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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction
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To: Sully- who wrote (42532)12/5/2005 1:40:54 AM
From: Solon  Read Replies (2) of 90947
 
"The bottom line is that Bush was right to remove Saddam based solely on the facts"

That is just your opinion. The fact of the matter is that this is not a black and white issue. What is at issue here is the legal basis for invasion. There are three grounds that have been considered:

A Security Council Resolution,

Self Defense,

Humanitarian Grounds.

Much of the purported justification given by the moved side is subjective and a matter of self serving interpretation. Likewise, the case for the against. Both sides are too often represented by hotheads.

I am not impressed by endless texts and summaries of the resolutions and the failures of compliance and so forth. These facts are for the most part unremarkable and uncontroversial. But they are not the issue. The issue is on what basis the U.S. and Britain considered they had the legal right to invade. There was no legal right conferred by Security Council Resolution. That leaves self defense and humanitarian grounds as possible justifications.

Clearly (and I have been discussing this with Laz) a formal policy of intervention on humanitarian grounds would have bypassed all of this rigamarole and permitted intervention when SH was gassing the Kurds. However, as it is there is no overweening legal justification for what occurred--at least in the minds of many objective people. That is not to say that the case for self defense does not have merit. But the invasion is certainly not above examination, dispute, and disagreement.

It would be foolhardy to accept the precedent that a mere claim of self defense is sufficient basis for any country to invade another. This would open the door to lawless savagery. There needs to be developed objective criteria. And what moral right would we have to criticise or intervene if such countries were permitted to make claims without a very high bar of provability?

Again, please don't waste my time with endless recounting of unfulfilled sanctions and what-not. SH was brutal and savage, and much of the world is likewise uncivilized. They get no sympathy or support from me. Neither do I sneer at the self defense claim. And I do not need to be told how the interests of France and Moscow pushed a multilateral consensus to an uncertain timeframe.

The bottom line, however, is that no one country is forever and always the most powerful (whether with or without allies). Therefore, it behooves all of us to hope for objective criteria for invasion whether we speak of humanitarian or self defense grounds. To me this is not a question of politics. It is a question of human survival. Reason or impulse? I hope for reason.

Having said all of this, let me add that I am so used to being misrepresented or misunderstood that I will state clearly once again: What I have here expressed is neutral as regards the legality of the invasion. Obviously I am happy to see savagery driven back. Just as obviously, I recognise that the rule of law is our only defense against brutality...
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