Crimes Against the People of X
Cheney said in a tv interview that the US would have invaded Iraq ‘even if we knew [had known, he means] that Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction.’ Prominent legal scholars sent him a letter in response. That’s good – but there’s one part of what they say that I think is worrying.
Alternative justifications offered by vice-president Cheney during the recent interview are clearly legally insufficient for military action. A capability to produce weapons of mass destruction in the future, the use of weapons of mass destruction in the past, crimes against the people of Iraq, possible connections with terrorist organisations – all of these qualify as grievances which the United States might bring against Iraq in the United Nations, as we did, but do not constitute grounds for the first use of force without UN approval.
Bracket Cheney and that other fella for the purposes of this discussion, and also bracket the legality question; it’s the moral (and consequential) aspect I think is worrying. It’s that ‘crimes against the people of Iraq’ bit. The problem is obvious, and has been discussed endlessly, but it remains just as worrying. What if the crimes against the people of [wherever it be] are really huge crimes? And what if UN approval for the use of force is not forthcoming? What if there are only two choices: unilateral intervention (i.e. aggression) or standing by and watching a genocide continue?
That’s the worry. It’s not that I want to give Cheney and his gang a blank check, it’s not that I trust them an inch, which is why I said bracket them; but the principle is a worry. It’s related (obviously) to the whole national sovereignty question, which has been changing lately. It’s also obviously related to Darfur, and to future Darfurs. I don’t know what the answer is; I just wanted to point out the worry.
The criterion is “to prevent and imminent humanitarian catastrophe”, which was clearly not the case in Iraq.
Yes, that’d be the legal question – but would it be the moral one? Suppose for a moment that Bush&Cheney [I]did[/I] have a decent plan for the post-Saddam period, and all that – would the horrors of Saddam’s regime [I]morally[/I] justify going in? I’m leaning to a yes answer here (though with some doubts).
Well…some would argue that the ongoing pre-war Clinton/Gegorge H.W. Bush embargo period in itself was a ‘humanitarian catastrophe” but I’m not sure how I fell about this argument.
And Merlijn: how common has such a “plan” really worked? This argument sounds a lot like the old 19th century justification of colonialism (after the oh so moral Eurpopeans became embarrased about the naked greed and religious bigotry that originally inspired colonial empires).
Are we in the West then obligated to intervene in every part of the world-because there are certainly far worse situations in the world than pre-War Iraq.
Would Belgium have the white man’s burden sufficient to send the tens of thousands of troops, for example, to right the utter mess in the Congo created ultimately by your right bastard King Leopold,the post-King misadministration of said country, and then the American Cold War cozying up with Sese Seko? Something like 2 million Congolese have died in the various conflicts. Why are we obligated to invade Iraq and not Congo?
When does the intervention end? Who justifies it? Should Sweden invade the United States because we have a lousy welfare system and people don’t get adequate health care. Heck, we have thousands of homeless people in San Francisco. Maybe Belgium can invade us to right the human catastrophe.
You say that you don’t want to give the Cheney crew any justifications, but the ideal of endless “humanitarian interventions” that are never humanitarian and rarely solve things (invasions rarely do) does just that.
You claim that the antiwar left is unrealistic. I wonder who is the real starry eyed optimist here?
So, it looks to me as if Cheney et al. lied to the American people precisely because the people would never have supported an invasion on humanitarian grounds alone. The WMD ploy was only to get support to do the right thing from a humanitarian standpoint. Even now, these brave men, Cheney, Rumsfeld and our faithful leader, G. W., care so deeply about the Iraqi people that they are willing to sacrifice the reputation and honor of America for their sake. When I pray, I thank Jesus we have such selfless Christian men to lead us. It just makes me so proud to be part of a country sacrificing itself for the good of other peoples, even when those peoples don’t appreciate it. This makes me sure that Jesus loves us.
I don’t think anyone is claiming that Cheney is a closet humanitarian… On the other hand, people can do the right thing for the wrong reasons, which is partially what is at issue here. Besides, it is not that hard to imagine someone in power who is moved by humanitarian concerns (dubiously Clinton; maybe less dubiously Blair).
