posted 02-25-2001 11:12 PM               

One "just cause" might be when a nation invades another country and seeks to subjugate its poulation. Civil wars would be exempt from this, since they involve internal conflicts.

Two possible problems with this position are:

1) It just doesn't happen a whole lot anymore. With the advent of nuclear weapons, a conventional war on the scale of WWII just doesn't seem likely anymore. Most countries are not willing to risk getting into a nuclear exchange. Also, with the US such a force in global politics, nobody is as willing to engage in a direct conflict with us, so there just isn't a whole lot of one country invading another anymore.

2) There is still a whole lot of suffering to be had in civil conflicts, where one political party or force kills or subjugates another political sect in their country. Rwanda and Bosnia are two examples, and it's kind of hard to draw the line between this and a country invading another.

posted 02-28-2001 09:57 PM               

In response to babydoc's points, I'd say that in lots of cases where one country invades another, or one faction of a country (racial, religious, what-have-you) wages violence on another, U.S. actions usually seem pretty strategic rather than humanitarian or altruistic. Taking a few swings at Sadaam when he rolled his tanks into Kuwait was a pretty defenisible notion, but would we have protected China if Japan invaded again, considering our relationships with both nations?

It seems that the idea of waging war is a pretty intense notion. Waving some missiles around in a manner that says "You'd better not invade these guys or we'll open up an economy-size can o' whoop-tushy on ya" is certainly different from all-out war, since it usually seems to involve targeting (or attempting to target) military installations. When I think "war" I think of battles raging across villages and civilians getting slaughtered and left homeless, which is something that I'm not sure I see reason for, except, I guess, in extreme cases of self-defense (I know next to nothing about defense policy, so I really am talking out of my ass here, so caveat and stuff).

So I totally failed in talking about this in the abstract. Oh well -- I guess that's what the Philosophy threads are for.

posted 02-28-2001 11:11 PM               

I personally don't think there is any thing as a just war, although it is necessary from time to time. All wars are politically motivated nowadays. And then it usually is testosterone poisoning on the part of the politicians. In the end it is the soldiers and civilians who end up paying the price for the decision that others have made.

I think there would be a hell of a lot less war if the politicians were fighting with their lives on the line.

posted 03-01-2001 04:35 AM               

Without getting too much into politics -- Kevin's point about US action being strategic more than humanitarian is, I think, going to prove to be much truer in this administration than in the previous one -- but we'll see.

As for Andrew's point about testosterone poisoning and it being better if the leaders were out in the field -- I'm not sure I agree. In the Civil War era, for example, many of the political leaders of both the North and South got themselves commissions -- and many got themselves and/or their men killed. Regardless, the bloodthirst of many (particularly, it seems, in the South) was only increased by the prospects for getting on the field of battle. I'm not saying that politicians or dictators might not want to be more conscientious about their use of force, but I don't know that it'd be a cure-all.

posted 03-01-2001 11:40 AM               

The question then becomes this, I think: At what point do we begin to wage war on an aggressor? In World War II, the United States didn't do a whole lot until its own interests were visibly threatened; In Vietnam and in Korea and in the Gulf War it seemed that we were doing just the opposite - attempting to quell an objectionable force (be in international communism or Sadaam) before it got really out of hand.

posted 03-01-2001 07:09 PM               

quote:

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So it seems that we're starting to pare down our ideas of what makes war justfiable into defense of others and defense of ourselves.

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I'm wondering, Kevin, who constitues "others" The cover story on this week's The Economist is about Africa's struggles. They note in the opening editorial that there are about 7 or 8 countries in the midst of insurgencies, a half dozen more are involved in the war in Congo, and that Ethiopia and Eritrea were involved in a very bloody border war. Why have we not become militarily involved in any of those conflicts? The situation in Rwanda a few years ago was far more bloody than the Bosnian conflict, yet we did nothing. It seems that "others" are defined as those with whom we share either economic or cultural ties.

quote:

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At what point do we begin to wage war on an aggressor?

