Reflections on the Iraqi Bush War

Tiassa · May 15, 2003

Humanity did not justify this war (Financial Times)

Don't worry if Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction never turn up. Don't worry if he had neither the capacity nor the intent to threaten the US or his neighbours. Don't worry if Iraq was not in breach of United Nations resolutions. The war, we are now told, can be wholly justified by the horrors Mr Hussein inflicted on his own people, the latest evidence of which was found this week in a mass grave south of Baghdad. The war was a legitimate "humanitarian intervention": tough, ugly but defensible. We did the right thing - just as we did in Kosovo, as we eventually did in Bosnia and should have done in Rwanda.

But did we? If the answer is Yes, there may be few limits to what can be done in the name of humanitarian intervention. There are many other repressive, dictatorial and murderous regimes against which the evidence and arguments are as strong as they were against the Saddam Hussein of the last decade. And that means many more temptations to re-write the rulebook of force, with all the risks that can bring.
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Perhaps we might start assembling media and other (more legitimate) sources and start figuring out just what has been done. I start with a more philosophical reflection.

Also for your reading pleasure: Questions in the aftermath (Economist)

From the start, the Americans said it would take time to track down Saddam’s banned weapons. But as pressure has grown to explain why none has been found, the Bush administration has felt compelled to alter its explanation of the Iraqi threat. In the most recent briefings, officials have suggested that this threat did not take the form of an arsenal of stockpiled arms, as first thought, but was a “just in time” weapons-delivery system. In other words, instead of having tonnes of nasty weapons stored away, Iraq had systems that could be brought together to produce them at short notice. Meanwhile, American officials have been trying to shift the focus away from the search for weapons by highlighting the benefits of political reconstruction. That, they argue, is justification enough for the military action. Most Americans agree with this view. Many Europeans do not.
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And also some European infighting, also from The Economist.

:m:,
Tiassa
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Reflections on the Iraqi Bush War

Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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Reflections on the Iraqi Bush War

Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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