I said bracket Cheney, remember? I said it for a reason. The point is not Cheney, the point is that particular phrase. I’m not defending the Iraq war here. (I was never in favor of it, though I was uncertain about flat-out opposing it too. I was at a standstill on the subject. But anyway this post was not a paean to Cheney.)
Well, we have an opportunity for humanitarian intervention coming up. We have a nuclear armed country in which a law has just been passed saying that the president of that country, and he alone, has the right to decide what is and what is not torture; he also has the right to decide who is an enemy of the state (regardless of whether that person is a citizen of the state) and detain him or her for as long as he pleases; with the latter provision, of course, appended to a direct assault on the principle of habeas corpus.
So this is an opportunity for the humanistic intervenors to intervene on the cheap. A complaint to the International court; detention of George Bush when he lands on the soil of a country that recognizes the court; and Bob’s your uncle.
Furthermore, I don’t think it would be too hard to gather evidence that torture has been promoted by this leader in a systematic way, globally, from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay.
I’m not saying anyone here is defending the utterly vile Dick Cheney. My point is that the very idea of “humanitarian invasions” is very, very suspect. I have no problew at all adamantly opposing an invasion that would inevtiably lead to disaster, based on history.
It is worth pointing out that the USA, by its hostile and negative attitude, bears a long-term responsibility for devaluing the role of the UN in international relations. The complete unwillingness of the USA to leave anything to be settled by the UN, or to place its forces at the disposal of the UN for operations, has materially contributed to it being a place where “crimes against the people of X” get little more than rhetorical attention.
As to national sovereignty, it’s a pain in the butt, from a moral standpoint, but the way to get past it is not to allow another sovereign nation the self-appointed right of intervention without reference to some wider consensus. Especially not when the result is a lot MORE “crimes against the people of X” in the resultant chaos.
Note the phrase in the quote “without UN approval”. There ARE clear mechanisms for overcoming national sovereignty on humanitarian grounds, IF states were prepared to treat the UN as the higher power it aspires to be.
dsquared: But God told him, well Dubya, to do it, so surely that’s OK? I mean really, we cannot argue against the vast body of terribly academic-looking discourse begging the question of God, so we cannot argue against the liberation of Iraq if it is predicated on that.
For everyone other than dsquared, for whom theological justification for the war is insufficient and boiling a frog slowly is comparable in some important ways to dropping a frog in boiling water, resolution 1441 and the (conventional) missiles fired at coalition forces that breached it are a good place to start.
Cheney is a nasty piece of work though. Very nasty.
“Suppose for a moment that Bush&Cheney [I]did[/I] have a decent plan for the post-Saddam period, and all that – would the horrors of Saddam’s regime [I]morally[/I] justify going in?”
It would have had to have been an *incredible* plan to have convinced, given all that we know about the track record of wars of aggression (dismal, absolutely dismal). If such a miracle had occurred then yes, I’d have said it was moral to do so. But for any law on the statute book you can create a case in which it would be morally justified to break it; the laws are there for the overwhelmingly more common cases.
btw, dirigible, when someone’s main argument against you is that you distort people’s arguments and argue against straw men, you do not help your case by doing exactly that.
“A complaint to the International court; detention of George Bush when he lands on the soil of a country that recognizes the court; and Bob’s your uncle.”
Well, frankly, I think that’s what ought to happen. I’d love to see Bush get a visit from the local cops just as Kissinger did in Paris that time. And I agree with Dave about the UN (not to mention the ICC, the land-mines ban, etc). But I did ‘note the phrase in the quote “without UN approval”‘ – that’s why I included the question ‘And what if UN approval for the use of force is not forthcoming?’ My question really is the one that immediately follows – ‘What if there are only two choices: unilateral intervention (i.e. aggression) or standing by and watching a genocide continue?’ That’s not a lightly disguised way of saying I think unilateral aggression is a good thing – it’s saying there is a real quandary. That’s because I think there is a real quandary. (Just ask Roméo Dallaire.)
