Military Draft Coming back?

[jgruber]

I'll immigrate to some European country (France? LOL) in case military draft comes back. I feel sorry for these guys being shipped to Iraq to fight for Chenney's oil.

Wuday mean Cheney's oil?  It's Bush's, and Rumsfeld, and ....

[Phillip79]

If you don't care that Iraq didn't have WMDs, you should.

All I can say is do you really believe that the Iraqis think that we are "freeing" them?  We killed thousands of people there when we rolled in. 

It's not that I don't care about WMD's, but I do think the war can be justified completely on the WMD issue, or completely aside from it. 

Hussein was required to submit to weapons inspections by the United Nations, as a condition of his surrender during the Gulf War.  For the decade that followed, though, he engaged in a game of deceiving and frustrating weapons inspectors, and kicked them out of the country several times. 

It is NOT the responsibility of the United States to gather infallible intelligence on what Iraq was doing; why it was refusing to comply with inspections.  It WAS Saddam Hussein's responsibility to fully comply, and prove to the world that he did not have WMD's.  He simply did not do that. 

Knowing his history of using WMD's, and given his current behavior, the common-sense assumption is that he's being secretive because he has something to hide.  When you can't deal with certainties because Hussein has made that impossible, assuming the worst is the only responsible action.  But I don't mean to suggest that our decision was made on blind assumptions; there was very convincing evidence of his WMD programs. 

As David Kay, the Chief Weapons inspector said after his resignation, "It was reasonable to conclude that Iraq posed an imminent threat. What we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place potentially than, in fact, we thought it was even before the war."

Kay also reported that Iraq attempted to revive its efforts to develop nuclear weapons in 2000 and 2001, but never got as far toward making a bomb as Iran and Libya did. He said Baghdad was actively working to produce a biological weapon using the poison ricin until the American invasion last March.

All the evidence that we have points to one conclusion:  Hussein was feverishly working to develop WMD's, if we didn't have them already (a possibility that I'm still skeptical about).  He wanted to develop nuclear weapons, and given enough time, he eventually would have been successful, or obtained one on the black market. 

You said that the U.S. has to learn international diplomacy, and not brute force.  On the contrary, you should be applauding the U.S. as one of the few countries willing to enforce INTERNATIONAL LAW, and prop up the United Nations as though it were a relevant institution. 

As to your other point - "We killed thousands of people there when we rolled in."  It's true, we killed thousands of soldiers in the invasion (but actually, we allowed most to surrender.  Perhaps if we hadn't been so careful about sparing the lives of Hussein's loyalists initially, we wouldn't be having so many problems today).  We did NOT kill thousands of civilians.  If that's what you meant to suggest, it's simply not true. 

[Findedeux]

As stated by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations the civilian death toll was 4000-9000 Iraqi civilians. This is an old statistic, it is much higher now. The Iraqi people are coming to hate the U.S. even more than before. Many of these people were killed when the U.S. got information about Hussein personnell so and so, and they started bombing civilian houses and areas. The large majority of these personnell were not even where they were supposed to be, meaning that innocent people died for nothing.

  You also have to assume that Iraq would have used the WMD if they had had them. While this seems like it is obvious, it is not. Hussein had used chemical weapons on his own population (the Kurds?) and neighboring states but I think it is clear that he was never a threat to the U.S. He never Someone would of course say that he could sell WMDs to terrorists who would then use these WMDs on the U.S. but that is a highly unlikely scenario given that these types of transactions are possible to trace and that Hussein knew what the U.S.'s response would be to such an act. He had chemical weapons to use on the U.S. in the same way as WMD, and didn't use these against us for the reasons above.

   As for the U.S. being anything than isolationist is a bad joke. The U.S. went to war with Iraq despite the vocal protests of every major ally it had. Yes, Hussein was a bad person and should have been killed. But do you really think we went in there to free the Iraqi people? We are in bed with Saudi Arabia,a country that is now known to have far more connections with Al-Quaida than Saddam ever did. And why are they still are "friends"? Because they have almost all the oil and we want as much of that oil as we can get as cheaply as we can get it.
  Not to mention that a pre-emptive strike policy is the dumbest thing I have ever heard of in my entire life. The U.S. will likely be top dog for at least a few more decades. But once our reign is over (China will probably follow us) we will be vulnerable to the same moronic strategy that we have applied in Iraq. Let's just hope we survive the (hopefully) well-intentioned idiocy of the Bush administration.
   

[jgruber]

War can be justified on many grounds, but unilateral, pre-emptive attacks don't seem to fit into that category.

Agreed criteria for justified war have been completely ignored by the current administration.





