Anti-Climacus

WELL: Bill Wallo on justifications for Iraq:

"The other point is a difficult one as well, and it is the humanitarian perspective. I’ve long said that I thought the only real justification for invading Iraq was to remove a brutal dictator. From a humanitarian viewpoint, the challenge is clear: do you intervene at the possible risk of violent conflict, or do you try to wait the dictaor out? There are a number of issues associated with this dilemma, because dilemma it is: neither course of action is particularly palatable, and both will lead to suffering.

Intervention for humanitarian purposes only mushrooms: very quickly one has to wonder why military intervention doesn’t occur in a number of places. Why not intervene in the Sudan, for example, if we intervened in Iraq? The suffering in the Sudan is as significant and widespread as any suffered in Iraq, so if “humanitarian” reasons are the basis for military force then we should be marching into countless conflicts around the globe.

The other problem is the one I think we’re facing in Iraq: “regime change” is difficult to impose from the top down, or from the outside in. Bringing democracy, self-rule, and the idea of individual freedom to a region like Iraq is a laudable goal, and I firmly believe that the Middle East is “capable” of democracy. That isn’t the problem. The problem arises when it feels forced upon them by an outside source."

Gene from Harry's Place:

"On the other hand, I agree that the Bush administration deliberately exaggerated the thin evidence on WMD to win support for the war (though I'm quite sure they believed Iraq had such weapons). If Bush and company had been scrupulously honest, it's unlikely they would have won enough support in Congress to authorize the war. The truth is that making a case for the intervention on purely humanitarian grounds would not have been enough. Those of us who supported the war on those grounds were essentially "going along for the ride."

Does this make me (hopeless liberal that I am) feel uncomfortable and morally conflicted? Am I angry about subsequent mismanagement of the reconstruction effort? Yes to both questions.

But I also have to face what is to me an even more unpleasant fact: that if the Bush administration had been straight with the American people, Saddam Hussein and his legion of thugs might still be in power and continuing their atrocities.

I don't pretend to like it, but there it is. I wish I could feel as pure and righteous as some on both sides of the debate."

The Dude:

"He'd earned the right for the presumption of guilt. I wanted there to be at last in the White House a president who would think the worst of Saddam Hussein--who would make the worst assumption. Because all the other arguments contain the implication, at least, that if he said he had no weapons we're honor-bound to believe him. 'Cause he wouldn't prove what he'd done with the ones he had once declared having had. Presumption of guilt works for me in this circumstance."

(See also Joe Carter.

What do all of these have in common? They're all re-asking themselves to justify their positions on Iraq; even though I took some anticipatory positions when this all got started (the US can only lay the groundwork for democracy, not make it itself, nor can the results be judged at all in the short term), I still have a long list of things that I wish had happened otherwise, and I feel the need for a better-described theory for how we cash out our moral obligations in the international realm. But the point is that you see the constant need to work over logic which reflects the fact that the underlying issues are being taken seriously. You don't really see anti-war types doing the same.

But then, of course, they don't need to, because they were right, right?