Ophelia:
I do not see how this would be aggression. If I see someone being attacked and the police either cannot or will not intervene in time, then if I attack the attacker to defend the victim then it’s not aggression in any meaningful morality.
there is a fairly well-established (although still probably heterodox) body of UN jurisprudence dating back to the Kosovo intervention (which, recall, was not authorised by the UN) that the Genocide Convention allows a country to take unilateral military action to prevent an imminent humanitarian catastrophe. That’s the furthest you get in UN law; the Kosovo intervention is generally regarded as having been legal, but for obvious reasons the UN is not really keen on allowing every nation on earth to make up their own mind about what constitutes a vital reason to invade their neighbours.
The answer to the ethical question would be one of cost benefit analysis; will this intervention make things better or worse, taking into account all factors including the extent to which it weakens the prevailing taboo against wars of aggression, which is a pretty important part of the international order? If no then genocide is not actually the worst outcome (both Somalia and DR Congo show how an intervention can make an intolerable situation worse). If yes, then go for it, but check your figures three times.
As I say above, there are often cases in which breaking the law can be justified, but people are in general much too quick to decide that their own particular case is one of them (particularly when important geopolitical or mineral interests are involved, as it is apparently terribly unserious and politically incorrect to say these days).
Ophelia-you are proposing a Hobson’s Choice. What has to be asked is “Will the intervention, often an invasion of outside forces hated for historical, political, and cultural reasons, generally stop the genocide” Even with the use of overwhelming force? What then-is the occupying power going to stay there?
And, again, what was occurring in Iraq, horrible as it was, was not “genocide” but ongoing low-level civil war and oppression of one group (the Shia) by another (the Sunni). These kinds of tribal battles are endemic in Africa and aprts of Asia. Is it our duty to always intervene in nasty civil wars?
Even Darfur-will an invasion solve the problem? An invasion by whom? With what long and meidum term objectives? How will this occur in the face of violent I(slamic opposition-and could such opposition in fact worsen the situation on the ground in Darfur and the region as a whole? So…more deaths, regional instability, more recruitment of terrorists, another endless war thousands of miles from home. Are we talking a draft here, because that’s what it would take. I bet the people holding the Stop Darfur signs are not going to be suiting up for desert warfare-nor will their children!
And, again, there’s what the old Black Sabbath song called the War Pigs, slavering over the chance for more profits.
dsquared-your last paragraph sums it up pretty well. Thank you. Beware the smiles of warmongerers babbling about the need to “liberate” others through force.
For a wonder, I agree with everything dsquared says there. That’s all I was saying. I wasn’t saying intervention is always automatically the best thing to do, I was just saying it’s a question. The lawyers’ letter worried me because it seemed to skip over the question too quickly.
Brian, I’m not proposing anything. You’re reading carelessly. Calm down.
Isn’t the problem really that Cheney’s idea of ‘unilateral intervention’ is not really comparable with the sort of humanitarian intervention the UN charter envisages? Even John Major’s bombing the Iraqi Kurds with food parcels was not without casualties, but Shock and Awe must surely be something quite different. This distinction was argued by Simon Jenkins in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1876418,00.html
“what was occurring in Iraq, horrible as it was, was not “genocide” but ongoing low-level civil war and oppression of one group (the Shia) by another (the Sunni). “
Brian, you seem to be forgetting the people for whom the major charge of genocide was actually against (the Kurds and Marsh Arabs)
This basic error means I should trust your analysis why?
[repeats] I said bracket Cheney, remember?
CB: Marsh Arabs-perhaps. Kurds-less so. And, if so: Why are we not in Turkey. a U.S. ally? Are you proposing we send the 101st Airborn to Ankara? There are certainly villages in far eastern Turkey that would be eager to claim genocide by the Turkish State.
And, Mr. CB, I assume you are pro-intervention and pro-war. Given the realities of 20th century
“humanitarian” interventions and in particular the Iraq War, why need anyone on the anti-war left (or right) listen to anything YOUR side says?