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posted 03-01-2001 10:55 PM               

As for Africa -- from a moral/ethical point of view, I have no problem with going in and overthrowing governments that commit atrocities. But from a more practical perspective, if there's not support from other societies in the surrounding area such that said overthrow might lead to a stabilization in the region, is it really something worth doing?

posted 09-17-2001 09:09 PM               

Recent events have me rather flummoxed on this issue. Obviously the pre-emptive value of getting an enemy before the enemy has the chance to get you is playing a stronger role in my thinking now. And the humanitarian in me does often wish that we would go around snuffing out oppressive dictatorships. On the other hand, from a practical standpoint, I still don't know if we really have the resources to do that the world over.

posted 03-17-2003 06:25 PM               

My feeling on this is that if, as a result, the United States and Britain aren't sanctioned by or ejected from the UN, there's almost an implied approval on the part of the United Nations. Whether that inaction comes from intimidation or the UN quietly sitting back and being the "good cop" to the US/UK coalition "bad cop," it would strip the UN of a great deal of its authority, without quite letting us off the hook.

I'm not saying I think anyone should be sanctioned or anything, just positing the above as...well...a thought that has occurred to me. But like many thoughts that occur to me, everyone's invited to discount or ignore them at their leisure.

posted 03-18-2003 05:35 AM               

Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me to see some kind of General Assembly resolution criticizing the US/UK invasion plan. As it is I think the big powers on the Security Council view their withholding of approval as censure enough. And there's probably just enough wiggle room under the previous resolutions on Iraq that you'd have a hard time making the case that the US or UK should be expelled or severely punished for this.

posted 03-19-2003 04:31 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Dave Thomer:

That's what bugs the hell out of me. There's just enough of the slightest veneer of legitimacy to this thing that I can't quite work up the rabid opposition that I think I'd like to.

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I can. As far as I'm concerned, there is no chance that Iraq could successfully attack the US and they're not in the process of attempting it at the moment.

Regardless of who signs on to the 'war' and who doesn't (veneer of legitimacy) we're talking about killing lots of people who aren't hurting us (or threating to, as far as the available evidence is concerned) because GWB says their leader is bad. And Americans don't seem to mind since the people we're killing are: 1) non-white, 2) use the 'wrong' name for their god, 3) live far away, and .... 4) can't really retaliate!

Even if some of the allegations the Bush admin has made had been supported by evidence, this would still be wrong.

When we found missiles in Cuba in '62, we stood the Soviets down and got out of it with everyone still alive. Should we have just nuked Cuba and/or Russia because we had evidence of WMD (which we did have, that time)? Would it be any more right to do that now just because this opponent can't fight back?

posted 03-19-2003 05:47 PM               

I completely appreciate your position; at many moments I feel like I even agree with it. What trips me up sometimes is this: I supported using force to stop Milosovic and his ilk in Bosnia. Milosovic was no threat to the US any time soon either, but I felt like he had to be stopped and if the US had the power to do it, they should. So the Saddam's-an-oppressor-to-his-people-that-must-be-stopped argument has just enough currency to slow me down a little bit, and hope that perhaps in the long run, some greater good can come out of this.

posted 03-19-2003 09:51 PM               

Anyway, you raised a good point so I should probably try to clarify that previous post.

I was in support of the military action against Milosovic as well, so how do I reconcile the two points of view?

First -- contrary to the implication in my previous post –- there is at least one reason besides self-defense that I would consider a justification for military action and that's the defense of someone who's being attacked and can't defend themselves. I suppose that's a slippery slope -– do we rush to the rescue of everyone who's being mistreated? I don't think we've got the resources even if the answer should be yes. But maybe sometimes things are just so bad that it's warranted.

So, with the disclaimer that I based my position on what I've heard and read about that situation and may, of course, have been misinformed (I don't trust the news media much lately) here goes:

1) Milosovic was killing people at the time. He wasn't just known or rumored to have done terrible things in the past or to be planning future atrocities, he was killing large numbers of people right then and appeared as though he wanted to finish the job. US intervention offered the prospect of saving many of the lives that were otherwise about to be snuffed out.

