(Failing To) Justify the Iraq War

Thomas Byrne writes an interesting blog, in an intelligent way that is somewhat of a rarity for the blogosphere. Of course, that doesn’t mean that he is right on everything. As this blog post on the Iraq War shows. Let’s take a look:

The idea that the UK went into Iraq to help its people is simply untrue – the war was justified in the UK on the grounds of WMD, i.e. on self-serving grounds. Even if the wars were for completely self-serving grounds, the long-term benefits to the Iraqi and Afghanistani people still remain as a valid argument. I don’t really see the hypocricy. Going to war on self-serving grounds and taking care to ensure the long-term stability of the country aren’t mutually exclusive. It doesn’t follow from the fact that the war was on self-serving grounds that the West have no care about the civilian death toll – thats clearly false.

Y’know, I’m not entirely sure why the UK and US went to war in Iraq. There have been so many different reasons and, well, lies, that I lose sight of what exactly happened. However the West may have cared about the civilian death toll, but their failure to do anything to minimise that death toll through decent planning is probably what has convinced some that they didn’t give a fuck about “collateral damage”.

Saddam’s previous atrocities and the likelihood that they would get repeated nullify any moral arguments against the war, in my opinion – they stop me from having any moral issues about regime change that I would have otherwise had.

Morality is not a question of absolutes, particularly when it comes war. The assertion that there were atrocities under Saddam has to be countered with the atrocities committed after the fall of Saddam, by both the West and others. Even when a war can be framed in broad ideas of good and evil – such as World War Two – there are still acts that are at best morally dubious committed by the “good guys.”

Iraq was clearly a threat to stability in the region – Saddam had already shown a willingness to invade a neighbouring state and a willingness to commit genocide. I don’t doubt that the risk of WMD was exaggurated, but it was nonetheless a risk – even if Saddam didn’t have nuclear capacity, he had a record of using chemical weapons on civilians.

Saddam’s regime was a threat to the stability in the region – as is the Iraq War. This is Morton’s Fork – instability in the region caused by Saddam, or instability caused by the West. There is little that has happened since the Iraq invasion to make the area any more stable. In fact, quite the opposite.

Furthermore, chemical weapons are often defined by experts in the field as weapons of mass destruction – something Saddam arguably made clear by his actions. However, the invasion was justified by talk of Saddam’s nuclear capability – which did not exist. So then we come to intention – given a chance, Saddam would have got his hands on nukes. But he didn’t actually have them, and if we are going to invade countries based on wanting to get nuclear capability, then we’d better gear up for attacks on North Korea and Iran as well. But more on that later.

Obviously civilian deaths because of the invasion are regrettable.

And easier to say that from the safety of the West when your family and friends aren’t the ones dying.

But you have to look at the longer-term picture. Noone can quantify how many civilians Saddam was responsible for killing: Kurds were placed into hidden mass-graves, and noone can really quantiy the death-count resulting from Saddam diverting water away from Shiite areas and razing Shiite farmland. I’m happy to take 2million as an estimate: How many more civilians would have died if Saddam stayed in power? How many would have died under the rule of his sons after Saddam?

How many have died as a result of the war? How many others have been affected or radicalised as the result of the war? We don’t know. But this is another example of Morton’s Fork, isn’t it? Death from peace under Saddam or death from war brought from the West.

How many would die early from being unable to eat properly or drink clean water as a result of Iraq being unable to develop under Saddam?

How many people died when the power went down in the relatively civilised parts of Iraq as a result of the Western invasion? How many people have died as a result of the bombings of crucial infrastructure in Iraq since the war and the horrific sectarian since 2003? Life wasn’t rosy under Saddam, for sure. But it has hardly been a barrel of laughs since he’s gone, either.

These questions are completely speculative, but I don’t think its unreasonable to say that it would be more than that died in the Iran-Iraq war alone.

Which, by definition, is pure speculation.

Iraq now has a real chance to develop into a decent country: it has a proper constitution, an elected government and has a decent crack at developing peace between Iraq’s different people’s.

This doesn’t follow. The fact that Saddam is gone doesn’t guarantee peace between the different people of Iraq. Indeed, many people believe the reason why Iraq was at relative peace for so long was because of Saddam’s draconian rule. Fuck me, I’m not going to defend the gassing of the Marsh Arabs, or the continual attacks on the Kurds – or any of the other crimes carried by Saddam. But one of the many problems with the invasion of Iraq is the failure of the Coalition of the Willing to come up with a plan to reconstruct Iraq after the War. And it failed to come up with a good plan to deal with the inevitable ethnic conflict we see in the country to this day.

Obviously Iraq still suffers from violence and sectarianism, but that was to be expected.

Yes it was, so why was there no plan put in place to deal with it?

We shouldn’t ignore the successes: violence is going down, Iraq has a proper constitution and is now making some attempt to balance the interests of the different sects in Iraq.

Evidence please. And violence probably would go down after the troop surge, wouldn’t it? The actual state of the ethnic conflict in Iraq, and the efficacy of the institutions created to deal with it, won’t become clear until the West has left Iraq. There is, at this moment in time, no reason for particular optimism about the state of play in Iraq.

Iraq has come a long way in the last two years – and it will continue to do so.

Yes, it has come a long way in the last two years – and in the eight years since the war. But then the anarchy caused by the invasion means that any sort of stability is a good thing, and relatively easy to achieve. If you put enough boots on the ground there.

In, in 10 years time Iraq will hopefully be reasonably stable; whereas if Saddam was still there who knows what state it would be in?

Again, speculation. Iraq might be great in 10 years time, it might be a complete disaster area. The only way we will be able to tell is in 10 years time. But let’s hold off celebrating the invasion of Iraq until we know that there is actually a stable system in place.

Those who howl about how America and Britain don’t tackle countries like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are right; do have Human Rights problems. But they have nothing on Saddam – he tortured and erased entire villages (see Dujail massacre), diverted water away from Shiite territory to massage his ego and used chemical weapons on the Kurds.

And what about North Korea? Or Iran? Borderline totalitarian regimes with terrible track records of human rights violations that are given a wide berth by the West because, well, they’d be too much of a problem to take on. Both in the Axis of Evil as well… remember that phrase? It was given as another reason for attacking Iraq. But I digress. The point is that the invasion of Iraq on the grounds of human rights violations sadly doesn’t stand up to close analysis. This world is full of states that violate human rights. We can’t fight them all.

Cooperating with countries who have minor-ish Human Rights issues to remove a bloodthirsty genocidal dictator is an example of the ends justifying the means in my book, or would they rather we achieve nothing at all?

Talking about countries with “minor-ish Human Rights issues” is like talking about someone who has Prostate cancer having “minor-ish cancer issues”. It may be better than lung cancer, but that is purely relative, and of little comfort of you are one of the ones suffering from it. Other countries who might be suffering from “minor-ish” human rights issues are China and Russia – places where an conservative, anti-government blogger like Thomas might have a real problem.

And “would they rather we achieve nothing at all”? Let’s turn the question on its head – what have we achieved? It is not so much that the jury is out on Iraq, but rather that the jury has let to be convened to even begin its deliberations. Yes, few sane people would mourn the demise of Saddam and his terrible regime. But that doesn’t mean that, by default, what has been created in its place is any better than what went before. And even if in ten, or twenty, years’ time Iraq is a stable democracy, then I can guarantee that he poorly planned and poorly executed invasion of Iraq that was based on lies will remain a stain on the reputations of both the UK and US.