OB: I’m sorry for being impassioned. But sometimes there floats around here this meme among many -it’s not explicit, and it’s bracketed with denials-that seems to imply that the invasion and war has failed merely because of incompetence. That such wars are in fact a good idea if they are only “done right” by qualified liberals.
I’m less sure of that. I think there’s a lot of hubris in that-heck, roger’s point that the US should be the victim of an “intervention” makes plenty of sense to me.
[Brian, you seem to be forgetting the people for whom the major charge of genocide was actually against (the Kurds and Marsh Arabs) ]
Saddam has not been charged with any crimes of genocide against the Marsh Arabs. He faces charges relating to the Anfal campaign against the Kurds, the suppression of the Kurdish and Shia revolts and the invasion of Kuwait. The Marsh Arabs are implicitly included in the charges with respect to the suppression of the Shia rebellion (they are mainly Shia because they live in the south of Iraq), but there is no charge brought with respect to them as an ethnic group.
The principle of non-intervention isn’t just some airy do-gooder’s prescription, by the way. It’s an incredibly well-established empirical proposition that wars of aggression have bad consequences. Anyone proposing one ouight to be viewed with at least as much scepticism as someone claiming that he has a dog who knows when its owner is is coming home.
The principle of non-intervention isn’t just some airy do-gooder’s prescription, by the way. It’s an incredibly well-established empirical proposition that wars of aggression have bad consequences.
There are also bad consequences for non-intervention. In the case of Iraq, the continuation of the Hussain regime, by Saddam or his murderous sons, was not without consequence. If his regime had fallen “naturally”, it is not unlikely that the problems we are seeing now (sectarian fighting and jihadist terrorism) would have occurred in any case. No-one has suggested a Velvet Revolution was likely or imminent in Iraq.
I was on the phone yesterday to an Iraqi member of parliament, listening to him talking about security concerns, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi students starting at University this week, and his participation in government talks about economic reform (he believes it will improve security). Even after surviving an assassination attempt on him (a gunman sprayed the front of his car), he welcomed the removal of Saddam (as do the majority of Iraqis).
As for Darfur, I suspect in ten years time we will all be wringing our hands about how we failed to act and saying yet again “never again”.
I find it particularly disturbing that if you argue for intervention these days, you are accused of providing cover for imperialism, Dick Cheney, neocons or corporate interests. There is an underlying assumption of bad faith in calls for humanitarian intervention.
“btw, dirigible, when someone’s main argument against you is that you distort people’s arguments and argue against straw men, you do not help your case by doing exactly that.”
I’m at a loss to explain why you are claiming this to be the case, except as a rhetorical convenience. Your previous position was that we cannot (or at least, you know, should not) challenge theological doctrine outside of its own terms of reference. This is a war that was launched, some claim, on the word of God. So you can believe that theology is something serious or you can believe that a president who is told to go to war by God is a bit of a problem, but to believe both you must be a bit of a cultural studies lecturer.
As for 1441 this is a discussion of International Law.
And as for boiling frogs, I think you misunderstood the tone of what was said. Tone is very important, don’t you find?
If you do not like the practical outcome of your opinions, don’t hold them. But don’t shoot the messenger.
[As for Darfur, I suspect in ten years time we will all be wringing our hands about how we failed to act]
We did not fail to act. The EU, US and UK have all been incredibly helpful in sponsoring the peace talks, underpinning the diplomatic effort and providing humanitarian aid. Their one failing has been to fail to honour commitments made to the African Union, out of a misplaced belief that they would be able to replace AMIS with their own mission. Sorry to be a pedant about this but the identification of “action” with “military action” is a really bad source of confusion (I think Brian Brivati has made this point about one of the most unfortunately phrased bits in the Euston Manifesto).
Regarding the consequences of non-intervention, I prefer to argue on the basis of empirical facts. Obviously we can’t do without counterfactuals entirely, but it’s best to minimise their use. If we are going to allow counterfactuals in, then I am certainly going to argue that intervention in Rwanda would have made things worse, for example. What I’m looking for is a single concrete example of a humanitarian intervention which unambiguously made things better and it is surprisingly difficult. The only clear success is the American Civil War, with the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia much more debatable (because the deaths certainly continued at a frightening rate under Vietnamese occupation, and because it was actually a war of self-defence).
