up reasons that the world scorned. We waged a war of aggression on iraq over trumped-up reasons that the world scorned. We did persuade US citizens who weren’t paying attention, though.
To make it different, we have to argue that we’re intrinsicly good and iraq was intrinsicly bad. Like, our form of government is intrinsicly good so we have the right to invade other countries to impose it on them.
I tend to actually agree with this, but it’s hard to find a way to state it baldly that doesn’t sound real bad. And so instead we turn “moral equivalence” into a swearword, and sling around “moral bankruptcy” and “moral idiocy” etc. Because when we say “We have the right to invade any nation if it’s government does things we disapprove of, because we’re good guys and if we disapprove of them it proves they’re bad guys”, it just doesn’t sound right. Though I think there’s a degree of truth to it.
And this is why people get so mad when leftists make this argument. Because they disagree, but they can’t find any reasonable way to say why they disagree.
Well, as a matter of fact there are substantive differences between the two, even when one (as I do) departs from the point of that the American invasion of Iraq was based on trumped up excuses.
First, in re the infamous chemical and nuclear weapons accusations (that proved false and to rational outside observers were clearly even in 2003 overdone), there was at least some reason to give credence (indeed as is now clear from internal Iraqi documents, even Iraqi leadership thought they had some – of course this was false and a surreal indicator of the regime’s internal bankruptcy).
There is no reason, then, to say one has to believe the US is intrinsically good, Iraq intrinsically bad in order to have supported the US invasion. One had, at the time plausible (although wildly wrong) reasons for being sold on the idea that the Iraqi regime was a danger. A proper causus belli? Perhaps if the US had made a proper effort to sell the idea. It certainly did not.
The tale you cite supra to support Iraq has not even that shred of plausibility. The side drilling, although perhaps true, was hardly a decent pretext and the OPEC accusations are just factually wrong and betray a complete lack of understanding of the organisation, oil pricing or even the basic facts of the day. I add that the comment re the Emir was also ridiculous Left exageration: it wasn’t just the Al Sabah who got Kuwait back and the assets the Iraqi military tried to steal for Sadaam, it was also as I noted, the citizens (who I grant are hardly the most sympathetic characters in the world, but that doesn’t making stealing Kuwait for Sadaam any more justified).
Lounsbury, I don’t argue that the iraq/kuwait justification is plausible. I argue that the US/iraq justification is no more plausible.
A proper causus belli? Perhaps if the US had made a proper effort to sell the idea. It certainly did not.
Agreed. We made no significant attempt to sell the idea. The CIA leaked that the secret data was cherrypicked. Should we have believed that the CIA was leaking the truth or that somebody in the CIA was leaking lies because they were opposed to Bush policy? At that point I think it was reasonable to keep both options open.
Then we presented our evidence to the CIA. Aluminum tubes that the technical experts said were not for nukes. Pictures of trucks that could have been anything, not particularly small-quantity biowarfare. Leads to the inspectors that turned up nothing at all. If they knew anything about iraqi nukes, whyever would they give them bad leads instead?
By the time the actual invasion came, anybody who believed in our justification was not paying attention. There could have been an iraqi nuclear program, but if so we knew nothing about it. The claims were all lies, based on nothing at all reliable.
I never got around to looking at Saddam’s evidence for kuwaiti slant drilling, but his evidence couldn’t have been worse than ours.
“We think iraq is building nukes. We have no credible evidence whatsoever but we can’t take the chance. We have just under 10,000 nukes ourselves but we’re good guys and the world can trust us with them. If iraq gets 10 nukes that would be disastrous because they’re bad guys who’d use them even though they’d get massively nuked jin return.” Nobody would accept this justification unless they first agree that we’re the good guys and so we have a right to attack bad guys whenever we want to.
As for kuwait, it’s hard to come up with a moral justification for giving it back to the Emir. My guess is we did it partly because the saudi royal family wanted us to, and partly because we didn’t have a plan worked out with our various allies, and partly because restoring the status quo ante was a simpler story than setting up a democracy. (And also the Emir would be far more reliable at later doing what we told him to than an actual democracy.)
The illegality claim is, I believe, covered above. Bush’s doctrine of preemptive preventive war is not, to my knowledge, consistent with international law or the UN charter, i.e., the US’s claims were inconsistent with broadly understood meanings of the right of self-defense. I am unsure if the US has the authority to enforce relevant UN resolutions without UN security council approval. I suppose that has to be one of the issues. As for immoral? Well, it is nicely alliterative. Your mileage may vary. I expect the claim is that it violates jus ad bellum ethics, which isn’t much different from the claim above except that what positive international law, e.g., the UN Charter, says may not be relevant.