Principles of the Just War

    * A just war can only be waged as a last resort. All non-violent options must be exhausted before the use of force can be justified.
    * A war is just only if it is waged by a legitimate authority. Even just causes cannot be served by actions taken by individuals or groups who do not constitute an authority sanctioned by whatever the society and outsiders to the society deem legitimate.
    * A just war can only be fought to redress a wrong suffered. For example, self-defense against an armed attack is always considered to be a just cause (although the justice of the cause is not sufficient--see point #4). Further, a just war can only be fought with "right" intentions: the only permissible objective of a just war is to redress the injury.
    * A war can only be just if it is fought with a reasonable chance of success. Deaths and injury incurred in a hopeless cause are not morally justifiable.
    * The ultimate goal of a just war is to re-establish peace. More specifically, the peace established after the war must be preferable to the peace that would have prevailed if the war had not been fought.
    * The violence used in the war must be proportional to the injury suffered. States are prohibited from using force not necessary to attain the limited objective of addressing the injury suffered.
    * The weapons used in war must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Civilians are never permissible targets of war, and every effort must be taken to avoid killing civilians. The deaths of civilians are justified only if they are unavoidable victims of a deliberate attack on a military target.

[Phillip79]

"War can be justified on many grounds, but unilateral, pre-emptive attacks don't seem to fit into that category."

Where did you get that idea? 

"A just war can only be waged as a last resort. All non-violent options must be exhausted before the use of force can be justified."

On the contrary, I think America's decision to engage in 6 months of diplomacy, trying to pursuade the United Nations to enforce its own Security Council resolutions, was our biggest mistake.  I understand that we had to go through the motions of exhausting all other options, but if Saddam Hussein had any WMD's, he certainly had ample time to hide them or move them to Syria while we were fooling around, trying to get irrelevant former world powers on our side. 

"A war is just only if it is waged by a legitimate authority."   

The U.S. government is a legitimate authority.  The actions taken in Iraq hold the support of a majority of the American people, whether you like it or not. 

"A just war can only be fought to redress a wrong suffered. For example, self-defense against an armed attack is always considered to be a just cause."

Yes, I agree.  For 12 years, Hussein fired missiles at U.S. planes patrolling the No-Fly zone.  We could go through a very long list of "wrongs suffered" by the United States as a result of Hussein's actions in the 1990's. 

"A war can only be just if it is fought with a reasonable chance of success. Deaths and injury incurred in a hopeless cause are not morally justifiable."

In other words, a Lyndon Johnson-style war is out of the question?  Of course it is, and we learned that lesson.  Iraq was crushed so quickly, the world was stunned.

"The ultimate goal of a just war is to re-establish peace."
 
The Coalition has mostly succeeded in this regard.  There IS peace in the overwhelming majority of Iraq.  The media is fixated (somewhat understandably) on a few hotspots that are continuing to cause a problem.

"More specifically, the peace established after the war must be preferable to the peace that would have prevailed if the war had not been fought."

No more rape and torture rooms, no more executing political prisoners.  Currently, life in most Iraqi cities is more peaceful and free than it was under Hussein's regime.   

"The violence used in the war must be proportional to the injury suffered."

The U.S. has gone out of its way, almost to the point of frustration, to avoid not only civilian casualties, but to avoid Iraqi military casualties as well!  While Hussein's regime has killed nearly a million people, the U.S. has killed a few thousand enemy soldiers in overthrowing him.  Our level of force has certainly not been proportional to the damage he has caused.  Quite the contrary. 

"The weapons used in war must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Civilians are never permissible targets of war, and every effort must be taken to avoid killing civilians."

Again, compared to World War II and other major wars of past generations, civilian casualties are virtually non-existent in Iraq.  "Surgical strikes" with smart bombs have minimized civilian deaths (notwithstanding unsubstantiated claims made by anti-war groups like Amnesty International). 

After reading your requirements for a just war, I feel very good about my government's actions in overthrowing a vicious dictator and working toward the creation of a free and stable Iraq. 

[Findedeux]

I find it hilarious that someone would dismiss a group's projections of civilian causaalties based on that group's tendency to be "anti-war." Last time I checked, war was generally frowned upon but I guess because all the cool kids are doing it is has sudenly become the in-thing. And to think as a gen-X'er that somehow passed over my cool radar. Doh.

   I would think that the poster before me may have been stating just war theory, which is Catholic doctrine, though I don't know who else supports the theory.

   That Saddam may have had time to move WMD's to a different simply points to the fact that other countries are as equally deserving of war as Iraq, but that Bush is selectively discriminating. Why not Saudi Arabia if its all about democracy? Why not N Koreak with its nukes? This could go on and on. And are we really going to go to war with the whole middle east?
 