2) The Serbs were wiping out a people. Not that murder in small numbers is acceptable, but when a foreign nation claims to be dealing with a few spies, traitors, or whatever, you have to know the situation pretty well to say, categorically, that it's all a lie. (And then you still have to look at the consequences of bombing them and ask whether that response will do more harm than good.) On the other hand, when someone says, 'The ethnic Albanians all have to die,' you can be pretty sure that that's just plain wrong.

3) We were principally dropping bombs on military targets. Okay, I'm trusting the news on that one and hope it's true. If it's true, then we were killing the very people who were deliberately causing all the trouble.

Now the current situation:

1) Bush has gone to great lengths to establish a link between the WTC and Saddam and failed completely as far as I can tell. He's also tried to paint Hussein as a man on the brink of launching mass destruction; at least some of the evidence has turned out to be a complete forgery (the Niger/Nuke connection), some of the info presented was found to be out-of-date and not from real intelligence sources (Powel's paper to the UN which turned out to be Blair's cut-and-paste from a ten-year-old doctoral thesis), and much of it has turned out to be unsubstantiated rumor (Blix has been looking all over and can't find these terrible weapons that Rummy keeps claiming to know about). So while everyone generally agrees that Iraq's leader is capable of awful behavior ('He gassed his own people'), no one has established that he's up to anything like that right now.

2) There doesn't seem to be anything on the scale of genocide going on in Iraq at the moment.

3) If you've read anything about the 'Shock and Awe' plans for this campaign or the estimated civilian deaths ... well, I just don't think we'll be hitting only military targets.

Finally, in the process of selling this war to America, the White House has changed its story many times and doesn't look all that sincere to me. (In GW1, the incubator baby story turned out to be from a 'witness' who was never at the hospital in question, but who was coached into the testimony by an ad firm. Workers from the hospital denied the story.) So I don't give this same gang -- and it is almost exactly the same bunch involved this time -– the benefit of the doubt when they want me to trust them.

So that's the short version of why I think the former Yugoslavia was worth interfering with and Iraq -– at this time -– isn't.

posted 03-20-2003 03:56 AM               

I also couldn't agree more with Jack's criticisms of our supposed motives and alleged evidence. Our government spread far too many mistruths in order to try and legitimize this conflict. Even if I can make myself accept that some good will come out regime change, I can not and will not condone the steps the US took leading up to it.

I guess one of my concerns is that containing Saddam and keeping him as not-a-threat has involved the use of sanctions and the occasional air strike over the years. Saddam's refusal to accept the terms of the surrender he signed, which in turn was the result of his aggression against a neighbor, is a principal cause of considerable suffering on the part of the Iraqi people, to say nothing of whatever ethnic conflicts he has perpetrated against the Kurds and whatever general oppression he commits. It seems like we're in a box where there's nothing that can be done to avoid innocent Iraqis suffering and dying. So is the slow drip-drip-drip of containment the best route, or is an aggressive splurge of attacks better? I still lean toward the former, but it's one of those situations where I can at least see the case for the other side.

posted 03-20-2003 09:27 AM               

While I agree with the fact that GWB is using 9/11 to justify taking on Iraq, I believe that there is stronger evidence to show that Saddam is a "bad man." He has gassed and killed many hundreds of ethnic Kurds. He has been slowly moving them out of their homes - which are then given or sold to other Iraqis - and move them by force to outlying areas which are becoming slowly more Kurdish. But these people are not going here by choice. Unless you consider having yourself or family tortured and/or killed by Iraqi troops a choice.

I've also read reports that his sons are more than happy to follow in dad's footsteps. Both have been shown to be horribly cruel, kill people for fun, and are quick to take out those who work against them.

posted 03-24-2003 12:00 PM               

Hey wait, does that mean that there are also bad people in charge in other countries of the world, too?

Sorry for the sarcasm. I understand that Saddam is bad. No one is arguing that. I just want to know why this bad guy is suddenly tops on our "To Do" list and we don't even get involved when other world leaders do similarly bad or even worse things?

posted 04-04-2003 11:31 PM            

So what troops would those be? They consist of two groups. First are the ground forces the Saudis asked us to station there to contain Saddam and deter him from invading Saudi Arabia. Second are the air assets stationed in Saudi Arabia to enforce the southern No Fly Zone.