Two questions come to mind:
Who has rendered the decision that the morality of removing Saddam Hussein outweighs the morality of pre-emptively invading a foreign nation? You? Donald Rumsfeld? George W. Bush?
Who gave that person the right to render this decision?
I don’t consider S.H. to have been the legitamate ruler of Iraq. And, interesting enough, neither does the UN anymore. Brutal tyrants have no right to rule.
I think we all have to decide for ourselves what is moral. Not what is legal, but what is moral. Who gives you the right to make the moral decisions you make, rjung?
The point, as Sam pointed out was that the concept of threat changed. I realize that Saddam did not plan or possibly even know about the attack on 9/11. But it changed the way the US security folks think about possible threats. A couple tons of gas, a few cases of bugs, or even a small nuke is not much of a threat to the US in Iraq. Unless you consider that a small pleasure craft might be a delivery mechanism. They don’t need sophisticated missiles to do nasty things anymore. (not that they ever did, just that we all realize in now)
I’d like to chime in on one other thing. There may be an argument that the opportunistic nature of the Iraq war was a good thing. If we were looking for a place to tell rogue nations that they really really might want to quite being rogue I’m not sure a better place could have been chosen. Afgahnistan would not have done because they did arguably attack US soil. That is, Libya could have argued (within itself) that boisterous anti western attitudes are popular and so small pestering might be a good thing. After Iraq, however they might find it harder to beleive such a thing.
I’m certainly not arguing that this alone would have made the war moral, legal, or even desireable. Just that an argument along those lines could be formed. Often when you want to make a point (test case) you seek out a circumstance with the best chance of winning.
I’m not even drinking and still I write this badly. Sorry about the incoherence.
Why heck, thats worth 15000 dead Arabs any day:smack:
Where does the 15,000 figure come from? And how does it compare to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens who have disappeared under Saddam Hussein’s regime?
hhmmm... I disagree. If you do the right thing for the wrong reasons it doesn't make it right. Ends don't justify the means.
Especially if the lying was meant to delude the public for the reasons of the war. It would have been better if they had been honest about Iraq not being terrorist linked... but might serve as a staging ground for a more interventionist and preventive policy.
The War was possibly moral… but the lying changed that. Remember that the lying part was what made Europeans and Russians object. That objection and the war are creating divisions in world cooperation… so the lying was anything but a “detail”.
I make my own moral decisions, thankyouverymuch.
However… the moral decisions I make apply to myself, and not to others. I do not impose my morality upon others, especially not by force. And anyone who starts an unprovoked war has no right to claim morality of any kind, since he’s shown he has none.
George W. Bush is not god.
That’s right, it’s President Bush, who liberated millions of Iraqis and toppled one of the most horrible mass murderers in modern history (300,000 and counting), who is immoral. Got it.
Again, I think you are confusing legality with morality. Was the military intervention against Serbia (in response to the Kosovo situation) immoral?
Still, I’ve gotta go with the Pope on this:
Vatican Weighs In Against War
The fact that Saddam was a bad guy is not a sufficient moral justification for a war of aggression.
Squink:
Appeal to Authority? Doesn’t cut it.
I’m not even sure I’d call him an authority. He also doesn’t think that an epidemic of child molestation by priests is sufficient cause to take action either.
BTW, illegal and unjust are not equivalent to immoral.
John, it doesn’t cut it to completely ignore the opinion of the churches on moral issues either.
If it were just the Pope you’d have a good point, but a large fraction of the world’s religious authorities came out against the war on moral grounds. Here’s an assortment of their arguments.
Rather than them rehash all, I chose the Pope to introduce the large body of moral opinion that is still at odds with the president.
Or have all these folks changed their minds?
Squink:
Certainly the opinion of religious leaders is an indication that an act might not be moral, but it is not proof that it is not.
But it’s still unclear whether the pope was making a moral judgement or a legal one. He used the language of law, rather than of morality. But it is clear that the pope has a much more narrowly defined definition of a just/moral war than the world at large. From your cite:
Would you have called that war immoral?
You Know John, one of the things I thought was really remarkable about last spring’s rush to war, was the extent to which the opinions of the world’s religious leaders were marginalized. Here on the Dope, the Pope’s opposition to invasion was met with accusations that he supported terrorists. The president, a religious man, wasn’t nearly so blunt about it, but rather than engage in an honest discussion of the moral underpinnings for a preemptive war, we got this cock-and-bull story about Saddam posing a threat to innocent Americans. Everyone knew that Saddam was a bad guy before the war, but no one, not even the president, tried to make the case that alone was enough to justify an invasion. The postwar collapse of Bush’s imminent threat rationale makes it important (for some) to come up with another justification for the war, but that can only come about by finally addressing the concerns of the world’s religious and moral leaders. Those issues go a little deeper than the “Saddam BAD, so US GOOD” rhetoric so popular among the pro-war faction.
[quote]
Squink**:
I don’t disagree with your post. But I will still ask if it is possible to separate out the two acts-- the president’s justification for the war and the war itself-- and evaluate only the latter in terms of whether it is moral or not. Do you think that is a valid quesiton? It appear to me that many poster here are anable or unwilling to separate the two. I am trying to make th contention that it is valid to do so.
Where’d my post go? 
Retype, Try again:
That’s an interesting question, without the actual threat, and I think it’s a president’s moral duty to be damned sure that he only only responds to actual threats, we’re left with trying to balance the removal of Saddam, the liberation of Iraq and the fear we’ve imposed on countries that might want to fuck with the US, against the destabilizing influence of a policy of preemptive warfare, the question of whether we have the right to rebuild an alien society in whatever way that we see fit, and the hatred we’ve engendered in the population of many Arab and muslim states.
Such an evaluation might be doable, but I’d hate to be the one who’s position on the war forced them to try it. There’s no chance of there being a soundbyteable resolution here, but I suppose that the events of the next twenty years will serve to vindicate one side or the other.
Hold on there. Have you been reading this thread? See my first posting on this page.
Bush’s reluctance to actually have sex with those two words does nothing to the mitigate the actual absence of the imminent threats which he described in the run up to war. If you have available a soft, succinct euphemism for the president’s prewar WMD arguments, pray post it here, and we can discuss its merits relative to the term “imminent threat.”
This thread has mentioned Tony Blair a few times in the context of ‘why would he back Bush if he knew there was no evidence of WMDs?’.
Tony Blair told the UK Parliament that Iraq had WMD’s aimed at UK bases which would be ready to fire at 45 minutes notice.
Strangely none of these have turned up. :rolleyes:
The UK provided the US with documents purporting to show Saddam buying nuclear material from Africa.
These have now been revealed as forgeries. :rolleyes:
Robin Cook, a Governent Minister who had access to all top-level intelligence, resigned saying there was nothing that justified the war. :rolleyes:
Blair has a choice of two spheres of influence - Europe or the US.
The UK has an undistinguished record in Europe and the European Union has several faults (they can’t get their accounts audited, for starters!)
By contrast the US is very powerful, and we have a ‘special relationship’ with them.
So Blair, who loves the media attention, is delighted to be associated with the US.
I expect he advised Bush not to invade, but go for a second UN resolution. When it became apparent that Bush was going in anyway, Blair shrugged his shoulders and joined in.
Your request is good example of “begging the question”. We must assume that he used some euphemism for “imminent threat”, despite the facts. I must somehow prove a negative, that he did not. And you do not have to prove anything.
Well, at the risk of repeating, President Bush said nearly the opposite of “imminent threat” in his State of the Union address in January 2003: