Norman Geras presents a central part of the argument for war, arguing that war can be justified even when it is predictable in advance that it will do more harm than good, and that even aggressors aren’t fully responsible for the consequences of the wars they start. Here’s the crucial bit
in sum, those in the anti-war camp often argue as if there wasn’t actually a war going on – the real conflict on the ground being displaced in their minds by the argument between themselves and supporters of the war. Everything is the fault of those who took the US and its allies into that war and, secondarily, those who supported or justified this.To respond, I’ll begin by asking a question. Suppose those of us on the Left who opposed the Iraq war had prevailed. To what extent, if any, would we have been responsible for the crimes that Saddam would undoubtedly have committed while he remained in power?Except it isn’t. As I said in the earlier post, the war has two sides. One counter-argument here is likely to be that those who initiate an unjust war are responsible for everything they unleash. But first, this begs the question. Much of the case for the war’s being unjust was that it would have bad consequences. Yet, many of those bad consequences are the responsibility of forces prosecuting a manifestly unjust war – in both its objectives and its methods – on the other side. Secondly, it’s simple casuistry in assessing the responsibilities of two sides in a military conflict to load everything on to one of the sides – even where the blame for having begun an unjust and aggressive war is uncontroversial. Were the Japanese themselves responsible for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Adolf Hitler was responsible for many terrible crimes during the Second World War. But the fire bombing of Dresden? This is all-or-nothing thinking.
Based on the above argument[1], Geras’ answer would have to be “not at all”. Opponents of the war did not (with a handful of exceptions) support Saddam’s regime or assist it in committing its various crimes. And it’s clear here that Geras requires absolute and direct complicity. When Hitler fire-bombed London, it was obvious that, if the British ever got the chance they would in Churchill’s memorable phrase “give it all back, in good measure, pressed down and running over”, as of course they did. But since the bombing of Dresden was an unjust action, Hitler was not, in Geras’ view, morally responsible for it.
There’s a sense in which this is right, but it’s not the relevant one in asking the question “Should we have opposed the war”. In deciding to oppose the war, it was necessary to take account of all the consequences[2] of the decision insofar as they could be foreseen[3]. Those consequences included Saddam’s continuation in power, which would have cost thousands of lives and caused a lot of misery. The alternative was the war which has cost tens of thousands of lives and caused even more misery, something which should have been predictable in advance and was in fact predicted. If you accept this assessment, leaving Saddam in power was the lesser of two evils.
Since there are a lot of unknowns here, reasonable people differed about the best course of action before the war. Some believed that the war would be short that the transition to democracy would be rapid, and therefore that the war should be supported. Some believed the Administration’s claims about WMDs and Saddam’s to al Qaeda, which implied that leaving Saddam alone would be very dangerous. Most people who reasoned in this way have conceded that, at least ex post they were mistaken. Belle’s post on this was one of the best. Here’s another from Michael Ignatieff. Some people are still trying to argue that the good consequences of the war will eventually outweigh the bad, but this is becoming less and less plausible.
If you accept Geras’ argument, though, there’s no need to abandon support for this or any just war, even if its consequences are more evil than good. The bad consequences in Iraq are due to the insurgents who are unjustly resisting the Americans. And more generally, it’s hard to imagine any war that can’t be justified, on both sides, by this kind of argument. If your cause is just (in your own eyes), and the rules by which you fight it are justified (in your own eyes), then the death and carnage of war is all due to the manifestly unjust actions of the other side.
Given this analysis, it’s not surprising while supporters of the war have quibbled with recent estimates of civilian casualties, infant mortality and so on, few have given any indication that there is some level at which their support for the war would be withdrawn. The argument now isn’t about support or opposition to this war but about support for or opposition to war in general.
fn1. I haven’t checked, but I don’t think Geras has been entirely consistent in this respect.
fn2. This argument may be made either with regard to a case-by-case assessment of particular decisions, or to the formulation of general rules.
fn3. In making a judgement of this kind, it’s worth remembering that, most of the time, wars have been far more bloody and brutal than was expected on either side at the start. It’s more or less self-evident that at least one side in war has underestimated the costs and overestimated the benefits, but more common that both sides have done so.
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Perfect madness. Y’all are talking like this was a war proposed and debated like it were a hypothetical game of chess. Aaarg. This was a war proposed and marketed by a group of people who were quite clearly talking absolute crap: that they “knew” there were WMDs & where they were, that there was a definite AQ connection, that the financial costs (never specified) were to be sniffed at (for obviously preposterous reasons involving oil revenues), that we could have an occupation that was also a liberation (!), that this all had some damn thing to do with 9/11, that no reasonable plan for dealing with the aftermath was remotely necessary, that attacking an Arab country would make the Arabs Like Us… I remember arguing at the time that we should opppose this war because the people proposing the war were barking mad. And being laughed at. For the love of SpongeBob, if those people now proposing these Hard Questions had freaking asked sensible hard questions two years ago… well, we’d still be screwed, because the administration nuts would have done the same damn thing anyway. But at least we’d have been spared some of the ex post facto blathering. Sheesh.
Yes, Hitler was responsible for the bombing of Dresden, as it was a plausible response to the course of action he chose. Under the (extremely counterfactual) assumption that there was a feasible opposition to Hitler in pre-WW2 Germany Dresden would have been an ex-post argument justifying their opposition. Geras could maybe make a point based on probabilities, saying that the insurgency and its crimes were outside the expectable range of responses, but in 1939 the idea of Allied bombers firebombing Dresden was certainly less imaginable than the current situation.
That argument by Geras surely has to be one of the most absurd and intellectually dishonest I have heard even from the pro-war side, and does not deserve the elaborate rebuttal you give. These warmongers are only trying to hang on to a shred of their illusions and deny their blood-stained hands by any means they can, but it will not work.
If there’s one thing that I believe with deep certainty, it’s that moral responsibility is not a zero-sum “game”. Or, if it is, what sums to zero must be very closely causally related. Otherwise, moral responsibility itself dissolves into chance or determinism with little or no place for human choice. That well may correctly describe reality, but not reality as we are capable of experiencing it. We necessarily assume free will, and we necessarily assume moral choice. Thus, the decision to utilize firestorms as a war strategy, or to a-bomb Hiroshima or Nagasaki, or to bomb an Iraqi wedding party, must necessarily stand alone enough that a moral judgment about them is possible.
Yeah, Geras’s argument is weak. Imagine if people would apply this reasoning to everyday situations!~ What happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were pure evil (the fire bombing of Tokyo was just as bad, if not worse) but Geras practically says one can half-blame the chinese for Nanjing which is total rubbish…
What messinger said. Basically, it’s like this: war is hell and those who start it are responsible for all of it – they should be hung first. And then those from both sides responsible for individual crimes and atrocities should be prosecuted too, of course. Wasn’t all this discussed at length at the Nurnberg Trials?
You could fill a day discussing this kind of argumentation. First an out of context quote
That is, Norman Geras is not in dispute with me (or most of you) but just with those that support Zarqawi and the other ‘resistance’. It is really nice of him to keep other sane arguments out of his argumentation. That way he doesn’t have to address the issue of why flattening Fallujah helps in winning “hearts and minds” and making Iraq better of. It is a strange concept of war, if you’d be free of responsibility for the consequences of your actions. But by splicing the war in four that is what he does: 1st war) Saddam was evil, thus war is justified. 2nd war) The resistance is evil, thus war is justified 3rd war) bringing stability and democracy is good, thus war is justified 4th war) To hold elections, Iraq should be secured, thus war is justified. It is in no way comparable to what Walzer did. He created 4 parallel wars to distinguish between motives. Norman Geras splits the war in four to escape responsibility for the consequences of invading Iraq.John, you say: And more generally, it’s hard to imagine any war that can’t be justified, on both sides, by this kind of argument. If your cause is just (in your own eyes), and the rules by which you fight it are justified (in your own eyes), then the death and carnage of war is all due to the manifestly unjust actions of the other side. But this isn’t what Norman Geras says at all. His argument is about wars that are actually unjust, not merely ones that are believed to be unjust. Hence his argument doesn’t support any old war, but only just ones. If, however, you want to claim that this puts us in an epistemically hopeless position, since the best we can ever do is support a war which we believe to be just, and on Geras’s account we could always be wrong about this, then surely this problem also arises for your own justification of war in terms of preponderance of good over bad consequences. There are well-known and possibly insuperable problems about calculating the consequences of our actions, and we could always get it wrong, hence could believe ourselves to be justified in supporting a war when we’re not.
You’ve missed my point, Eve. I’m saying that, on Geras’ account, the justness of the cause is sufficient to make resort to war justified. Since (nearly) everyone believes in the justness of their cause, this means that war against those who obstruct your cause is almost always subjectively justified. The point is not that people may be right or wrong about the justness of their cause, but that whether they are right or wrong, Geras’ position points to war. I agree that judgements about consequences may be mistaken (and I say so), but a look at history tells us that the consequences of war have nearly always been more evil than good. So a focus on consequences leads to a position that is usually antiwar, while Geras’ argument leads to a position that is almost invariably prowar.
“Yes, Hitler was responsible for the bombing of Dresden, as it was a plausible response to the course of action he chose.” This hurts me more than it hurts you, you insensitive poster! swings rubber hose Seriously, this only confirms what I’ve known all along, that a good old consequence ethic, combined with the winner writing the history books (and, more importantly, writing those science-fiction books about what would have happened if we acted otherwise), can justify anything. Wouldn’t it be nice if people started taking responsibility for their own actions, instead of taking responsibility for everything else and then arguing that this stern responsibility we have of bringing about heaven on earth excuses all those minor sins we comitted on the way to our lofty goal? Pardon my rambling.
To summarise: 1. Geras is right (of course) that responsibility must be shared by all sides in this conflict. Not in equal proportions, of course. 2. Geras’s argument is clearly intended to imply that, in a Kantian sort of way, even if the consequences of the war are worse than the consequences of not having the war (here, now, with Bush leading it), it was still just. 3. But this argument falls flat, because the war is not just in a Kantian way. Even Kofi Annan said the war was illegal, and he is quite right. A UN Security Council resolution was not obtained, and lies were used in the process of trying to obtain it, and therefore it was a war of agression. The only way one can even attempt to justify it is on a long-term consequentialist account. Also, on the consequentialist account, is not clear to me why the goal of providing security and democracy for Iraq is helped by turning down offers of military assistance from the other Arab states.
John, that’s a very interesting argument, but I think it’s still vulnerable to the kind of objection I was trying to raise. 1)The problems with calculating consequences (including an acute difficulty in handling the counterfactuals) apply retrospectively as well as prospectively, so we’re not in a position to say what history shows us about the consequences of going to war versus not going to war. 2)Even if that’s wrong, and we can calculate consequences, you can’t assume that the consequences of not going to war in Iraq were better than the consequences of going to war, once you take into account the probable death rate from Saddam’s remaining in power (and his sons succeeding him), and the likelihood of his obtaining nukes at a fairly early stage, and the prospect of that leading to war with Israel and/or Iran. So even a consequentialist might have been able to support this particular war. 3)Furthermore, if the general focus on consequences alone does lead to a broadly anti-war position, it will also (because it takes two to fight) lead to a broadly anti-resistance position. If no-one at all had resisted the Nazis, then even if all the Jews and all the Roma had been exterminated, and many Russians and Poles enslaved, that still wouldn’t have produced as many deaths as the ghastly body count from World War 2. So the consequentialist anti-warrior should be as critical of those who resist aggression as of those who practise it, and will be unable to regard WW2 as justified. The unattractiveness of both these conclusions gives us reason to suppose that there’s more to the justification of war than counting the consequences, important though that undoubtedly is.
“…but a look at history tells us that the consequences of war have nearly always been more evil than good.” That’s a pretty contestable assertion. But nevermind that. This attempt to quantify good and evil on a large scale, with the implicit assumption that moral acts are all of a kind and can be tallied up at the bottom of a ledger…well, I think that’s the problem right there. Which may seem strange coming from me, as I consider myself a utilitarian. But that this is problematic is exactly why people have problems with the utilitarian “runaway train” thought experiment. There is a threshold, for whatever reason or reasons, where our moral sense becomes so unreliable that we intuitively don’t trust it. That threshold is approached or crossed in the runaway train example; and I believe it is certainly crossed in matters of warfare. In these cases, out of necessity we essentially abdicate our moral responsibility to something external—an authority, expedience, even chance. Moral philosophy in whatever guise attempts to chart the moral territory beyond which our individual intuitions are trustworthy. But implicitly individuals will disagree with its judgments. I suppose that in this sense I am a pragmatic utilitarian—confining my utilitarianism to the limits of the horizon in which our judgments of supposed maximal utility are trustworthy and having little use for lines of moral reasoning that exceed it (considerations of theoretical maximal utility is, to me, at best irrelevant and at worst counter-productive). Even where we generally trust our judgment, most of us recognize our fallibility and thus it is most wise to never completely discount the first order harm of an act; the moreso as the moral context within which one is trying to judge approaches or exceeds that horizon.
Geras’s position is really odd (and possibly circular in the bit quoted above: in claiming that we ought not to accept the view that one side is responsible for all the consequences of a war, one premise seems to be that the other side is responsible for some of them, which is just a straightforward denial of the first premise). To take an example from a less controversial moral field, according to his account of moral responsibility, if I gave alcohol to a recovering alcoholic, and it wasn’t certain that he would lapse, then I could not be held responsible for his lapse. Those kinds of examples can presumably be multiplied: any consequences of my act which do not follow directly from the act itself are not my responsibility. The opposite position is, I think, equally troubled, although respectable philosophers have been holding it since Bentham, since it denies (in effect) anyone any responsibility by falling into a kind of determinism. But that, as the initial post shows, is not a view which the anti-war arguments are necessarily committed to: an eminently foreseeable consequence of invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein was the chaos that currently confronts us, especially when it was being organized and led by a group of conservative ideologues and robber-baron capitalists. Because it was foreseeable, it is the responsibility of those who brought it about. The field of moral responsbility actually widens when you invade a country and remove its government, because you are effectively now its government: if under Saddam, Iraq had fallen into the kind of chaos it is now in, everyone would be unreservedly condemning the actions which brought it about, because, as the ruler of Iraq, Saddam had a special responsibility to the Iraqis. Since the Coalition is now occupying the position that Saddam was, that responsibility is passed on. Clearly, this view doesn’t divide moral responsibility up into an all-or-nothing property: it was foreseeable that the insurgents gathering in Falluja would result in eventual Coalition attacks on a heavily populated area, so the insurgents are responsible for that. But, the Americans invaded: saying you started it is fair enough here, because whoever started the chain of foreseeable consequences bears the brunt of the responsibility.
Without actually reading Geras’ argument, I’m counting this as more evidence that Bush will have a blank check during his second term. The rational conservatives and the moderate Republicans are mythical beasts. They’re the only ones who could have saved us, and they chose not to. There is no point at which Geras’ kind will get off the bandwagon. He’s in it for the duration. We don’t know what Bush plans, though we can guess, but we can know that he will be supported.
“…but a look at history tells us that the consequences of war have nearly always been more evil than good.” John Quiggin’s is not just a pretty contestable assertion, Keith, it’s BS! The “nearly always” is merely a sop to the inevitable “well what about Hitler?” It is totally meaningless, as Eve Garrard quickly pointed out about simplistic WWII tallies which seem to show that by the end of 1945 more people died as a consequence of the Allies resisting Hitler than would have died had they sued for peace in 1941. Utter BS!
Oh bosh. How do you count casualties in a counterfactual world? What is the point of such intellectual twaddle except to twaddle?