   Peace in the overwhelming majority of Iraq is not peace. It is becoming clear that Iraq may cost us more than it was worth if as a result of it anti-American sentiment increases such that terrorism activity also increases. This is no surprise, as everyone (except Bush it seems) was debating this issue before the war. We may have taken out a violent dictator but I think the only way a democracy is going to take place in Iraq is if we shove it down their throats, something that is not going to be possible when we withdraw most of our forced after the handover date. The major issue is whether the world will be safer after Iraq, and since I believe the most prominent issue is terrorism rather than horrible regimes, I am inclined to think the latter (it helps that there is little or no connection between the two, at least in the case of Iraq).
 

[Findedeux]

Sorry post should read:when we withdraw most of our forces after the handover date...
 
 As to "latter" I am referring to the possibility that the world will not be safer after Iraq. Should have proofread a little better.

[jgruber]

The just war doctrine is certainly supported by the Catholic Church, but it is also supported widely throughout Protestant denominations.  I learned about these principles about 25 years before becoming a Catholic.

As to why not other countries, you might also ask why not Pakistan which is widely believed to have nuclear weapons and was identified by the administration as supporting terrorism.  Why are they are new best friends?  For the same reason Saddam was way back when.   Because they fit the need of the moment and not for any higher moral purpose.

 

I find it hilarious that someone would dismiss a group's projections of civilian causaalties based on that group's tendency to be "anti-war." Last time I checked, war was generally frowned upon but I guess because all the cool kids are doing it is has sudenly become the in-thing. And to think as a gen-X'er that somehow passed over my cool radar. Doh.

   I would think that the poster before me may have been stating just war theory, which is Catholic doctrine, though I don't know who else supports the theory.

   That Saddam may have had time to move WMD's to a different simply points to the fact that other countries are as equally deserving of war as Iraq, but that Bush is selectively discriminating. Why not Saudi Arabia if its all about democracy? Why not N Koreak with its nukes? This could go on and on. And are we really going to go to war with the whole middle east?
 
   Peace in the overwhelming majority of Iraq is not peace. It is becoming clear that Iraq may cost us more than it was worth if as a result of it anti-American sentiment increases such that terrorism activity also increases. This is no surprise, as everyone (except Bush it seems) was debating this issue before the war. We may have taken out a violent dictator but I think the only way a democracy is going to take place in Iraq is if we shove it down their throats, something that is not going to be possible when we withdraw most of our forced after the handover date. The major issue is whether the world will be safer after Iraq, and since I believe the most prominent issue is terrorism rather than horrible regimes, I am inclined to think the latter (it helps that there is little or no connection between the two, at least in the case of Iraq).
 

[jgruber]

You lost me on this paragraph.

I find it hilarious that someone would dismiss a group's projections of civilian causaalties based on that group's tendency to be "anti-war." Last time I checked, war was generally frowned upon but I guess because all the cool kids are doing it is has sudenly become the in-thing. And to think as a gen-X'er that somehow passed over my cool radar. Doh.

[Findedeux]

Jeffjoe: Phillip had stated: "Again, compared to World War II and other major wars of past generations, civilian casualties are virtually non-existent in Iraq.  "Surgical strikes" with smart bombs have minimized civilian deaths (notwithstanding unsubstantiated claims made by anti-war groups like Amnesty International)."

  His suggestion was that anti-war groups cannot be trusted to accurately report civilian casualties precisely because they are anti-war. Not only did I find this funny because I had supposed that everyone was anti-war at least in theory, but groups like Amnesty international and Human Rights Watch, etc, are known to have some of the most accurate reporting on such figures. If you really want to be suspect of anyone you would want to question the group that had the greatest interest in the war, which is obviously the U.S., not groups like the above. These groups know they won't be able to stop the war (just as they have never stopped any other war) and they know there will be more wars. They are primarily there to document what takes place on both sides. Thus, they would most likely be the most accurate source of such casualties. 

   As for smart bombs, they're only as good as the information they are fed. Here is a little piece from Slate.com on the subject:

                   "Smart Bombs, Dumb Targets
Did overconfidence in precision targeting cause civilian deaths in Iraq? A new report by Human Rights Watch reveals, for the first time, just how persistently they tried to kill individual Iraqi leaders in this manner—and how consistently they failed.

Over the course of the war, U.S. air forces mounted 50 so-called "decapitation strikes." The bombs accidentally killed several dozen civilians who happened to be near the explosions, but they killed none of the Iraqi leaders they were intended to strike.he problem was not with the bombs. The bombs were as accurate as advertised; they hit precisely where they were aimed. The problem was with the pre-strike intelligence; the Iraqi leaders—the bombs' targets—turned out to be someplace else."


  Not the best time to be an American.