I have to agree with London_Calling, as I believe that intent is the defining characteristic of morality. If you kill a guy because he’s about to murder someone, that’s moral; if you kill that same guy just for fun, that’s immoral (even if it is a bad guy).
Whether or not the war was moral depends on our reason(s):
If we went into the war in Iraq out of our own security interest as was stated by the Bush and his Friends, this would neither have been moral or amoral. Survival is amoral.
If we had gone in for the security of the world at large or for the benefit of the Iraqi people, I believe that would have been a moral act, as that is a reason derived from wanting to do a general good (which is my definition of a moral act).
If we had gone in to secure oil contracts or whatever, it would have been an immoral act, as trying to enrich one’s self while unnecessarily harming others is an immoral rationale. Note that competition for limited resources (such as businesses competing for market share) is not immoral, because they knowingly enter into the competition with a (relatively) defined set of rules.
That’s my take on the morality of thing. You can call it moral or immoral depending on what the principal reasons for going to war were. Note if it was a complex multi-reasoned affair (as I suspect it might be), then it may be morally ambiguous (i.e. if we went in for security, oil and to liberate the Iraqis, then this would have both moral and immoral components).
Having immoral elements to it won’t taint the whole affair ?
Then you have cause and consequence. You are morally responsible for the consequences of your actions. If your “moral” actions ends up causing more “evil” than “good”… then you are responsible. If Iraq ends up in a very nasty civil war after Bush takes out the troops with more dead than the Saddam era… was the War moral ?
In reality, the reasons were probably much more complex than that.
THere was security. There was a desire to remake the Middle East into something more decent. There was the desire to take down a genocidal tyrant. There was the desire to secure oil supplies for the long term. There may even have been something personal.
Since we can never know the real reasons, we can only look at the effects and compare them to the stated objectives. There is no point in drawing conclusions based on our imaginary view of what GWB really thinks.
hhmmm… you got it wrong adaher. What if Bush introduced a virus that only kills arabs ? Would that be amoral ? VERY !
Now lets say the result is world peace ? Suddenly the whole world becomes one big united planet. That single amoral genocide allowing the human race to unite. The effects are great… so looking only at the effects does not determine the morality of the action.
If for example Bush was acting morally... but his nice war has become extremely divisive to the world. The UN collapses... Europe re-arms itself... and terrorism explodes world wide ? The effects certainly don't reflect the "do-good" attitude of Bush do they ?
So effects are important... especially if they could be foreseen... but they don't determine morality.
**hhmmm… you got it wrong adaher. What if Bush introduced a virus that only kills arabs ? Would that be amoral ? VERY !
**
Of course. What if he thought it was actually a cure for cancer and he had the best of intentions? Would it matter? Results matter a lot more to me than intentions. Maybe I’m just an old-fashioned American though.
**Now lets say the result is world peace ? Suddenly the whole world becomes one big united planet. That single amoral genocide allowing the human race to unite. The effects are great… so looking only at the effects does not determine the morality of the action.
**
You are looking at two effects. One bad, leading to another which is good. Obviously, it’s a value judgement. Let’s say that theoretically killing 400 million Arabs would bring world peace. Would it be a good thing? I don’t think so, I don’t think very many people would think so.
But lets’s say you have a genocide going on. Over 1000 people are being killed every day in this nation. Military experts expect that to end the genocide will cost 2000 civilian deaths. I think that’s more than worth it, and the civilians probably would too. In the invasion of France, 14,000 French civilians were killed by the Allies. Most French thought the price was well worth it.
**If for example Bush was acting morally… but his nice war has become extremely divisive to the world. The UN collapses… Europe re-arms itself… and terrorism explodes world wide ? The effects certainly don’t reflect the “do-good” attitude of Bush do they ?
**
Not going to happen. Europe has no will to rearm, terrorism has not exploded worldwide and is unlikely to over this if it hasn’t already. The UN may collapse someday, but I fail to see how that will affect the world one way or the other.
… but was it foreseeable ? I can entertain the idea that Bush was “moral” about the war. (Though his advisors were obviously entertaining other objectives or fantasies.) It might have become a “darn huge mistake”… and still remain moral initially… unless you neglected to think about the aftermath of your actions.