Eve, “If no-one at all had resisted the Nazis, then even if all the Jews and all the Roma had been exterminated, and many Russians and Poles enslaved, that still wouldn’t have produced as many deaths as the ghastly body count from World War 2” I don’t think this is true: it is implausible to think that the Nazis would have stopped with the Jews, the Roma, the ‘mentally unfit’, homosexuals, and communists. They were already using untermenschen Slavs as roads for their tanks in 1942, so I don’t think that we ought to be particularly sanguine about their fate, and there were an awful lot of them. Neither is an assessment of consequences not limited to a bodycount, so the blighted lives of those not murdered would have had to been taken into account. Also, I don’t think anyone’s claimed that responsibility is the be all and end all of moral reasoning. I may be responsible for some quite bad consequences of my acts, but insofar as I was acting to further or to defend legitimate moral interests of mine, the act may be justified. For example, I might refuse to enter into a business contract with some other business which would be mutually beneficial, and foreseeably prevent the other business from going under with the loss of jobs. I think we could reasonably agree I would be in some sense responsible for that, but not think that I had acted in a way which we could condemn. The case of resistance to the Nazis seems to me to be like that: partisans were responsible for the reprisals – at least after the first time – but I don’t think that that means that they acted wrongly (although, presumably there is some point at which the costs would become too much, I’m just not sure where it is). To my mind, what makes the Coalition’s invasion of Iraq wrong is that whatever moral interest of their’s they were promoting or defending was not one strong enough to justify the foreseeable consequences of that act: the moral interest in removing a dictator who presented little threat to the external world is a quite different one from that in removing a totaliarian, expansionist ideology from the control of the economic powerhouse of Europe. The argument about responsibility is relevant insofar as we need to know who is responsible for what in order to tell whether the moral interest they initially had in acting in the way they did can justify the act and its consequences, but, to me at least, it’s not just about a simple causal responsibility claim.
A problem I have is the whole “hindsight is 20-20” thing. To my mind, assuming the Bush admin never really took seriously the claim of WMDs, what it comes down to is evaluating which, at the time, was comprehensibly the most likely outcome of an invasion: the neocon vision, or what has actually occured. In my view at the time, the neocons were delusional, but not so delusional that they might not be able to accomplish, given effort and commitment, what they expected to accomplish in at least one country (Iraq). Had it gone the way they expected, I would not have been deeply shocked. Only mildly surprised. I, for one, strongly believe that the outcome would have been much better had we adequately planned for and executed the occupation. The people that supported the war (and I suppose I should include myself because I tepidly supported it) were in the more complicated position of not being the decision makers or being adequately informed—in that context it is not unreasonable that many of them believed that the neocons knew what they were doing. And it really isn’t accurate to say that I even “tepidly” supported the war—it is more the case that I could not bring myself to oppose it with the fervor and certainty that it would be the clusterfuck it has turned out to be. The Bush administration has turned out to be stupendously inept in managing the occupation—something that shouldn’t surprise me given their record in other areas but, even so, I expected them to at least look after their own interests with some competency.
Geras writes, “Secondly, it’s simple casuistry in assessing the responsibilities of two sides in a military conflict to load everything on to one of the sides – even where the blame for having begun an unjust and aggressive war is uncontroversial. ” It’s not simply a question of laying blame on one of the two sides—it’s a question of assessing, because we live in a putatively democratic society that the reasons that were given for prosecuting this war, namely that Saddam had WMD’s and posed a danger to the US —were false. The deception of a people by its government redounds very differently in a democracy than it did in the military imperial country of Japan, and in Nazi Germany. So PLEASE, this philosophy stuff is useful to a degree, but as some one from the literature/theory side of things, can we get a little political perspective here? There is, as one commenter raised the question of legality involved—we violated a country’s sovereignty—I think this point has been made over and over again—but I suppose Geras would say this is moot—since there is a war going on—but I don’t think it can be, not in a democracy.
Peter T: well, I moderated my contradiction because, in my view, Quiggin is correct in the context of the first-order and “near” consequences where we trust our intutions and mostly agree. But, as I say above, there is also wide agreement that, in theory at least, the moral correctness of fighting a war exists and also is something that could be widely agreed upon. Fighting the Nazis is one such touchstone, that’s why it inevitably comes up in these discussions. This is why I distrust a moral analysis that attempts to deny one widely agreed upon moral “truth” to support another. Perhaps both are true on their own terms, and the decisions to take such actions have their own responsibilities that cannot, should not, ever be completly whitewashed away. cliu: it’s not clear to me the connection between being a democracy and taking an absolutist position with regard to respecting sovereignity, particularly with regard to non-democracies. And, as you’re making a leglalistic argument, there is the point that the international legal framework that exists— the UN resolutions authorizing the us of force by the US against Iraq from 1990 onwards—arguably authorizes this second invasion. Thus, it seems to me this legalistic argument makes for a somewhat weak moral argument.
Cliu, the deceit does matter, insofar as we are making a moral assessment of the people who actually took us to war. However, if the war was otherwise justified, we might think that the moral wrong of lying to your population and the world at large was a means to a just end, and therefore justified. I’m not sure about how to do the weighing, but that view doesn’t look implausible. Think of a case where I lie to someone to prevent a great harm befalling them: if it was justifiable to prevent them from having this harm befall them, then, if lying was the only (low-cost or efficient) way of preventing it, then it is justified. Therefore, the real question is whether the war was just, and that turns on the kinds of issue that are being discussed here.
Some people are still trying to argue that the good consequences of the war will eventually outweigh the bad, but this is becoming less and less plausible Why? Don’t be ridiculous. Iraqis will benefit from this action for many decades. It would be quite extraordinary to claim it’s becoming less and less plausible for the good outcomes to outweigh the bad – they haven’t even held their first election yet. Already in Iraq most Iraqis are a great deal better off than they were under Saddam Hussein – just ask most Shiites and Kurds, the people who make up over two thirds of the country’s population. Yes, there’s a lot of violent crime in Baghdad, and there quite patently has been a war going on in Falluja. But for the rest of the country, they are already enjoying the benefits of not having to live under their oppressive fascism totalitarian dictatorship, and all the benefits that entails – it’s quite extraordinary that you would so casually dismiss this fact, let alone make wildly improbable claims about the future. (You people really do get carried away, don’t you – the media in this country has a lot to answer for.) And of course, your solution of removing the sanctions and no fly zones would have emboldened Saddam and his sons, Iraq would be back to threatening the region, building WMD and genociding their own people – so you’re not even comparing the situation with the right set of criteria, even though based on that false criteria you still come to the wrong conclusion. an eminently foreseeable consequence of invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein was the chaos that currently confronts us Then why didn’t anyone predict it? The argument from the antiwar movement was never that there’d be chaos if we removed Saddam – that’s the argument you’ve all convinced yourself you made in retrospect. No, the main arguments the antiwar movement put forward were (a.) the US would just replace Saddam with another totalitarian dictator (b.) they certainly wouldn’t allow any sort of free press, and (c.) you’d have to be a stark raving lunatic to think the yanks would ever allow an election. On all three points you have been proved manifestly wrong. Yes, civilian casualties were also a factor, but the ‘conservative estimate’ back then was that at least 500,000 civilians would die in the war itself. Not that it would be only 50,000 as an overall figure, according to the Lancet study, which includes all military casualties, over an 18 month period – well below your wildiest dreams. So given how much you you got wrong, perhaps it’s time you showed a little humility instead of crowing about Al Qaeda terror attacks on the Iraqi people; ludicrously trying to pretend that the whole of Iraq is Falluja; that millions of Shiites and Kurds are not eagerly awaiting their historic first election after hundreds of years of oppression, and that most Iraqis – not the ones who get TV cameras shoved in their face in Falluja and chaotic Baghdad on the TV every night – are already enjoying their vastly superior life, thanks to the war you opposed.
Isn’t there something terribly artificial (and terribly silly) about pretending that there were exactly two possible courses of action: Start the war now! or Saddam (and all his descendents) remain in power forever. This is obviously wrong. There were many alternatives: More and better diplomacy could have created the kind of Grand Coalition we saw in the first Gulf War—or at least prevented the disasterour shattering of the western alliance. Perhaps we could have paid Saddam $5 billion dollars to go away. $5 Billion and nobody dead looks awfully cheap now, doesn’t it? The point is, there were many choices that could have been made, and the decision to rush into unilateral war was a deliberate one. The choice to screw up the post-war occupation as to guarantee the maximum destruction and chaos was also deliberate.
You can’t talk about the Iraq War without talking about costs.
