The Iraq War retrospective Thread

[kandrathe]

Who did you think they meant would enforce 1441? Chuck Norris? The Harlem Globetrotters? The Security Council is the sole body with this authority. This is not a confusing issue.

And, the Security Council was given the opportunity to follow through with their vague threat, and it turned out to be empty.

Even stipulating that this interpretation is true, it does not change the basic facts of authority. The Security Council, not the United States, had the authority to decide whether Iraq was in material breach, and what to do about that. Again, this is not ambiguous.

Well, you are wrong here. Every sovereign nation has the right to decide its own actions, and to what extent another nation has become a threat, and how their nation will respond to that threat. Contrary to what some in the world would believe, the nations of the world are not subservient to the UN. In the absence of UN ability to control Iraq, and the imminent danger that the US "perceived" they were in -- they made the judgment to protect themselves. The US President asked for, and the US Congress authorized the use of force.

Turns out, the UN was right. Iraq was not in material breach, they had no relevant WMD, and their "obfuscation" was apparently for trivial reasons. If having a spine means declaring wars without good reason, then I think I'll go with spineless.

You still don't get it. The war was caused by spineless bureaucrats who corrupted the oil for food program, and through ineptitude or greed caused the enforcement of sanctions to fail. We tried the non-violent approach for a decade!!! It failed. Maybe it was doomed to fail because of the spinelessness, ineptitude or lack of will by the members of the UN. But, you cannot say that Iraq wasn't given an opportunity to reform. The UN had the opportunity to stare down the bully Saddam, and they cowered instead. If the UN's purpose is to make war unnecessary, then it also failed. You go ahead and convince yourself that the US is the unreasonable belligerent, and that poor Iraq under Saddam was without reproach.

So, all you have to do is make a case (true or not) that another country is a threat to you, and you can then declare war on them without the UN or anyone else giving their permission?

Essentially, yes, that is the criteria. See below for a more complete jus ad bellum list.

A more obvious one would be the interpretation that you must actually be attacked before you can invade another country to defend yourself.

You have a very naive and limited interpretation of justification for war. But, if that is the case, it is easy to understand the US's jus ad bellum rational. In fact, it was part of Powell's speech to the UN. Iraq tried to assassinate a former President. Iraq repeatedly fired on US aircraft patrolling the "no fly zone". Iraq failed to fulfill the terms of it's cease fire agreement from Gulf War I. Iraq was negotiating and providing aid directly to Ansar Al Islam, an affiliate of our sworn enemy and many other terrorist organizations. Iraq was suspected of stockpiling proscribed weapons materials and harassed and blocked attempts by the UNSCOM to discover the truth, leading people to believe such weapons existed.

I have no idea what you mean by this, but from where I sit, illegal war looks a lot scarier than legal war.

War means the bombing of innocents. War means horror, both during and after. When we get to the point where war is authorized or encouraged by committee's of bureaucrats, then the world will become a seriously dangerous place.

For discussion, consider Professor Brian Orend's proposed jus ad bellum Just War Tenets -

• JWT 1. Just cause. A state must have a just cause in launching a war. The causes most frequently mentioned by the just war tradition include: self-defence by a state from external attack; the protection of innocents within its borders; and, in general, vindication for any violation of its two core state rights: political sovereignty and territorial integrity.<>
  
• JWT 2. Right intention. A state must intend to fight the war only for the sake of those just causes listed in JWT 1. It cannot legitimately employ the cloak of a just cause to advance other intentions it might have, such as ethnic hatred or the pursuit of national glory.<>
  
• JWT 3. Proper authority and public declaration. A state may go to war only if the decision has been made by the appropriate authorities, according to the proper process, and made public, notably to its own citizens and to the enemy state(s).<>
  
• JWT 4. Last resort. A state may resort to war only if it has exhausted all plausible, peaceful alternatives to resolving the conflict in question, in particular through diplomatic negotiation.<>
  
• JWT 5. Probability of success. A state may not resort to war if it can reasonably foresee that doing so will have no measurable impact on the situation. The aim here is to block violence which is going to be futile.<>
  
• JWT 6. (Macro-) proportionality. A state must, prior to initiating a war, weigh the expected universal good to accrue from its prosecuting the war against the expected universal evils that will result. Only if the benefits seem reasonably proportional to the costs may the war action proceed.<>
  [st]The tenets are discussed in Professor Orend book, The Morality of War, and I referenced them from an article in the Military Law Review - Vol 186, Page 128.