Casualty: The Legal Case for War

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
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[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
BTW, back on topic for this thread, which is the LEGAL case,

Makkun, your links confirm what I said above – The British based their case on the U.N. resolutions. If you go to the text of the resolutions, you will see that Saddam had the duty to demostrate the WMD were destroyed. He did not, and did not even cooperate with the inspectors who were trying to verify that. That put him in breach, which was all that was necessary for the legal cause.[/quote]

Just to be contrary:

"Blix, executive chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, told the council that inspectors have been given prompt access to Iraqi sites and have faced ‘relatively few difficulties.’ He said Iraq’s cooperation could be a result of strong outside pressure.

ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the council that inspectors have found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapons program

Blix said inspectors have not found any evidence of mobile or underground weapons facilities. He said Iraq is making a serious effort to quantify biological and chemical weapons destroyed in 1991, unearthing several complete bombs from a re-excavated site.

ElBaradei said inspectors have found no evidence that high-strength aluminum tubes and powerful magnets Iraq has purchased were intended to produce nuclear weapons.

ElBaradei also said accusations that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger are “unfounded.”

He said Iraqi scientists have agreed to be interviewed without escorts or recording devices, and that inspectors were still seeking to have those interviews conducted outside the country."

– CNN, 03/07/03

If the UK and the US are convinced and they say they have evidence, then one would expect they would be able to tell us where is this stuff. When asked if he was getting sufficient cooperation from Western intelligence agencies, he explained: Not yet. We get some, but we don’t get all we need.

– Hans Blix, Independent, 12/21/02

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[quote]w2097 wrote:
The Mage wrote:
“Then exactly what did you mean we were responsible?”

That Iraqis had nothing to do with Sept 11th, while we are the direct cause of their huge civilian casualties. If you read the post that I replied to it should be clear then.[/quote]

Uh No. Obviously you need English lessons.

Let?s look at what was said.

First hedo said, [quote] ?Wonder what the citizens of Iraq thought of the death toll in the US on Sept. 11th.

?Think they took it lightly? Maybe rejoiced in it? Bad Karma.? [/quote]

This was talking about the attack of September 11th. Now what did you say?

Now exactly how am I supposed to take this response? Where does it say it is about us attacking Iraq? To me it looks like you are saying The 911 attacks were our fault.

Now I know you are not saying that, but it should be obvious how I came to that conclusion.

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Moriarty,

“Thunder, you’re misunderstanding the argument. The argument isn’t that ‘if you attack Saddam you must attack everyone else,’ the argument is that if we currently utilize options other than war to tame dictators just as ‘bad’ or worse than Saddam, then obviously war was not the last option (which is commonly held as a requisite for taking the country to war).”

Then it should be stated so.

But you ignore the history of the diplomacy. We use all kinds fo measures to deal with ‘bad guys’, but when we exhaust those measures and get no meaningful results, war is the option. There comes a time when peaceful measures don’t secure the peace.

“Let me explain it simply: The President had/has assured us that taking the United States to war is to be done as the last possible resort.”

Yes, and it was done so. Diplomacy with Iraq had been attempted for the better part of a decade. When it came time to create an ultimatum, it was clear there were parties in the UNSC were not acting in good faith with the insistence on making Saddam comply with his obligations. More sanctions/inspections would have produced the same fruitless results it did up until 1998.

So, in short, diplomacy was finished, assuming the warnings of the international community are real.

“When no WMD were found, the President justified the war by stating that a brutal dictator is now gone, and that war was still a last resort.”

And so it is. What else could have been accomplished through diplomacy? Once Saddam performed enough to get the sanctions off his back, he was going to reconstitute his nuclear program.

“The President currently resorts to options other than war in dealing with other dictators, so being a “cruel dictator” is obviously not justification enough to call war a “last resort.” Understand?”

Certainly, and well he should. Iraq got 12 years of diplomacy - essentially three administrations. Understand?