Brian an eminently foreseeable consequence of invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein was the chaos that currently confronts us Then why didn’t anyone predict it? The argument from the antiwar movement was never that there’d be chaos if we removed Saddam – that’s the argument you’ve all convinced yourself you made in retrospect I don’t care what other people said, I’ve been saying that there would be chaos in Iraq since day one. Since I only started posting on blogs about two weeks ago, I can’t prove that: however it is true. Let’s not forget, either, that the US State department agrees with me. No, the main arguments the antiwar movement put forward were (a.) the US would just replace Saddam with another totalitarian dictator (b.) they certainly wouldn’t allow any sort of free press, and (c.) you’d have to be a stark raving lunatic to think the yanks would ever allow an election. So, on a), Saddam has so far been replaced by Allawi, who may not have been quite as bad yet, but certainly isn’t some peace-loving altruist. On b), I’m not sure whether anyone made this claim, but papers have been banned: I’m seem to recall al-Sadr’s newspaper being banned for example. On c), I’m not sure elections which take place in the midst of the kind of violence currently going on count as free or fair EVEN IF THE PEOPLE RUNNING THEM HAVE THE BEST OF INTENTIONS. I do not think that the Coalition or Allawi have the best of intentions. As for the ‘most Iraqis are doing perfectly well thank you’ argument, I think that the Lancet study, the obvious failure to do any reconstruction, and the relatively widespread insurgency put paid to all that.
“Suppose those of us on the Left who opposed the Iraq war had prevailed” I think sums up why the antiwar faction failed – it didn’t argue the case as one of principle but rather one of politics. In particular most of the arguments are seem to me to be conservative arguments but without any willingness to attribute them to being as such. Which is where the credibility problem creeps in.
The argument from the antiwar movement was never that there’d be chaos if we removed Saddam – that’s the argument you’ve all convinced yourself you made in retrospect. Oh, really? Let’s take some questions asked before the war by two members of this blog, for starters: Daniel provides Exhibit A.
I’ll provide Exhibit B: Or Exhibit C: I was one of the people who thought that between, say, (1) Quick success, (2) Declare victory and withdraw, (3) Ongoing screwup or (4) Colonial Protectorate/Puppet state, the most likely outcome was (4) by a nose. In retrospect this was because I (unlike Dsquared) was giving the administration way too much credit for its strategic thinking. Right now we have a mix of ongoing screwup + protectorate. It wouldn’t be hard to multiply examples from CT contributors or other anti-war bloggers along those lines.Jerry Pournelle, who is not generally considered a flaming liberal, also made it in great detail with reference to historical experience and current military practice during the 12 months leading up to the war.
It seems to me that it is more the neocons trying to convince themselves that they are not responsible for the chaos and death currently occuring.
Cranky
Brian – I, for one, and very publicly (in two separate occasions in Salon.com) stated that there would be chaos and an insurgency that would make ground war look like a joke. So, put me down for one public figure who stated what you claim wasn’t by anti-war folks. As for the Geras point—w/r/t a just war, he’s right. That’s why going in with as much legitimacy as possible is so important: it is not only just, per se (and I think, proleptically, that consequentialism is a useful half-measure, but ultimately that there are strong reasons for thinking that humans are “built” deontologically & so, shortly, it should be just—that is in accord w/our notions of both personal virtue of those waging it & our social contract), but that to the extent that any military action is judged just in its context, the roots of insurgency will have harder ground in which to grow.
Giles, no one who backs killing as a solution has other principles than politics. DSW
“no one who backs killing as a solution has other principles than politics” Really? I think that a fair proportion of wars in the past have taken place for religous and or moral reasons. In fact, other than WW1 it seems to me that politics is the rare cause.
Giles, What do you mean by the term “politics”? Also, how is Quiggin’s calculation necessarily about politics rather than applying a given principle?
Geras’s argument, somewhat simplified, seems to go like this: There isn’t one Iraq war but several. The first was the war to unseat Saddam’s regime, this war was started by the coalition, but nevertheless just and it ended successfully. There’s a second war (or, in Geras’s version several further conflicts) which was started by the Iraqi insurgents, i.e. which was forced upon the coalition. This war is unjust in its goals (preventing democracy) as well as in its methods (killing non-combatants, etc). The current crisis in Iraq is a consequence of the second war, not the first. This means two things, according to Geras. First, the dire situation in Iraq is not a consequence of the first war, and thus does not impact on that war’s legitimacy. Second, it is not something the coalition is morally responsible for, since the insurgents are the aggressors at this point. This whole idea strikes me as being a tad sophistical. The distinction between the two wars seems to be an ad hoc distinction, tailored to make everything come out right. Moreover, Geras’s view is another way of saying that the coalition cannot be held to the responsibilities of an occupying power – providing peace and security – since there’s an ongoing situation of war. But if that were true, the coalition couldn’t possibly have a legitimate authority to govern Iraq, an authority it clearly claims.
John, I think you’re misrepresenting Geras’ argument. From what you quote, he was attacking the attribution of all the responsibility for the consequences to the initiators of the war. In attributing to him the unstated conclusion that therefore none of the responsibility for the consequences of the actions of the other side lies with the initiators, you’ve engaged in the very kind of “all-or-nothing” thinking he was arguing against. As far as it goes, Geras’ point seems right. Some people have been claiming that the overall consequences of the war are worse than the alternatives would have been, and concluding (all too quickly) that the war was unjust. Geras is right to point out that it’s not that simple; there’s a strong prima facie case for attributing only partial responsibility for the consequences of the other side’s forseeable actions to the US. To show that the war was unjust you need to show more than that the balance of consequences is worse than it would have been otherwise. If you had other good reasons for thinking the actions of the US just, and those of its enemies unjust, this could be sufficient to absolve the US of responsibility for those consequences. The question should be what Geras thinks those reasons are, and whether they’re any good.
Sometimes, discussions about the Iraq war remind me of psychoanalytic therapies that have gone on too long. Mommie and Daddy are dead—the invasion happened. Opponents and proponents aren’t going to change that. This war is no longer against Saddam’s regime. It is being waged by an occupying force that made its own independent choices during the occupation, and thus stands for something. It chose, for instance, to stand by while much of Iraq’s infrastructure was looted—but did guard the oil ministry. That is a definite choice. It promised back in May, 2003, to have electricity on line at pre-invasion levels within six months—and has yet to consistently make that claim good. It claimed that it would have Iraq’s oil production top Saddam’s 2002 production, and might have finally achieved that goal. It claimed it would institute a democracy, and instead wrote laws that were designed to install the usual neo-liberal economic regime in the country, no different than the laws that, say, Pinochet instituted in Chile in the 70s. The institutions of democracy—for instance, an Iraqi legislature with real power, an independent Iraq judiciary, an Iraqi written constitution, etc., etc., never happened. It claimed that it would operate, under the aegis of the CPA, as a real government—and instead all but ignored security for Iraqis, while showing its concern almost wholly for the safety of American soldiers. It said that it would, at the least, revitalize Iraq’s own business structure, and then systematically spent its funding on American corporations and their security agencies. So, what does the above have to do with Saddam Hussein? Nada. The insurgency has many parts and factions, but one of the central themes of it is not to defeat the invasion, but to defeat what the occupiers have done. Hence, those terrorists blowing up all the neat infrastructure Americans are “giving’ the people of Iraq—giving by buying from American companies and employing Fillipino laborers, giving using Iraq’s oil money, giving while 60 percent of Iraq’s work force remains unemployed. I’d love to see what the American work force would do under similar circumstances.
This whole discussion collapses the distinction between three different questions: 1) is the war just (jus ad bellum)? 2) is the war being fought justly (jus in bello)? 3) is the war a prudent course of action? Proponents of the war have a good argument for the first, a mixed argument on the second, and an increasingly bad argument on the third. Moreover, the main argument advanced by the administration for the war (WMD and the need for a preventative attack) was really an argument about power-political prudence (reason of state) and not an argument that fits comfortably in the “jus ad bellum” tradition. The fact that the argument increasingly has switched to a humanitarian jus ad bellum justification would be a lot more compelling if the pro-war crowd had any intention of universalizing their maxims. Perhaps I’ll blog on this when I finish grading :-).
