RateItAll: The Opinion Network

Every war is legitimate. Every war is illegitimate. It all depends of who is judging. I wonder if any country in the world ever asked permission to go to war. In the case of Iraq, the use of force was clearly authorized by the U.N. after the failure of Saddam to comply with the numerous resolutions.

Under Just War Theory, the question of legitimacy is an institutional one. Was the question of going to war adequately vetted out through legitimate organs of the state? Posing the question peripherally, I would have to say yes, it was. The question of war was taken to the legislature, who voted on the matter, according to constitutional procedure. However, we also have to question the information provided to decision makers on the prospects for war. Simply put, many deemed the war necessary because the Bush administration was touting its need in the face of an imminent threat. Turns out that Saddam's Iraq wasn't so much the threat that it was played up to be, and indeed, he was largely deterred by American military power by 2002. We've learned that much of the information used to justify this war was built on weak premises. Even worse, the rationalization for the war provided by Bush shifted with the political winds. It started out as a security matter, then they began to emphasize that this war was some broad neo-liberal democracy-building project. Of course, it is highly ironic that a Republican administration would pursue war for such ends, historically that's an aberration for the foreign policy promulgated by that party, one that probably shouldn't be repeated. We should do more to promote democracy, but lets do it systematically and not arbitrarily. In this respect, the belief promoted by the neo-cons that one can mix Wilsonian idealism and realism to create a new paradigm is woefully wrong and highly subjective. In such a situation, security decisions are made with irrelevant criteria and decisions about things like human rights, which, if we follow the doctrine enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, becomes one that isn't necessarily universal in scope. So basically, what many claim to be a "Bush Doctrine" is nothing more than "foreign policy done on the fly." Mixing and matching different goals situationally. Under certain contexts, that is fine, but one shouldn't tout universal values and a big picture vision when there clearly is none.

No way. The whole thing was based on lies. The amazing thing is that people support being lied to!

I think it was justified, I'm a moderate, but I think Dubya has been screwing up and overextending his stay in postwar Iraq. This dude is a mess, we really need a better president. In response to Kairho, I don't really think action against Saddam was in doubt for much of the nineties. You say the US should have slept on it, but I think that is a rather uninformed statement, to say the least. We had been oversleeping on Saddam for years. He was more than eager to reassemble his military machine, and had we claimed to not give a damn, you can bet your mommy's bank account Saddam would've been buying weapons like children buying candy with a 100 dollar bill! Now W, or his masters, whomever they might be, always seems to have an agenda for everything. I fear that is clouding his better judgement on Iraq. The action was good, time to leave; send the Marines if the situation gets out of control...good day.

Legitimate from what standpoint? International law? As proscribed by the United Nations? Silly contention, they had long since forfeited the authority to interpret any such legitimacy. If they had retained anything regarding such credibility, more nations than Germany, France and Russia would have withheld their support. Iraq (vis-a-vis Saddam) had clearly violated numerous UN Resolutions and was in direct defiance and non-compliance (under threat of military action) with the well-known and often articulated concensus of the UN. Had the weapons inspectors not been expelled, they were still in defiance on many points. From the standpoint of domestic law? This course of action was pretty roundly approved by the US Congress. What the vast, vast majority of Americans believed was pretty clear.

Without a doubt. Saddam Hussein is a war criminal as well as guilty of crimes against humanity. Further, he thumbed his nose at over a dozen impotent UN resolutions and has cost the U.S. taxpayers tens of millions of dollars by refusing to let arms inspectors in, and then capitulating once we had gone to the considerable expense of moving our forces into the region. This happened time and again. No matter what else W did or will do during his presidency, he has performed the international community the great service of getting rid of that piece of garbage former dictator.

Just because there are reasons for an action doesn't mean action necessarily follows. How many of us have had an argument or severe disacgreement with someone and wanted to punch him our her out? Happens all the time, but cooler heads (almost all of them) prevail and alternate action (like writing a nasty letter and then tearing it up) will result in a rational course of action. The US should have "slept on it" rather than charging directly into war. Yes, there was provocation, but insufficient for the resulting action.

I don't think we did. It was a violation of international law, and it was clearly a war of choice. We failed pretty spectacularly in attempting to build a coalition of countries to agree with us - and that failure even with an exaggerated case for war.

In an open letter to President Bush, Wilton D. Gregory the President of the United States Council of Catholic Bishops stated that they, as well as the Holy See, were deeply troubled by the precedents involved with what they perceived to be the "unilateral" use of force in Iraq without international sanction by the United Nations. The Holy See (John Paul II) contended that without broad consensus and approval by the United Nations security council the use of force in Iraq lacks legitimate authorization. Dr. Jean Elshtain, an expert in the just war tradition, amongst many other Natural Law scholars disagrees. Dr. Elshtain contends there is nothing prescribed by the Just War tradition that mandates a group of states in concert must agree upon taking military action. At the onset of military action there was broad consensus amongst the American public and support for the miltary action was overwhelmingly approved by the United States Congress and the imperatives of the United States Constitution. Each criteria for the determination of a justified war assumes that the state, in this case the United States, is the decision making entity. Dr. Eshtain argues- and I think successfully- that the concept that the United Nations is the only legitimate decision making body violates the principles of both international law and the UN Charter itself. Both assume state sovereignty and subsequently the right to self defense. With that right is the right to determine what the parameters of that defense shall be. I would add further that the international body itself lacks legitimate authority, that it is itself a poisoned body, one that is incapable of determining the moral parameters of just war. The Security Council includes France and Russia both who have been determied to be acting upon self interest, seeking to protect their lucrative arms contracts and in other cases nefarious and illegal oil-for-food profits illegally skimmed off programs intended to feed the poor citizens of Iraq. Certain members of the United Nations themselves lack legitimate authority having assumed power not at the will of the people whom they rule but at the edge of a sword. Despotic nations states lack the legitimate authority to prescribe a moral defense for the United States when their motivation is empircally suspect and predicated upon a protection of their own power. Furthermore, this war was a continuation of Gulf War I which was authorized by the United Nations. Iraq had continually violated the sanctions placed upon it by the 1991 cease fire agreement. Saddam had ignored 17 separate United Nations resolutions, had repeatedly attacked United States aircraft, and kicked out weapons inspectors in 1998. In violating the requirements of the ceasefire of 1991 and the subsequent 17 resolutions demading Iraq do so the determination to use force had already been legitimated.