Musing over the Iraq war.
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.
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.
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.
Obviously civilian deaths because of the invasion are regrettable. 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 would die early from being unable to eat properly or drink clean water as a result of Iraq being unable to develop under Saddam? 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. 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.
Obviously Iraq still suffers from violence and sectarianism, but that was to be expected. 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. Iraq has come a long way in the last two years – and it will continue to do so. 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?
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. 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?
Broadly I have a couple of issues with the invasion of Iraq, and specifically about the argument you’re putting forward.
My first issue is predominantly practical, the first principle of war is ”the selection and maintenance of the aim”, or identifying the objective and remaining focused on it until it’s achieved. We were already engaged in Afghanistan, and any operations in Iraq should have clearly been supportive of achieving our objectives there. they weren’t, there was no link between AQ and the regime in Baghdad, in fact the two were pretty hostile to one another. So we allowed ourselves to be diverted from our aim, and in doing so failed to invest the required effort in Afghanistan, leading us to the situation that we’re in now.
Moving on, I have some issues about the situational ethics required to justify an invasion ”because it was the right thing to do. Notwithstanding our legal obligations the ”right thing to do” is subjective, with many different interpretations of what that might be. Personally I’d expect the PM to be able to substantiate a decision on a bit more than”just because”.
I am not a lawyer, so at the time I had to take the professional advice, although it’s worth recognising that ”Just following orders” isn’t an acceptable defence if it later turns out that it’s been an illegal order. However my interpretation is that two of the Vienna Conventions apply; The Law of Treaties and Succession of States in relation to Treaties. Those both underpin aspects of our membership of supranational bodies relating to sovereignty. Our membership of the UN also includes provisions around sovereignty and the right of a state to independence and freedom from interference within its own borders. I believed at the time that the invasion was unjustified, and continue to do so.
Moving on to your specific examples the main one that might justify the invasion, and even then it’s a pretty tenuous connection to Just War Theory, would be the regional stability issue. I would suggest that there was no urgency around any risk. Threat is intent plus capability and whilst he may have had the intent after 12 years of sanctions, embargoes and Ops Southern and Northern Watch I would argue that he had very limited capability. The specific chemical threat was very overplayed. From what’s been in the public domain we were aware that whilst we knew he had the various agents and reagents that he needed they were probably out of date and unlikely to be viable. None of that really explains the indecent haste to invade, we’d lived for a long time with Saddams regime, why not take the time to finish in Afghanistan first?
All that said, there have been huge improvements in Iraq, although a long period where things were a good bit worse. I just don’t see it as a justification for the invasion.