This whole idea strikes me as being a tad sophistical. Ain’t it just a tad sophistical indeed. The Germans occupied Poland – that’s war number 1. And then the Warsaw ghetto dwellers, unappreciative of the superior German culture, started their aggression against the poor Wehrmacht and recklessly disrupted order in the otherwise peaceful city – the war number 2. They should’ve known better.
I’m sure mayors across the country will rejoice upon learning that they’re no longer accountable for their cities’ crime rates.
Go back and read the original quote from the ‘pro war’ guy – there is very little there in the way of argument. It’s mostly a series of assertions. Then note the tone. It’s designed to invoke (in a subtle way) a common pro-war stance: that those opposed to war are soft, squeamish, unable to stand the hard realities of the world and “the way things really work.” So we do bad things in a war, but that’s just the way it is. Got to get your hands dirty cleaning up dirt. This totally begs the question of the moral choices the U.S. administration had before the war began and the choices they had during the conduct of the war. They are responsible for the choices they made, the choices they didn’t make, and the choices they pretended they didn’t have. Before the war the U.S didn’t have to listen to exile groups with no support on the ground in Iraq. They could have fomented internal dissent. They could have chosen different sanctions. During the war, they didn’t have to use Saddam’s prisons for their prisons nor his palaces for their headquarters (overlooked, but very symbolic to the Iraqi’s). They didn’t have to sweep up innocents and torture them and photograph the tortures. They didn’t have to use cluster bombs, keep out humanitarian assistance nor did they have to go to war totally innocent of 2,000 years of experience fighting insurgencies. No, Hitler isn’t responsible for Dresden, because Dresden wasn’t necessary to defeating Germany nor to minimizing the total number of deaths during WWII.
wesa – because he pitches the case against the war as coming from the left – thereby discounting the views from the right. I appreciate I’m being a little pernikity but the point is that its seems to me that the anti war left and right had more “principles” in common than they are happy admitting – hence the desire to sperate it into a political matter.
Giles, my reason for writing the way I did is that Geras is (or was) generally considered part of the Left and is using arguments of a general form that are commonly associated with the Left. So I meant “those of us on the Left who opposed the war” in contradistinction to “those on the Left who supported it” If you supported or opposed the war on grounds of “international realism”, for example, none of these points would be relevant.
Apparently they’re using napalm in Falluja: FALLUJAH NAPALMED, or rather ‘napalm gas’, whatever the hell it is… Clearly it’s the fault of the ‘insurgents’ – why don’t they just give up, turn themselves in and get it over with, stupid bastards? When will they realize that it’s nothing else but their stubbornness that causes various bad things to fall from the sky?
I don’t think Geras was, like Kamm, proposing a deontological defense of the second Iraq war, let alone of all wars. Rather he was pointing out how some folks are exceedingly limber when it comes to selecting and presenting deontological versus consequential arguments in regards to certain events in Iraq. For example – Before the war a lack of a UN mandate was presented as a powerful deontological (consequential as well) argument against invading. Strangely, for lots of those folks, the mandate the UN handed to the US occupation isn’t a powerful deontological argument for the US occupation. (Not all see Juan Cole) They can actually type straight while claiming that the US occupation is illegal because the UN did not mandate the invasion. Apparently the obvious is elusive.
“If you supported or opposed the war on grounds of ‘international realism’, for example, none of these points would be relevant.” That may explain why I can’t see that the Geras Doctrine is worth discussing. On my reading of his post, Geras could partition just about any war into a sequence of subwars and prove just cause by induction, as long as he had a prior view as to who the bad guys were. Have great powers (or hegemons or gigapowers or whatever the USA is now supposed to be) ever bothered very much about the ethics of war? Mostly they seem to do whatever it takes to enhance and secure their wealth and power, short-term and long-term. They have an interest in rules only insofar as rules work to their advantage. If there is evidence that statesmen are constrained by morality in any significant way I would be interested to see it. Bears shit in the woods. Need we ask whether they are guided by deontological or utilitarian principles?
Why is it that guys who never go to a war sit back and tell others it is ok thing to do…First Iraq war: mandate from colaition that we would get Iraq out of Kuwait…nothing beyond that. The second: we would topple Saddam and—establish ten permanent bases in the Middle East to offset…OPEC? bring democracy to countries ruled by dictators or royalty? I would not send my son to war for reasons that at the moment seem so confused or wrong. Would you?
To those who have talked about WWII, we’re talking here about the decision to start a war, which was made by Hitler when he invaded Poland. The suggestion, implied by several commenters, that World War II did not cause more evil than good is absurd – presumably what is meant is that the Allies were justified in resisting Hitler, but that’s not the issue raised by Geras’ argument. If you want an arguable exception to the proposition “wars cause more evil than good”, you’d be better off looking at the US Civil War.
In this thread, Brian demonstrates the fundamental dishonesty of so many on the pro-war side. I know that’s strong language, but I don’t have any other explanation. I’m referring to “And of course, your solution of removing the sanctions and no fly zones would have emboldened Saddam and his sons, Iraq would be back to threatening the region, building WMD and genociding their own people.” Does Brian have any idea if that’s “our” solution? Of course not. But really, that’s not the best part of his message. The best part is the hint of fascism: “The media in this country has a lot to answer for.” And how will they be made to answer? Kangaroo courts? Firing squads?
Aggh, Geras is an intellectual hack who has long ago tried to sell his intellectual honesty to the highest bidder, only to discover nobody in power gave a shit to what he thought. He is the sort of intellectual Orwell warned us about, the one who keeps worshipping the boot stamping in our face and considers it an honour to lick it clean.
Great post, Brian! That’s the best thing I’ve read on here in ages. Ever, in fact.
What do you like about it, Clive? The lying? The incipient fascism?
The consequences of war have almost always been bad, by any reasonable definition of “war” or “bad.” The only wars I can think of with good outcomes are WW2, American Revolutionary War, and a few other wars of independence. I’m sure there are other examples (maybe even Gulf War I), but when you think about how many thousands of wars have been fought over the course of human history, warfare seems to be a pretty inefficient and counterproductive strategy. Granted, I’m not quantifying over ultimate geopolitical consequences because I don’t think those can be measured with any precision.
Another thing that doesn’t stick with my idea of moral choices, is that the pro/against war choice requires equal justifications. The silly known extreme is the cost of saving a life in say Darfur. It might not be the cost of a beer, but for the price of a nice dinner you can save a life in Darfur. Yet I regularly make the choice of not saving a life in Darfur, but having a nice dinner instead. Cruel. The same could be said about Iraq. If you think not going to war in Iraq leads to moral responsibilities (for those suffering under Saddam), you’d end up never going out to dinner. And as said, the ‘resistance’ is not exactly to be supported, the Allawi government is UN sanctioned, thus legitimate. But the hostilities between those, and the resulting death and destruction are a direct consequence of the war choice, and are certainly not a second distinct war. Thus those deciding for war are still to be held responsible for it.
WWII has come up several times in this discussion; it’s worth pointing out that while it was undoubtedly a beneficial war for Western Europe, its long-term benefits are far more mixed from a global perspective. It cemented Soviet Russia’s power over Eastern Europe, which was quite brutal and repressive. It led at least in part to Mao’s takeover in China, which killed millions. By cementing the Soviet Union’s power over its own territory and reducing nearby threats to it, WWII indirectly fueled the Greek Civil War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cambodian Civil War. Yes, National Socialism was overthrown; that was unequivocally good; but Communism was considerably strengthened and extended, which was unequivocally bad.
“The only wars I can think of with good outcomes are WW2, American Revolutionary War, and a few other wars of independence” Why do you think the American Revolutionary War had a good outcome? A good case can be made that it perpetuated the lifespan of human slavery in the west, indirectly caused the devastation of the Napoleonic Wars, and contributed to the erosion of British hegemony (with very bad consequences for the first half of the 20th century).
This whole discussion also misses a huge middle ground: those of us who supported the idea of disarming and/or deposing Saddam Hussein but who opposed the process and means by which it was accomplished. We are, by this argument, morally responsible for neither Saddam Hussein’s potential depradations nor the ill effects of our governments’ precipitous actions, as we opposed both. In fact, I think the “anti-war” group falls more into this middle category than the “pro-war” (or pacifist) group realizes.