“I’m not saying I agree with this argument, and obviously this is not the only argument the Administration has made for war, but I think I have clearly demonstrated that while your simplified, misinterpretation of the argument can be “put to bed”, the actual argument is not so easy to dismiss.”

My point is simple - many, perhaps not you, think that there is a moral nexus between toppling one bad guy and being obligated to topple all the bad guys. Your argument is completely different and is one worth addressing.

What I am ‘putting to bed’ is that limited fallacious assumption that many here are working off of when they complain about the war.

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The Mage wrote:
“Now I know you are not saying that, but it should be obvious how I came to that conclusion.”

Yes, because you hadn’t read my previous posts and just took the last few ones out of context of the topic as a whole. The topic was ‘how Americans react to Iraqi civilian casualties’. Hedo decided to compare that to Iraqi civilian reaction to 9/11 to which I pointed out that they were not the cause.

I now see how it appeared to you. Well, we’re both to blame, I should’ve typed with more clarity. Let’s call it quits.

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[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Moriarty,

“Thunder, you’re misunderstanding the argument. The argument isn’t that ‘if you attack Saddam you must attack everyone else,’ the argument is that if we currently utilize options other than war to tame dictators just as ‘bad’ or worse than Saddam, then obviously war was not the last option (which is commonly held as a requisite for taking the country to war).”

Then it should be stated so.
[/quote]

Agreed

This argument, in my mind, does not water. By that logic, even if Saddam fully complied with every clause and such of his obligation and had proven without a doubt he didn’t not have WMD, we were still right to go to war because after we lifted the sanctions he would try again. If that’s the case why have sanctions, or law for that matter, in the first place. “He’s just going to comply with his punishment and then commit another crime, so kill him now.”

Robert MacNamara (former secretary of defense to JFK and LBJ) spoke, I think, quite eloquently about this problem. Using sanctions to punish behavior or persuade behavior is not effective for many reasons, including:

  1. Sanctions are only effective when supported universally, which is near impossible to ensure.

  2. Sanctions tend to hurt the population more than the leader that should be punished.

  3. Sanctions cannot be pursued indefinitely, because of #2, and thus it is always possible for a guilty party to do as you describe above.

This leaves war as a recourse, however war is a blunt tool not well suited to modifying behavior in what we should consider a humane or civilized manner. In MacNamara’s estimation the only solution is a widely supported International Criminal Court which would allow us (the world) to more effectively punish the criminals of the world stage without resorting to war. Obviously, we (the United States) oppose such a thing, for various reasons.

[quote]
What I am ‘putting to bed’ is that limited fallacious assumption that many here are working off of when they complain about the war. [/quote]

Agreed. You’re absolutely right on this point.

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Moriarty,

You raise a good point about sanctions.

Which is precisely the reason I don’t endorse them. They are ineffective. They don’t hurt the folks we want to hurt.

Unfortunately, sanctions are the preferred method of avoiding reality at the highest levels of geopolitics. Without the guts to actually give warnings their due meaning - do what we say or we’ll hurt you - the likes of the UN rely on sanctions to give themselves the satisfaction that they ‘got tough’ on transgressors without having to actually do any of the heavy lifting in decisions on war and peace.

Look at Castro - he is nutty and powerful as ever. Sanctions haven’t done anything to Castro.

And, with all due respect to McNamara, an international court doesn’t scare anyone. Genocidal maniacs don’t fear being put on trial by the Western world - and, upping the ante, suicidal Islamists who would kill themselves to bring mass carnage simply laugh at a legal procedure that would put them in a comfy prison cell.

There’s no fear of an international court for the kinds of atrocities these savages are committing. All the court does is make us feel better about ourselves because we convince ourselves that the court would be a humane alternative and human progress toward a world without war. I am under no such illusions.

Moreover, the great part about international tribunals is that practically the only way to get someone tried for these ‘crimes’ is to wage war and win first, capture them, and then give them their ‘due process’.

While I don’t think international criminal courts are bad per se, I think their ability to influence bad behavior on a global scale - ie, deterrence of genocide, war, terror, etc. - is nil.