[There is an underlying assumption of bad faith in calls for humanitarian intervention.]
There are all sorts of underlying assumptions of bad faith; I have to say, Anthony, that you have made one or two of them yourself in the past. The trouble is that the alternative to raising the question of bad faith is often to ignore the existence of large and obvious mineral interests, and of a large and influential group of American politicians who are in fact imperialists.
I’d also note that “providing political cover”, a phrase that I think I’ve done as much as anyone to introduce into the British blogosphere, was explicitly meant to avoid the implication of bad faith. When someone like Thomas Friedman decides that he supports a war for international democracy which happens to be physically identical with the war that Dick Cheney supports, then I have no reason to doubt his sincerity, but the practical effect of his actions is to provide cover for Dick Cheney (leaving aside the question of whether Cheney is interested in imperialism, democracy or mineral interests, or combinations of the three).
Where I do agree with you on this point is the view that is (more implicitly than explicitly) common on the far-left tendency, that there is something intrinsically imperialist about wanting to promote democracy; that just because many “democracy movements” have turned out to be fakes and US patsies, it is impossible for there to be a genuine democratic movement in the Third World. This does strike me as patronising and unpleasant; even a lot of democracy movements which are definitely and provably paid for by the CIA are also genuine.
I think the pro-intervention side could do a lot to help themselves, though, by a) not castigating the United Nations so much (similarly, not being quite so keen to pretend that issues like Darfur are a clear case of US vs EU) and b) taking on a couple of serious campaigns which aren’t quite so obviously coterminous with State Department policy (some of the former Soviet Central Asian republics come to mind). The second of these, though, rather throws the whole thing into sharp relief; advocates of intervention don’t get the chance to set their own agenda, because there is no realistic prospect of intervention of any sort in a lot of client states. I think that’s at the root of a lot of the accusations of bad faith; the pro-intervention side is always going to end up on the same side of the USA largely through no fault of its own, because the Euston Manifesto group doesn’t have an army of its own (and nor does the Henry Jackson Society, although I doubt this is for lack of trying), and thus it’s not able to set its own agenda rather than always defining itself with respect to what the Americans are doing.
The American Civil War was a humanitarian intervention? That would be news to Lincoln. He thought he was preserving the Republic. 600,000 military casualties and vast untabulated economic and humanitarian costs of four years of industrialised warfare… Sherman’s March Through Georgia, Bleeding Kansas, Quantrill’s raiders, Antietam, Shiloh, Vicksburg… and 100 years of Southron resentment and Jim Crow legislation… Someone has a really low threshold for “unambiguously made things better”.
[The American Civil War was a humanitarian intervention? That would be news to Lincoln. He thought he was preserving the Republic.]
Anthony: this is a perfect example of the fact that this accusation of bad faith against the pro-intervention side has been around for more than a hundred years, so I would be pessimistic about the prospects for it going away.
“I am certainly going to argue that intervention in Rwanda would have made things worse, for example.”
Yes? You think it would? (Or would you just argue that it would for the sake of testing counterfactuals – which is a good reason.) Rwanda, obviously enough, is one of the main reasons that clause in the lawyers’ letter causes me to balk. Clinton, apparently, to this day still strongly wishes he had done something (had intervened in some way, though I don’t know exactly in what way) – thinks he was badly wrong not to.
Well, I suppose I can imagine ways that intervention could have made things worse – if, to everyone’s surprise, surrounding countries (or guerilla armies from surrounding countries) had rushed in to resist the invaders, and what was supposed to be a quick police action had turned into a ten-year ten-country war. I believe that was part of the reason for doing nothing at the time – especially because of Somalia – that what was meant to be a minimal intervention would turn out to be a quagmire. That could have happened, of course.
Brian
‘But sometimes there floats around here this meme among many -it’s not explicit, and it’s bracketed with denials-that seems to imply that the invasion and war has failed merely because of incompetence. That such wars are in fact a good idea if they are only “done right” by qualified liberals.
I’m less sure of that. I think there’s a lot of hubris in that-heck, roger’s point that the US should be the victim of an “intervention” makes plenty of sense to me.’
Look. If it’s not only not explicit, but ‘bracketed with denials’, how about taking the denials seriously? Eh? You do realize that by brushing them aside you’re calling me a liar, right?
That ‘I’m less sure of that’ is rich. You’re less sure of what? A stupid assumption that you have made up and attributed to me? You’re less sure than who? Than I am? But I’m not ‘sure’ of that at all, because it’s not my view.
[Yes? You think it would?]
Not necessarily. I’m just pointing out that it is a bad idea for the pro-intervention side to bring counterfactuals into the debate over the failures of intervention, because practically *all* the successes of intervention live in the counterfactual realm.
I’ve got no real enthusiasm for getting into Rwanda counterfactuals, though, because it would involve learning a hell of a lot of specific information about Rwanda which I don’t know and don’t know how to get. How big a troop force would we have been talking about? Where were the refugee camps located and what would have happened to the people in them (I know that the economy of Burundi was nearly knocked over by the burden of Rwandan refugees after the RPF victory)? Would the whole thing have ended up like Operation Turqoise on a national scale? These are all the questions that never have to be answered because it didn’t happen.
I’m not a complete pessimist with respect to the ability of state violence to do good, so I wouldn’t want to rule it out entirely. But it makes no sense to base the case for X on “failures of not-X” rather than “successes of X”. It’s rather like some advocates of homeopathic medicine who are fond of telling you about the number of people who have chemotherapy for cancer but die anyway.
Yeah. Agreed. Not wanting to rule it out entirely is all I’m talking about, but I think you’re right about failures of not-X.
btw, Ophelia, I think you might be misunderstanding Brian. AFAICS he has accurately characterised your position (and mine, although it is one that I regard as currently shipping water quite badly). This is that there is a possibility of a workable intervention, and that the failures of most recent attempts at humanitarian intervention (whether or not we define that term broadly enough to include Iraq, there is still Somalia, and I would guess that Brian regards Kosovo and Afghanistan as failures, a defensible position) is the result of incompetence in planning or execution.
Brian, as far as I can see, takes the libertarian/hard anti-imperialist view that even the best possible planning and any feasible allocation of resources would still have resulted in failure. I call it the libertarian view because there’s a clear parallel to Hayek’s critique of state planning here; while one could say that in principle a planner could achieve the optimal outcome given perfect information – it’s not logically impossible – it is actually a practical impossibility for any real-world planner, no matter how intelligent or well intentioned to achieve a result that beats the market outcome. I think Brian’s rhetoric might have slipped a bit but he’s not actually misrepresenting you (although I don’t understand what this business about “denials” is).
I resent an historical clarification being treated as an accusation of bad faith. You also brush aside the more significant point that, if you think 600,000 casualties and four years of total war is an “unambiguous” improvement, as opposed to a terribly high price to pay for anything, you are remarkably casual with human life in pursuit of your principles.
And the Gettysburg Address still doesn’t mention slavery, no matter how hard you squint.
The Gettysburg address doesn’t explicitly mention slavery, but it can be argued that it does so implicitly – it’s hard to know what else is meant by the ‘new birth of freedom’.
I can’t make any sense of the idea that the American Civil War can be regarded as a humanitarian intervention. It wasn’t an intervention at all, in the sense that the term is used in international law, unless you think the rebel states had a right to secede. Lincoln had no need of any such notion as the Responsibility to Protect; as an elected president his responsibility was obvious. He was defending the established order against a rebellion. On top of that, the rebels were the first to use force.
If there was any bad faith involved it consisted in the fact that he acually played down the humanitarian aspect, insisting that his sole concern was the preservation of the Union, when in truth abolition was his eventual goal.
Ophelia: I wasn’t meaning to even address you or your comments specifically or personally, just addressing an overall tone which, to me as a skeptic of interventism, bothered me.
And, I don’t think my characterization of the “denials” is that far off-there IS lots of “well we know Cheney and Rumsfeld are evil, but our side will do a better, more moral job.”