Please ‘scuse crosspost from John’s blog, I’m only a day and a half behind everybody else … …John, Doesn’t everyone believe that war should be a last resort? Supporters of the US’ action in invading Iraq believe it too, so they have to persuade themselves that it was indeed a last resort. Of course those of us with a clue and who can read and think know that they’re deluded (some wilfully so). You’re not suggesting (as it seems to me to read) that the options open to the US and the UN were only two – invade or not? That was a no-brainer to answer “not!” to at the time, but it did still leave to be addressed the issues of Saddam’s regime and the poor consequences to Iraqis of the sanctions and No_Fly enforcement zones. What was to be done? There was a world of possibilities open to sensible people of good will that should have been considered but, tragically, the US was not in such hands. The US’ actions were foolish and disgraceful, and flew in the face of what was the 20th century’s wealth of experience on the subject of war and bad regimes. There were even well tried and tested policies open to be pursued before resort to war, but consider just the least likely scenario of all, which may be that Saddam could have been led to see the error of his wicked ways and have begun to improve the behaviour of his regime, to good effect both internally and in Iraq’s international affairs (decreasing the militant and terrorist threat he posed). That’s unlikely. Now: how unlikely was it that a man (Gorbachev) would be promoted through the ranks of the soviet system to reach a position of power, then wield his power and influence to reform, and ultimately preside over the dissolution of, the USSR? Soeharto ruled with an iron fist in Indonesia – yet stepped down voluntarily. Marcos left the Philippines peaceably. Mandela was an “insurgent” once, and certainly not always a man of peace;today he’s seen as a saint. It’s futile to go on with a discussion of alternative scenarios like this, though, in a world ruled by America’s village idiots and supported by their fearsome warbloggers. Futile because we’re in fact being remorselessly moved away, by the US government and its acolytes, from any chance of applying the lessons of 20th century history to the challenges of the 21st century. More’s the shame, but before moving forward again we need to go back to those people who voted for jihad with Bush/Cheney in 2004, to find out how they were left behind in the education system, what can be done about it, and so on. There’s nothing to be done about the warbloggers except to resist them until they grow up and go away because, just as Stalin had his cheerleading leftist intellectuals, the demagogues of the Whitehouse have theirs; immune to reason or self-insight, only old age and forever being wrong will weary ‘em.
Rob: I can think of cases where out of paternalism, one might lie to another for his/her own good and by extension the tyrant can lie to his people because they must be protected. That is the logical structure of tyranny—a pre-Enlightenment, pre-Kantian, pre-public sphere kind of justification. I’m not saying that people don’t lie in a democracy, but that when lies and distortions take place on such a scale as the run up to this war, it makes all discussion moot—it actually makes this discussion moot, because if we were to consider your case of the liar who lies for the good of others, we would have to assume that Dick Cheney and Company know something we don’t, which is his rhetorical strategy to begin and we should then just throw in the towel on public debate and even on the possibility of dissent because we don’t know as well as our rulers what is going on. That would be the only ethical justification for lying that I could come up with, a minimal ethical justifcation, albeit. BUT under a democracy, formed in the crucible of public sphere, popular opinion at least of the Habermasian model is formed from free debate of the facts. If you’re saying that the facts may be lies, told to us for own good, then how can we reasonably be expected to form opinions or have dissenting opinions? That is what is most disturbing about the run up to the war for me—and the Left’s inability to form a coherent opposition doesn’t matter – there was dissent with regard to the Administration’s position, there continues to be dissent. That the Administration has found its court philosophers and its apologists is no surprise. That they care little about democratic process is not shocking either. But dissent by nature is a sometimes messy thing affair. So is the democratic process. Sycophancy however can often seem very attractive, especially when it has all the emollients of the throne behind it.
John Q, I wonder if it may be a bit reductive to state flatly that the decision to start WWII was made by Hitler when he attacked Poland. France and the UK did not have to then declare war in response. It was incumbent upon them to conduct an analysis of all of the consequences that would flow from their decision to do so; with the experience of WWI so close at hand, it strikes me that at the time there would have been cogent moral arguments made for abandoning Poland in order to avoid a second continent-wide bloodbath. Similarly, the US did not have to declare war on Germany following Pearl Harbor; Germany was no immediate or near-term threat to the US. Arguably, the US did not even have to declare war against Japan after Pearl Harbor. Japan was not seeking to conquer the US, after all; essentially, the Pacific Theater could be viewwed as a struggle to determine which Great Power would have hegemony over that part of the world. The US could have conceded the Pacific to Japan, and, absent the benefit of hindsight, I’m not sure that the choice is entirely clear. Would the people of the China or the Philippines have been that much worse off being ruled by authoritarian Japanese puppets rather than Mao, Chiang, or Marcos? I suspect so, but I’m not sure that I would have been confident enough in my intuition at the time to justify spending thousands of additional lives. Certainly, the aggressor in a war bears a heavy responsibility, but I think the decision to fight back is also morally fraught.
Jeez, all this effort to hypothesise justice in war is screwed up by the snide remarks against the Bushies. We should get the valuable parts into an argumetn map where those of us less exalted can study them at length. For an example of this approach see http://www.debatemapper.net/
tom t “Similarly, the US did not have to declare war on Germany following Pearl Harbor” They didn’t. Germany declared war on the US. It would appear that not a lot of people know this, but I can’t think why not. In whose interest is it to misinform/keep it secret?
I realize that some of you are earnestly asking questions that are important to you on matters of justification of the invasion of Iraq, however, at this moment there are some basic questions that deserve answers whether or not your count yourself as antiwar. Baathist remnants and foreign islamists are waging war on Iraqis and the Coalition. Do you support the goals, methods, and victories of the “insurgents”? If you do, then, give some thought to removing yourself to Iraq and putting the courage of your convictions to the test. Failing that, perhaps it is possible to attempt to state the principles that would lead you to support these “insurgents”; and maybe you’d benefit the discussion with your explaination of what, if anything, you are prepared to do to act on these principles today or in the near future. Perhaps you’ve already taken action? If you are not with the “insurgents”, then, consider exploring ways to support the people in uniform, the relief workers, and the Iraqi people. Even if all you can muster is glum bewilderment it would be better than posing as a handsoff judge of a war that must be won—either by the Iraqis and the Coalition or by the “insurgents”. Iraq is an important piece of the broader war that was declared against us by the islamo totalitarians. The fight in Iraq is paramount to the stability and liberty of the Iraqi people, and it is great responsibility to ourselves, but on the broader scale it is not everything. But the islamist totalitarians are behaving as if a loss there would be a major setback if not a decisive conclusion to their overall mission. Do you favor an insurgent victory in Iraq or no? As a supporter of this fight I don’t pale at the thought of responsibility for taking on the “insurgents”. It would irresponsible not to take the fight into their teeth.
To answer the original query, in my opinion it is impossible for anyone other than Hussein to ever be culpable for his actions. If one averts his gaze from an atrocity, he is not guilty of committing that atrocity, he is guilty of ignoring it, with whatever that may imply about his character. There is a difference between being willing to sell guns and actually pulling the trigger. So I guess I agree with Geras—the US (or rather, our government) IS repsonsible for how it behaves, not how other entities behave. (I apologize for the forth-coming harshness. ) tom t, what are you smoking? Watching History Channel, or BBC specials, or reading histories, or god forbid, reading actual primary literature from the 20 years preceding WWII indicated that it would happen as it did. Once the US embargoed Japan over its adventures in the Pacific, war between Japan and the US was inevitable. Once Japan and Germany formed an alliance, war between Germany and the US was conjoined with that inevitability. The principle in action there is the same as the one motivating the insurgents in Iraq: if someone is prosecuting a war against you, you have two choices, to surrender or to fight. This is, incidentally, the reason I took flak from my friends for opposing the war. My argument against the war was simply this: the United States had never before openly supported a first strike, not even in the early years of the Cold War when we would have won by default since the USSR did not have nuclear weapons yet. Now we have foregone that policy, and the rest of the world sees us differently. I guess that means I think the war was unjust but the resistance would be just if they were not committing the atrocities they are.
