As Ayn Rand said to William F. Buckley, “Hyew arrr too intelligent to belief in Gott.”
Got it - that was indeed just a series of partisan pot shots, nothing thoughtful.
There’s no need to try to engage **John ** on any deeper level, people.
Well, it would be Serbia, not Kosovo, but I know what you mean. You have to do a lot of tap dancing to say that wasn’t an aggressive military action. We were not attacked, and it was an internal issue for what was then the remainder of Yugoslavia. At any rate, you may procede to tap dance: please define “aggressive” and tell us how the action against Serbia does not fit that definition but the action against Iraq does. And fill me in on that “unjust” part, too, please.
Is this one of those trick questions? Are we to believe that you haven’t been advised of our views? That you don’t already know what we mean by unjust?
It was waged for two or three conflicting agendas – breaking OPEC, establishing a neocon free-market corporate paradise, removing Hussein as an international irritant and complication, removing Hussein as a wild card on the global oil prices – none of which had any least thing to do with the freedom or safety or welfare of the Iraqi people or any of their neighbors.
What was just about it? We deposed a dictator? The Iraqis remember Hussein’s iron fist with nostalgia now! Sure, you had to live in fear of the secret police, but if you kept your mouth shut about politics you could have a decent life! At least most people had jobs and health care and food and clean water, and a man could go out for groceries without carrying an AK-47, and a woman could go out, period!
Justice, as we defined it at Nuremburg, is based on necessity when it comes to war. Any nation may defend itself from imminent threat. (History buffs amongst us will recall that Germany tried to do exactly that, they tried to claim that Polish troops had raided over the border and attacked a radio station.)
If you have a case to present that will convince us that Iraq represented some imminent and desperate threat, please bring it forward.
Didn’t you read the Financial Times this week?
libertarianism is dead politically. 
I’d like to die and go to Heaven and find her there, so I could follow her around and rub her nose in it. Of course, thats unlikely on at least two counts.
Was it Dorothy Parker? Upon hearing the news that Calvin Coolidge was dead, remarkeded “How can they tell?”
How is that “unjust”? I really don’t know what definition you’re using. If it’s a legal definition, then lets see it. If it’s a coloquial definition, then we’ll just have to agree to disagree-- my definition is different.
Well, I never said it was just. I don’t think it’s a matter of justice one way or the other. But you’re making a case that the war was executed poorly, not that it was “unjust”. If Iraqis, as a whole, remember Hussein with nostalgia*, that’s because of our incompetence, not our intentions. I think we can safely assume that most Iraqis, pre-war, wanted Saddam out. We actually were greeted as liberators-- for the first few weeks. It’s when we became occupiers that we lost the hearts and minds.
*I don’t accept that, btw, unless you have a cite.
You are familiar with the concept of genocide, are you not? Or its synonym, “ethnic cleansing”? You are familiar, I trust, with the concept that the civilized world has an obligation to stop it? You’ve heard of “Never again”, right? You do recall, I trust, that that was why we sent people over there, that it worked, and that we then left? You were, in fact, not comatose during the Nineties, I trust?
OK. So, what threat were we defending ourselves against in Serbia?
What definition are you using?!
Can’t you agree, just to start with, that when two nations go to war (or, for that matter, when two men brawl), at least one of them is in the wrong?!
“We” means NATO, representing the civilized world (Russia blocked the UN, which Clinton tried first, due to its historic ties with Serbia). The civilized world nearly unanimously supported the effort to end the genocide in Serbia and Bosnia. The threat was to civilization itself, and incidentally to the political and economic stability of Europe.
But you know that, or at least have no excuse not to.
Yes.
No, that’s not a synonym of “genocide”.
Hmm. Sounds like what a lot of people were saying about Iraq. I think you can make a stronger case that Saddam was genocidal than you could for Milosovich.
BTW, we never “left” Kosovo. It’s still a UN protectorate, as was established after the unsanctioned attacks by NATO in the late 90s.
As an issue of morality (right vs wrong), I think that is generally true, although not always. In the particular case of the Kosovo war, I think we were morally justified to interfere. But I also think we were morally justifed to do so in Iraq, too. I think it was unwise and unnecessary, but not immoral.
:eek: Why?
In fact, Russia brought the issue of unauthorized bombing ot the UNSC and was supported by China and Namibia (a rotating member). So no, it wasn’t just Russia. You can hand-wave Namibia if you want, but not China.
Civilization itself? World civilization would have collapsed had we not interfered in Kosovo??? Can you flesh that argument out a bit, please. I didn’t realize the economic stabilty of Europe was dependent on the status of Kosovo. Can you flesht that one out a bit more, too, please.
Saddam was an evil tyrant, and couldn’t, in any moral sense, be called a legitimate ruler of that country.