Especially since “our” interventions included, for example, the initial funding of the precursors of the Taliban in Afghanistan (Jimmy Carter) (boy, that worked out well, no?). Too often, it’s part of Great Power gamesmanship dressed up in moralism.
Daniel,
If you are citing the American Civil War as a clear success of a humanitarian intervention (970,000 casualties – inc civilians – out of a total population of approximately 33 million), then you must consider Iraq to be some way off being a failure given the lower casualty rates, and the fact that Saddam was arguably more murderous than the Confederacy was.
Given your stated positions in this thread, I’m surprised you haven’t argued that the UN article on genocide should be revised – to take into account the fact that actually stopping a genocide might make things worse for the victims of such a genocide.
You are of course correct that interventions do not unambiguously make things better. For example, you could argue that the Allied, in particular the Soviet, invasion of Germany made the situation much worse for the German people (read Anthony Beevors Berlin). If you want perfection and 100% certainty before an intervention – then you will have no interventions ever. You will, of course, have fairly unambiguous events like Rwanda.
Anthony, that is quite a high moral tone to be taking given the extraordinary scarcity of evidence on your side. Since the pro-intervention side has delivered us Somalia, DR Congo and Iraq in the last twenty years, a little bit less attitude might seem to be in order.
[the fact that Saddam was arguably more murderous than the Confederacy was]
I think this would be a very weak argument indeed. The War To Free The Slaves did, in fact, free the slaves. In that sense, it was successful. There are a few historians who argue that in the immediate aftermath of the ACW, freed slaves were worse off than they had been as slaves, but really not very many.
Success justifies. The problem with Iraq is that it didn’t work (and maybe couldn’t have worked). Do we say that a capable civilian (an ex-prize fighter Green Beret etc) doe snot have the moral sanction to intervene when he sees a private fight?
Would anyone seriously suggest that a unilateral invasion of Cambodia to topple PolPot would not have been morally justified? (The prudential sssues of effectiveness & wisdom etc etc are separate.)
David,
Success is not predictable, and Daniel’s balance sheet mechanism for looking at these problems sets an impossibly high bar before action can take place. Daniel probably thinks I was being mischievous when I wrote “I’m surprised you haven’t argued that the UN article on genocide should be revised – to take into account the fact that actually stopping a genocide might make things worse for the victims of such a genocide.”
It’s a genuine question. Is the UN overreaching itself an unrealistic bid to prevent genocides? Daniel thinks clearly thinks they are, since he argues that there is scant evidence for any intervention’s effectiveness.
Success can also be judged differently. You, for example, think Iraq hasn’t worked. Whereas my friend who is in the Iraqi Council of Representatives thinks it still can work – despite the best attempts of terrorists to derail the process for their own ends. I tend to side with his position, rather than one formed from reports of suicide bombings on the six o’clock news.
AND NOW ….
After decrying and denigrating the UN for 5+ years of the Shrub/Cheney presidency, they suddenly find that they REALLY NEED the UN!
Oops.
Because of a state that is really evil, and treats its own populace worse (possibly) than even the Taliban – N. Korea.
Oh, and btw – has anyone notice the latest?
The Somali islamist/warlords are trying to pick a fight with “christian” EtHiopia?
Oh dear.
David: Your position on Cambodia is simplistic and ahistorical. It ignores one of the major factors in reason why Pol Pot took power: United States’ interventions in the area-especially the militarization of Southeast Asia in its attempt to “preserve” “Democracy” in Vietnam. We largely assisted corrupt and incompetent military dictator Lon Nol to take power through a violent coup, overturning the waffling but somewhat effective attempts to balance all the pressures by Price Sihounek (sp?) Those thousands of tons of bombs and defoliants we dropped on Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos couldn’t have had an effect on the Khmer Rouge coming to power?
So…intervention leads to a horrific result justifies another round of intervention which in turn leads to another horrific result.
Get breeding, folks, because we need a lot more “Christian Warriors for Ddemocracy” to feed the neverending cycle.