Cliu, I’m vaguely aware of Habermas and his followers views on democracy (particularly vaguely now: I’m really tired), and, on those views it makes sense to think lying to one’s fellow citizens is particularly wrong. I think Habermas thinks it would be basically undemocratic, because it would deny the grounds for some intersubjective agreement. However, if you’re going to make the ‘lying destroys democracy’ argument about American politics, then you’re not just going to regard the decision to go to war in Iraq as undemocratic, but all kinds of other stuff as well, just because of the misinformation and incivility which characterizes American political debate. In fact, you’re going to get quite worried about most Western nations and their democracies. I’m not sure whether Habermas is right, but you don’t have to agree with him to believe that the lack of grounds for reasoned debate in democracy is troubling. However, granted that democratic debate is not perfect, lying on some ocassions to one’s fellow citizens may be acceptable: presumably if we had a Habermasian democracy, sound policies would always go through (or, at least, any policies which were made would have strong reasons in their favour apart from being approved by a majority), but in a non-Habermasian democracy, sound policies do not always go through. For example, FDR decieved the American public about Pearl Harbor so that he could get a popular mandate to go to war with Japan: if you think that was a good policy, and there was no other way to do it, precisely because people couldn’t see the reasons in favour of it, then you might think that behaviour was regretable but justifiable. What’s true in ideal theory may not necessarily be what’s true in non-ideal theory. Presumably Habermas would agree with Mill that you don’t need someone’s consent to stop them walking over a bridge that’ll collapse under them: when people aren’t responsive to reasons, a force which isn’t unforced may be necessary. Also, it’s not clear to me that the requirement for intersubjective agreement is as strong in foreign policy as in domestic policy for Habermas, because we’re not subjecting each other to coercive authority, but that just may be the tiredness. Also, I think I made it reasonably clear that lying would only be acceptable if there was no other way of achieving the end, or the other ways had high costs, and the end was of high moral value. I never said that I thought that lying in this case was justified, merely that lying could be justified in some other, relatively restricted, cases, so I can’t see how I am supposed to lose the ability to critique policy. If I’d said Dick Cheney was a liar who’d lied for the greater good, I would lose that ability, but I haven’t said that. Just to make it clear: Dick Cheney is a liar who lied for some combination of reasons, none of which had to do with the greater good, unless Halliburton stockholders are the only citizens of the USA. Oh, another thing about Habermas’s theory: doesn’t the fact that we know that they lied now, that lots of us thought they were lying at the time, undermine the necessity of truth-intending communication? If lies don’t always achieve their purpose, then doesn’t that at least partly obviate the need for individual truthfulness, since individual truthfulness is not a necessary condition of democratic debate (access to a plurality of information sources, some of which are truthful, would be).
If you do, then, give some thought to removing yourself to Iraq and putting the courage of your convictions to the test. Why didn’t you, confused fella, put the courage of your convictions to the test and join some kind of anti-Saddam resistance in Iraq in the first place? But no, you think it’s perfectly alright to send other people to kill and die and waste other people’s money to feed your paranoia and your delusions of grandeur and make a mess of things. I sure hope the US government gets its ass kicked in Iraq, which seems to be the only way to teach them a lesson that’s remembered for a few decades.
Rob, You’re right to point to Habermas’ idealism—for along with Kant he believes that with enough debate in the public sphere, the most reasonable course of action would be the one chosen by a democracy. This form of sovereignty is hardly the most effective or the most efficient, but I’m tired too, and will try to respond to some of your other points at another time.
“I sure hope the US government gets its ass kicked in Iraq, which seems to be the only way to teach them a lesson that’s remembered for a few decades.” You hope for the death of hundreds of thousands and the enslavement of millions just to spite the US. The comments on this site are always a hoot.
The best thing in this Geras post is the link to an essay by Michael Walzer, who proposes that we think of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as four wars going on in parallel. Two of these are just wars: the Israelis’ war for security within Israel’s borders, and the Palestinians’ war for a viable state. The two unjust wars are: the war to wipe Israel off the map, and the Likudniks’ war for a Greater Israel. Walzer’s idea, crudely summarised, is that we should support the two just wars and oppose the others. Geras doesn’t try to apply this approach to the Iraq conflict, but let’s see what happens if we do: there is, arguably, a just war to introduce democracy; an unjust war to extend American power in the region; a just Iraqi independence struggle; and an unjust war aimed at establishing a new tyranny. This last comes in several varieties: theocratic Sunni and Shiite, secular Baathist; but they are all unjust because of their ultimate aims. It is easy to see one reason why Geras doesn’t go down this road. If he confronts the fact that some of America’s war aims are unjust, while some of the insurgents’ demands are just, he will have to re-think his easy condemnation of the anti-war crowd.
As a United Statesian, I’m going to engage in an appeal to authority that is unlikely to carry much weight with anyone other than my fellow citizens, but nevertheless: To quote B. Franklin, There never was a good war or bad peace. http://www.wisdomquotes.com/001592.html
there is, arguably, a just war to introduce democracy Is there? It must be the one that’s fought by emitting huge amounts of hot air by dishonest US politicians and their minions. That’s not really a ‘war’ as such, it’s called ‘war-time propaganda’.
I agree that opponents and proponents of the war had to consider the reasonable consequences of their positions. I think Geras gets the analysis wrong here. I disagree that the net suffering would have been less had Saddam been left in power. The historical figures for Ba’athist genocide make it difficult to argue otherwise. I’m sure as academics you should have no problem proving your case by providing credible evidence, with links. The last point which the anti-war left cannot be allowed to “forget” is that each leftist who agitated against the war advocated for the exact same state of affairs as Saddam’s Ba’athist supporters: continued enslavement, mass torture and genocide for ordinary Iraqis. At least the French sold their fellow human beings into bondage for petro-dollars; anti-war leftist and comfortable Western academics did it for nothing.
Isn’t the US already getting its arse kicked in Iraq? it’s not doing much good to anyone in the way of teaching lessons or otherwise. In fact, the more it goes on, the more it all becomes a retroactive justification for war. More terrorism, more just wars, more terrorism, it’s almost like an ecosystem of its own. We can all argue all we like on whether the war was just or not, fact is, nobody here was asked to participate in a decision which certainly wasn’t taken after long hours of philosophical debate on the theories and definitions of what is just and what isn’t. As if factors like nationalism, fear mongering, propaganda, strategies and interests had nothing to do with how willing people are to accept that kind of decision without too much questioning. International law having been declared well past retirement age (at only 55, too), even the concept of justice has become relative. If Bush and Blair say the war is just, well then, so it is. That’s all that matters.
Abb1, it is true that the plans for democracy may be little more than propaganda. Then again, they may really be a war-aim. This is why I have trouble with Walzer’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. How does an Israeli, who is willing to make the concessions required for a just peace, know that he isn’t making a present of an enlarged base for operations to Hamas? Similarly a Palestinian who argues for moderation may be making a present to Sharon, enabling him to say: see how reasonable they can be if you hit them hard enough? You really can’t separate Walzer’s two just wars from his two unjust wars. The same goes for Iraq. An Iraqi who throws in his lot with Allawi may find that he is simply facilitating the creation of a puppet state. If he sides with the insurgents, he may be creating a theocratic tyranny. The just wars are interwoven with the unjust wars and you really can’t pick them apart.
Mark, try reading some of the earlier posts about the Lancet study, the crime rate, and the increase in hunger in Iraq and at least give some indication that you know the time period when Saddam committed his greatest atrocities and who his allies were then and then get back to us about all that. One can make an honest case for the war in Iraq being better than the alternative (not that I buy it), but it helps if you know what you’re talking about.
Kevin, the problem with talking about the war in Iraq as if it only had two sides seems starkly put when you say: “An Iraqi who throws in his lot with Allawi may find that he is simply facilitating the creation of a puppet state. If he sides with the insurgents, he may be creating a theocratic tyranny.” Iraqis do have other choices. They can call for the occupation to end, peacefully—and get arrested for it by Allawi, Nasir Ayif. They can support a Shi’ite nationalist group that does not support theocracy, opposes the occupation, and leans towards a much blurrier border between church and state than a secularist would want. They can support They can support Issam Shukri, of the Union of Unemployed in Iraq (UUI). The fall of Saddam was a good thing. The means by which he fell was a bad thing. The means survived him, and has become a very bad thing—an occupation. But the space opened up by Saddam’s fall has also survived him—meaning that civil opposition to both the Allawi regime and the insurgency (Ba’thist and Islamist) is not only possible, but could actually be crucial to holding Iraq together.
