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?