The Iraq War

--Responses-- You spend a good amount of your first entry bashing the Anti-War movement, rather than justifying the Iraq War, so I will spend a good amount of words refuting that. **As a side note, you declare that you follow Libertarian ideology, an ideology that is HEAVILY anti war and non Interventionist. I urge you to actually read the LP platform. http://www.lp.org... 1)You noted that a point of importance was that Hussein's next target was Saudi Arabia. I don"t remember the breakdown at the time of invasion, but I know in more recent years that the vast majority of our crude oil is produced domestically, and imported from Latin America and Canada. Not Saudi Arabia. --I find point particularly heinous, another country"s economic value to us is not an appropriate justification for war. The American military does NOT exist to protect private interests abroad. 2)The Taliban harboring Al Qaeda without war. Guess what. We dismantled the Taliban and occupied the region and didn"t do much do disrupt Al Qaeda. 5)The anti-war movement (me being an open member of it) does not oppose the DECLARATION of war in 1941, as both the Empire of Japan and Nazi Germany posed a massive threat to the U.S and the entire world for that matter. It is not even remotely comparable to the "police actions" we have seen in the last 60 years, in which war was never even legally declared. So your point is irrelevant 7) It"s interesting that you mention Kosovo. The NATO bombings in Kosovo were condemned by much of the world, and are incredibly controversial. Some go so far as to call them war crimes, as numerous civilian installations were targeted. Amnesty International claims they were human rights violations. Serbian sources claim that more civilians died that anyone else. (1)http://www.b92.net... I find it disgusting that you blame the Non-interventionist movement for the deaths in Rwanda and the rest of the world. The United States, is a Sovereign Nation. Our Government DOES NOT exist to police and protect the WORLD. The United States is already the largest funder by far of the U.N and NATO. (1,2). We have spent Trillions upon Trillions of dollars on aide to other nations. We have spent trillions of dollars on wars to "protect". If we followed your suggested logic of being worldwide police, the U.S might as well declare itself the global authority. 1) http://www.nato.int... 2) http://www.un.org... ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Now for the actual issue, from what I could glean, you seem to be largely trying to convince me that Saddam was evil. That is neither the issue at hand, or something that I disagree with. You say that you will get into more of this later, please don"t, as the issue is not how evil Saddam was. -----Saddam"s Human Rights Abuses As a Justification---- Yes, Saddam Hussein was a sadistic, genocidal monster who slaughtered his own people. The Al"Anfal campaign is generally accepted as genocide, and is often use by interventionists as a motivator for war. Estimates are that around 100,000 people perished. (1) While it was undoubtably a human atrocity, it occurred in the late 1980"s. We invaded nearly 20 years later. A bit of a delayed reaction I would say. You cannot realistically justify the Iraq War on a 20 year old event, and that seems to be your only substantial justification for the Iraq incursion. Iraq was one of several Islamic fundamentalist that brutalize/brutalized their own people, and one of many nations that abuse human rights. I don"t disagree that it was deplorable. But we cannot justify the drastic nature of a unilateral (2*) military intervention because of the seemingly brutal practices of another culture, that differ from our own western values. If that were the case, we would have to invade Iran, North Korea, Eritea, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Belarus, and Democratic Republic of Congo just to name a few. So in your pro-war view, should we be military involved in every single place? Should the U.S continue to perpetuate a dominant global western hegemony? Are we truly the ultimate bright light of moral justice and righteousness in the world? Who are to enforce this view through militaristic brutality? http://news.bbc.co.uk... I call the Iraq war a unilateral intervention because America supplied and financed the vast majority of the war. I think that"s fair, although it doesn"t fall under the rigid definition of unilateral. --WMD"s-- To me this is the biggest failure of the Iraq War justification. The remnants of the chemical and biological weapons programs that were found were largely abandoned in 1991.(1,2) Hans Blix was the head U.N weapons Inspector at the time, and supports the assertion that there were no serious threats from WMD"s. (3) You state that they posed, or were near to posing a potent nuclear threat to the U.S and our allies, this is simply incorrect. They did not have Nuclear technology, and wanted to buy Nuclear technology from a Nation(North Korea) whose nuclear credibility is questionable at best, even today. North Korea bought their technology from China, and as far as I know don"t even have adequate technology to launch the device. So I seriously doubt that 10 years ago Iraq posed any real threat to the U.S or our allies. For your own reference, the actual instances of WMD"s being found by ISG( Iraq Survey Group ) has already been compiled on wikipedia . http://en.wikipedia.org... The majority of these instances go toward disproving the notion that Saddam stockpiled WMD"s. In my opinion, Wikipedia is a tremendous resource.They cite nearly everything that is added, including the entire list I recommended to you. (1)http://www.factcheck.org... (2)http://www.globalsecurity.org... (3)http://www.npr.org... ----Post War Ramifications--- The removal of Saddam"s Ba"ath Regime did not end the slaughter. Approximately between 123,000 and 134,000 Iraqi civilians died as a "direct result" of the U.S invasion of Iraq. (1) A large majority of that blood is on America"s hands. There are multiple instances of Americans raping, beating and murdering civilians. (2) These instances are nearly inevitable in war. These kind of things undoubtedly caused a spike in militant extremism in the reason, and bred an anti-western sentiment. --Where is the justice and nobility that you declare this war had? There was none. War is ugly. War is dirty, bloody, and horrific. America unintentionally slaughtered children, women and thousands of innocents, and labeled those lives as collateral damage. We also lost thousands of our own valiant young men in the process. --Did the ends justify the means? No. After hundreds of thousands of deaths and immeasurable suffering and destruction in the region, the U.S leaves Iraq crippled. It is widely considered a failed state, failing to provide basic services and protection for it"s own citizens. (3) So did this so called "noble and just" war really do anything to help the Iraqi"s? That seems to be your main motivation for supporting the Iraq war, helping the Iraqis. So I ask you, what stops another tyrannical regime from taking over? Not much. There is a cyclical nature of dictatorship in un-developed, socially chaotic nations. The cycle of dictator-war-liberation-ruler-dictator has been seen all over the world. (1)http://costsofwar.org... (2)http://en.wikipedia.org... (Merely a compilation, the actual cases are easily obtainable) (3)http://www.foreignpolicy.com... ----Legality of the Iraq War---- The legality of the Iraq war is highly contested to say the least. I am no International law expert, so I cannot make any extensive comments. In 2004, Kofi Annan stated that he considered the War illegal and violated the U.N charter. (1) I would guess that he is more qualified than me to judge International law. The issue of wether or not Iraq forfeited state sovereignty is also controversial, as there are many differing perspectives on the issue. (1)http://news.bbc.co.uk... As I have in other discussions in debates, I will leave you with the words of our own President Barack Obama. "The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." 2007