[M]ore generally, it’s hard to imagine any war that can’t be justified, on both sides, by this kind of argument. If your cause is just (in your own eyes), and the rules by which you fight it are justified (in your own eyes), then the death and carnage of war is all due to the manifestly unjust actions of the other side. John, if this is your objection to Geras, then I don’t believe you’ve responded to Abb1’s challenge to it: The Germans occupied Poland – that’s war number 1. And then the Warsaw ghetto dwellers, unappreciative of the superior German culture, started their aggression against the poor Wehrmacht and recklessly disrupted order in the otherwise peaceful city – the war number 2. They should’ve known better. In fact, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was entirely negative in its effects, succeeding merely in killing a few German soldiers and hastening the deaths of a few thousand Ghetto inhabitants. Hence, if we are not allowed to apply a priori moral judgments of the kind Geras is advocating, then we must, by your reasoning, declare the uprising to have been unjust. Of course, nobody here seems to have grasped the implications of Abb1’s comment—let alone scolded him for the sheer moral depravity of his analogy. I assume that’s because nobody really takes seriously John’s argument against Geras, and would never think of using it to refute an anti
US position. As some bloggers like to say, “not antiwar-just on the other side”….Henry: I’ve read his blog enough to know he has nothing to teach me. He is exactly the same kind of leftist poseur as Hitchens is. Somebody who leads a nice comfortable life, who is nicely isolated from the consequences of his support of this murderous war in Iraq. Oh yeah, I know he has allegedly written knowledgeable books on marxism and all, but if he was any kind of leftist, he would’ve been against this war. I really have no patience for his kind anymore.
John I think you are missing a key distinction in Norman’s argument (either that or I’m projecting one into his argument.) Many of the key evils being complained about with respect to the war in Iraq has been things like the kidnapping and beheading of civilians, the use of civilians as human shields by the insurgents, the not-sufficient discrimination of US soldiers between combatants and non-combatants. I believe that one of Geras’ points is that these evils are being caused by the fact that the Iraqi insurgents choose to avoid following the rules of war. They intentionally endanger civilians, they intentionally hide behind them, they intentionally bomb civilian targets.
Equally shocking, Dan, is that you failed to denounced Brian’s lying and proto-fascism upthread. Of course you wouldn’t, since your whole post consists of a smear. Jet: You’ve been reading the Crooked Timber comment boards long enough to know that abb1’s opinions are not typical of anyone except abb1. I expect better from you.
Donald, I’ve read much of that, thanks. When you feel like putting those items into a coherent logical argument for the anti-war position, I’ll respond. As far as I know, an accusation that “You don’t know what your talking about” has little probative value. If you disagree, try this: I’ll concede that I don’t know what I’m talking about – does this make your position that the war was not justified more or less true? I’ve said it before: the left signed its own death warrant when it stopped teaching undergrads logical reasoning. You make it so much easier for non-leftists to tear your arguments apart.
Donald, I’ve read much of that, thanks. When you feel like putting those items into a coherent logical argument for the anti-war position, I’ll respond. As far as I know, an accusation that “You don’t know what your talking about” has little probative value. If you disagree, try this: I’ll concede that I don’t know what I’m talking about – does this make your position that the war was not justified more or less true? I’ve said it before: the left signed its own death warrant when it stopped teaching undergrads logical reasoning. You make it so much easier for non-leftists to tear your arguments apart.
Kevin, I’ll think about it. Thanks.
The pro-war side, Geras included, rest their arguments on two claims that seem far from being a given. Firstly on a minor note: the murderousness of the Ba’ath regime, in terms of the people we can expect it to kill, are based on an historical average. But the regime was more murderous at some times (earlier) than others. It’s almost the equivalent of taking the average number of people killed throughout Soviet history and saying we could expect Brezhnev to kill about a million people a year. Saddam’s regime was weakened after 1991. Certainly, he had very little control or even presence in the Kurdish areas. But if the justification is that more lives would be saved with war than without, something other than a historical average is needed to make the case. Secondly and more importantly, there’s the assumption that there was no way to get rid of him without a war. If anything, the invasion showed how weak the regime was. Notice some proponents of the war such as Hitchens move back and forth between claiming that we had to go in because it could not be removed otherwise and claiming that we had to go in because it was a failed state on the brink of collapse. Saddam was clearly bluffing on WMDs, whether to keep the Shi’a in line or keep Iran at bay is unclear. It maybe the case that war was needed, but this is assumed and not argued in prowar claims.
I believe that legally, if not morally, anyone who contributes a necessary condition for an injury to take place is completely responsible for that injury. If Mr. A cuts your brakelines and Mr. B puts LSD in your coffee then you get in a car crash, they are not each 50% responsible. They are each 100% responsible. So, Churchill and Hitler are both 100% responsible for the firebombing of Dresden. Of course, in international law, the side that is responsible is the side that is not strong enough to assign blame.
Mark, anyone who can’t extract from Donald’s post the claim that Iraq is not now better off than it was under Saddam probably also needs some remedial classes in something (comprehension, perhaps?). Since the key claim of your earlier post – I disagree that the net suffering would have been less had Saddam been left in power – was that Iraqis were now better off, pointing to evidence that shows that they’re not does constitute a refutation of your argument, by showing one of your premises is not true. Also, you commit the error of assuming that people who opposed the war wanted the situation existing before it to continue: when you find someone who claimed that the sanctions regime was perfectly acceptable, didn’t need reform, and still opposed the war, let me know. There were alternatives, like reforming the sanctions, supporting genuine opposition groups, buying Saddam off like in the eighties. Not that I think that continuing the sanctions as they were wouldn’t have been better than this mess.
Mark Donald shows a perfectly good grasp of reasoning. Your argument from the initial post seems to be ‘Iraqis would have sufffered more under Saddam’, an implicit premise ‘Wars that prevent suffering are justified’, therefore ‘A war to remove Saddam is justified’. Pointing out evidence that refutes the first premise of that argument counts as a refutation of it. Perhaps what you mean is that you don’t accept that evidence of a refutation of your first premise: if so, please explain why, but don’t slander your opponents with the fallacy it looks to me like you’re committing.
sorry, I thought I’d lost the first post
Dan Simon, actually, all I was trying to say was that it’s silly to break a war into smaller pieces. You started a war, the war escalated, it inflamed, radicalized the region (just like opponents of the war predicted), extremists came to Iraq and started hacking heads, blowing up police stations and so on. Right? And you are saying – this is a different war now? That’s absurd. Those who started a war of aggression are responsible for the whole thing until they sit thru their Nuremberg trial and get hung by the neck till dead. They are guilty of every killing that occurred as a result, no matter who killed whom, why and where. Now, the extremists who kill innocent people are also responsible for their little (in comparison) crimes, like cutting a dozen heads off; but that’s nowhere near the culpability of the leaders who actually initiated the slaughter.
Dan I don’t think anyone has actually said – although they may have relied on it – that consequences are the only measure of the justness of an act. In fact, I said earlier that they weren’t. Also, I don’t think that anyone has actually claimed that the insurgents are justified, although again they may have relied on it. I think that the claim has been that the insurgency was a foreseeable consequence of the invasion, and that as such, the invaders are responsible for it (whoever else may be) in a morally relevant way, and because of that, insofar as the suffering as a result of it counts against the justness of war, the suffering caused by the insurgency counts against the justness of the war.
Equally shocking, Dan, is that you failed to denounced Brian’s lying and proto-fascism upthread. Of course you wouldn’t, since your whole post consists of a smear. I have no idea whether or not Brian’s post was “lying”—it was mostly a collection of factual claims about Iraq, the detailed accuracy of which I’m hardly in a position to dispute authoritatively. As for the “proto-fascism” part, I saw only condemnations of Saddam Hussein’s fascism, and praise for democracy. You do have a point regarding my aspersions about CT commentators, though. It’s quite true that people have all