Dozens of mass graves have been uncovered all over Iraq since Saddam’s ouster, but this report of a mass grave containing the remains of 200 Kurdish children has a special horror. It’s a reminder that regardless of the number of WMDs we ever find, overthrowing Saddam was a good thing to do.
Why don’t we go into Uganda and Myanmar too?
Let’s be the “police man of the world.”
What better way can there be to spend American tax dollars?
Saddam’s regime was a hateful blemish on the world = No Debate
The war was fought under the justification of WMD and not regime change = No Debate(AFAIC)
The justifications were lies and thus the war was illegal = Not yet established.
There are many regimes that suppress and murder their own people. China, Cuba, N Korea, half the continent of Africa, etc. What is the number of murders that justify intervention from the outside? Certainly Saddam was a despot, certainly the world is better off without him. Under what logic do we overthrow Saddam but give Most Favored Nation status to the butchers of Tianamen?
They have WMD - namely, nuclear weapons.
So in their case, it is too late for a quick victory. This was not the case with Iraq.
I have said it before, but I will repeat - my objections to the US acting as the world’s policeman are practical, not moral. If we could overthrow every tinpot dictator on earth as quickly as we did Saddam, we would be almost morally compelled to do it.
The difficulty is that we can’t, not that we shouldn’t.
Regards,
Shodan
Should we prohibit food relief because we didn’t feed some other starving people? Should UNICEF be criticized for helping some needy children, because it didn’t help some other children?
You ask how to justify freeing the Iraqi people from Saddam. An equally good question is how to justify not freeing the others you mention from their horrendous regimes.
From a human rights perspective and being in need of humanitarian relief Iraq was hardly the worst and there are plenty of countries in Africa, Asia and, maybe, even South America which are much worse.
The fact is that the USA chose to conduct an illegal war of aggression contrary to international laws and that has done some serious damage to international relations and has heightened tensions around the world. The USA could have worked with, rather than against, the UN and achieved the same regime change without the neagtive consequences.
And BTW, Human rights were never used as the justification. It was WMD. Remember? Where are those pesky WMD?
http://home.cogeco.ca/~kurdistanobserver/2-7-02-88-gassing-still-killing.html
It took only 15 years to topple Saddam after this atrocity.
Well done!
While have serious reservations about the motives behind the war and reservations about how the US and the UK intends to run Iraq, I still agree with December the net effect of the war so far has been positive so far. Saddam has gone and the people who benefit most from this are the Iraqis.
However, I do still reserve absolute judgment until the long-term effects become clear.
I am glad Saddam Hussein is no longer in charge of Iraq.
I am utterly skeptical about the administration’s motivations:
I hope that the coalition can assist the Iraqi people in rebuilding the country so that conditions in Iraq are better than they were under Saddam, which were acknowledgedly ghastly, and that the repercussions of Western interference in an Arabic nation do not make things worse for the West.
Should Finland be embarassed because they didn’t topple Saddam 15 years ago? What’s better – doing nothing or doing something worthwhile in a less-than-ideal way?
What’s better doing something worthwhile in a less-than-ideal way, or doing something in an ideal way?
The OP is a strawman. I have never seen anyone argue that Iraqis were better off under Saddam, or that Saddam was a good leader, or that he didn’t abuse human rights.
Invading another country under false pretenses is a serious matter, even if it does have a net positive outcome (although that is not clearly the case yet in Iraq). IMHO post hoc justifications can be found for a wide range of unpalatable actions. This thing was sold as part of the war on terrorism, and it still remains unclear how that is the case. There was no debate in the UN about political killings, mass graves or torture before – the world knew those things. The debate was about WMD.
In the past, the UN has intervened in many human rights crises (East Timor, Rwanda, Kosovo). Granted, they have not always done a wonderful job, but they have intervened. The US did not explore this possibility at all. Bush felt it necessary to go to Iraq unilaterally, while invalidating the security council (and therefore the whole UN structure), on a matter totally unrelated to human rights. So paradoxically, the argument could be made that intervention in Iraq will only stand to make future human rights more difficult, because the UN’s authority is waning.
Shodan and december, your points are well taken. However, it seems to me that if the United States wants to begin to eliminate despots on the principle of human rights, then the proponents of that policy should run and win an election on that platform. So if Bush wants to be an interventionist, then he should run as such in 2004 so we know exactly what we’re getting.
We cannot help everybody, but that does not mean we should help nobody. If you plan to pick off despots one by one and Iraq was a good place to start, I have no quarrel with that as long as you’re being honest. Just don’t tell me it’s about weapons that don’t exist.
While WMD was, unquestionably, touted as the primary justification for action against Saddam’s regime, it was never the ONLY one. During the time it takes to thoroughly scour Iraq for more conclusive WMD evidence – which, oddly enough, seemed to require an almost endless patience when it was UN inspectors doing the looking, but now that it’s American soldiers, everybody’s got an eye on their stopwatches – we continue to discover “more good reasons” Saddam is no more.
But for the “sideline” players who sat this one out, and sit EVERY one out ( Wonder how long the Iraqis would have had to wait on being liberated by the Finns, just to pick an example… Maybe mazirian can shed further light on that scenario), any chance to spin this as a black eye for the coalition must be seized.
The fact that “human rights” wasn’t advertised as “the” reason to go into Iraq doesn’t negate the real and tangible benefits to the Iraqi population that followed as a result. I don’t care if they EVER find the “smoking gun” everyone seemingly clamors for.
Those who are predisposed to support the U.S. position already have enough “no-brainer” violations of 1441 to point to as justification. Those who are predisposed to find fault with every action we take around the globe will have a hard time accepting ANY evidence yet to be found as valid.
Damn, if they’d buried the dolls a decent distance away, my love for Saddam would still live.
Has Finland declared itself the first and foremost protector of the downtrodden Kurds (someone should really mention something to Turkey, otherwise they are the next target of liberation) with the mighty Finnish military machine?
Are you really comparing a country of 5 million people to the world’s only superpower? We did what we could as a member of the United Nations, but at least we weren’t cheerleading SH when he was testing WMDs against the Iranians and the Kurds.
I have it on good authority that Saddam also like to run over cute, fluffy kittens with tanks.
God bless you, President Bush.
China justified their annexation of Tibet on grounds that Tibet was a feudal society and would be better off under Chinese rule. So I see december is supporting this kind of policy. Tibet, of course, had been historically subservient to China anyway, so at least China had some historical justification which the USA in Iraq totally lacks.
The fact is that the invasion of Iraq was a violation of international law as embraced by the US customarily and in the different treaties it belongs to, including the Vienna convention and the UN. Now, if the USA want to say countries are free to do as they please unilaterally, without any regard for international law, then it should say so clearly and pull out of the different treaties and conventions and become a rogue state. It cannot expect others to abide by the rules while not respecting them itself.
You’re close. It was actually lion cubs that were mistreated.