What spoils it for me was the RECKLESSNESS in which it was conducted. No "moral" war would have to be forcefed to most of the world. It was very easy to foresee that this whole thing would cause more damage than good... a disunited west is a everything Osama ever wanted. Arabs feeling humiliated by US overpowering too.
Taking down Saddam ? MORAL
Taking down Saddam no matter what ? NOT MORAL
We were right about all the events we foresaw with the exception of one: there was a bigger insurgency than we expected in the Sunni areas. Bad for us, but hardly significant on the international scene.
No mass refugees, no use of WMD, no mass starvation, no falling of moderate regimes, no increase in terrorism as of yet.
These were hysterical predictions of the anti-war left and in retrospect turned out to be very wrong. As if that was any great surprise. The US has done this kind of mission on a smaller scale many times and done it well. It’s just that some people weren’t paying attention.
No increase in terrorism ? Are you sure ?!
Just because the “homeland” isn’t getting hit… it doesn’t mean other places aren’t. Terrorism is increasing.
By foreseeing I meant many things… most outside of Iraq. (Unless civil war ensues… its hard to argue against the benefits to the Iraqi people.) I think Bush was inconsequential about the Iraq war as far as the international scene mattered… and therefore any morality claimed was lost.
**Just because the “homeland” isn’t getting hit… it doesn’t mean other places aren’t. Terrorism is increasing.
**
Not in Israel, not in Russia, not in India, not in Africa, not here. That doesn’t leave many other places where terrorism is a major problem. In Israel and India specifically it has actually decreased in the last year, a lot.
**I think Bush was inconsequential about the Iraq war as far as the international scene mattered… and therefore any morality claimed was lost.
**
The worst thing that happened on the international scene was the disapproval of some nations. It doesn’t amount to anything.
Terrorism in Russia hasn’t increased ? India ? You sure ? Last I heard the russian trains and hospitals have been targeted. India had a bomb or two.
Other countries like indonesia, philipines too. Terrorism might not be as high as in the 70's... numerically. Dont know... but its higher than pre-9/11 for sure.
Going back to the morality issue, there’s an interesting Gallup poll out on what American’s think constitutes a justification for war:
So, without the imminent threat of WMD’s or terrorists, the administration’s case for invasion would have fallen on deaf ears. I’m surprised at this result, as it seems that an awful lot of American’s are climbing on the liberation bandwagon as a CYA fallback. Perhaps they just haven’t finished thinking it all through yet.
I believe the administration was emphatically predicting that we’d find a whole lot of weapons of mass destruction, too. It doesn’t speak well for our precognitive abilities that we haven’t found any at all.
Yeah, we made an assumption on the mindset of the Iraqis. And while I think there could be other situations where it might be hazy what the population thinks, we could be pretty certain that most Iraqis wanted Saddam out. Besidest he obvious fact that most normal people don’t like to live in a country ruled by terror, we saw the Shi’a uprising in the South after Gulf War I, and we were pretty familiar with what the Kurds in the North thougt. That’s a pretty big majority right there. Of course we can’t assume that all Shi’a and all Kurds think alike, but I believe we had a fair assessment of the mindset of most of that population. What little polling info is available now has shown that to be true.
Your second point has some validity, but I’m not sure what the alternative is. The best we can do is make sure they (the Iraqis) are vested in their own future. Make sure that the country doesn’t end up being divided up solely per the interests of foreign corporations and governments. Or per the interests of domestic corporations, for that matter.
It hangs perfectly well. The information was, as far as we know faulty, and that’s the best word that can be used to describe it. However, the voices of dissent on the other side were quite clear and well documented on these boards the past year in spite of the neverending equivocations from invasion apologists. So many politicians in the US jumped on the bandwagon of “let’s go to war based on a lot of unsupported assertions”, but how many of them did you actually hear providing reasonable, well-supported arguments?
When dealing with ignorance all it takes is one source.
Abe:
What you described is not lying. I don’t see it hanging together at all. Keep in mind that you and I haven’t seen all the documents that Bush and Blair saw. I see no reason for Blair, or the war-supporting Democrats, to cover Bush’s ass.
I believe the administration was emphatically predicting that we’d find a whole lot of weapons of mass destruction, too. It doesn’t speak well for our precognitive abilities that we haven’t found any at all.
Granted, but that has nothing to do with the security situation, assuming they don’t exist. If they do, then we’d better hope we find them before the resistance or Al Qaeda does.