Reassessing American Motives: the Iraq War (of 2003)
In light of facts, reasonable opinions should evolve. Unfortunately, the justness of the two Iraq wars, despite several readings and discussions on the subjects (while pursuing my BA in Political Science), remains fixed in the grey areas of my doubt. It seems that for every position on one side, a minimally reasonable position is ready to counter. To state a bias, however, I hoped Kenneth Roth’s article in the Journal of Military Ethics would help pull me deeper into a position I was already leaning toward. Uncertainty is not usually comfortable, and his abstract provided an answer for his titular question, “Was the Iraq War [of 2003] a Humanitarian Intervention?”. He says, “[it] cannot be justified [as such].”
The first question I asked myself upon finishing the abstract was whether or not it mattered if the Iraq War was a humanitarian intervention. My understanding is that Saddam Hussein was believed by the US military intelligence community to have WMDs and to be working with Al Qaeda. Today, we know almost certainly that both of these beliefs were wrong, and it remains hard for me to accept how the intelligence community could be so naïve as to think Saddam Hussein’s secular Ba’athists would arm religious fanatics bent on dissolving secular sovereigns of the Middle East so they could replace them with theocratic ones. Nevertheless, satisfying even one of those conditions might be a reasonable cause to go to war, so if including the Al Qaeda aspect of the stated preconditions for war was the realpolitik way of convincing Americans something that needed to happen should happen, I might understand the Bush Administration’s impetus to lie. Consider that according to Brian Orend in The Morality of War, Saddam Hussein maintained that he had WMDs himself.
Kenneth Roth seems to appreciate my question, and suggests his reasons for considering whether or not this war was a humanitarian intervention are related to the Bush Administration’s claim that humanitarian intervention was a primary justification for war — this claim coming only after their original primary justifications were proven erroneous. There remain no links of Saddam to international terrorism and no WMDs were found. So, I suppose the unstated question Roth might help me answer in proving his conclusion, thereby dragging me into a more solidly negative opinion about the Iraq War, is whether rational minds could have believed they were helping people other than themselves by putting American and Iraqi lives in conflict.
Roth argues that the “enormous” human cost of [any] war (at the time of his writing, ~25,000 deaths marred this particular war) forbids Armed Humanitarian Intervention in all but the most severe situations where a higher human cost will result from inaction. Explicitly, he says, “Given the very real risk that any war will lead to large-scale loss of life, humanitarian intervention should be reserved as a threshold matter only for situations of ongoing or imminent mass slaughter.” Following that criterion, he demands five additional factors of justification: last resort, humanitarian intention, maximum respect for international human rights and humanitarian law during the course of warfighting, a likeliness of causing more good than harm, and a UN Security Council endorsement.
His main argument is that Saddam Hussein’s regime was not presently committing mass murder, such a mass murder was not imminent, and that although one had been perpetrated in the past, during the Anfal Genocide against the Kurds (slaughtering ~100,000), Roth says ‘better late than never’ is not a fair justification. I can think of people who disagree with him and what they might say. In the absence of a global dictator rehabilitation program, it’s unlikely Hussein wouldn’t employ similarly horrendous tactics whenever it benefited him. But I see Roth’s position, too. Who’s to guarantee that such a situation where he would wish to use those tactics would ever come up again? How can last resort be true of a situation that could have continued on without another humanitarian crisis?
Roth further argues that the odds were against another crisis happening in Iraq, thanks in part to pre-existing sanctions. Proving that argument correct might be critical for me to make up my mind on the worthiness of this war, especially since the attached clause of urging for prosecution seems wholly farfetched. (Who would escort Hussein to trial if not a military force?) The idea that Saddam Hussein could be sufficiently discredited at home by criminal charges is particularly unsatisfying given the history of his hold on power, and comparisons to Slobodan Milosevic and Charles Taylor do not convince me.
I was intrigued by Roth’s secondary argument that the US/UK had spread themselves too thin to act in other humanitarian crises that might happen (and one did, Darfur). But I’m not sold that a lack of forces was the reason America didn’t take substantial action there. I chalk that up to public opinion. Then, if public opinion favored intervention, would we have been spread too thin?
America’s humanitarian intention is one of the murkiest topics. Granted, we know the primary reasons were WMD and global terrorism related, as they were initially stated as such. That implies for me that the just cause for the invasion was self-defense (purportedly). It’s easy to agree with Roth that the US fails this criterion, if just cause is limited to humanitarian purposes for the sake of his argument, but I’m inclined to believe it was in fact, at least, considered a secondary bonus.
The facts about US warfighting Roth shares are troubling. The most powerful and most technologically advanced fighting force on earth should not resort to using any tactics or munitions that are not state-of-the-art in their ability to avoid harming civilians. As for the infamous instances of mistreatment toward detainees, I’m more willing to forgive the American-Military-At-Large than Roth is. I grant the benefit of my doubt to those people higher on the chain-of-command who Roth wishes were court-martialed, and acknowledge that the perpetrators themselves deserved to be and in fact were court-martialed.
The better rather than worse criterion is for me, an impossible sell either way. I’m not convinced Saddam Hussein could have thwarted civil war after the Arab Spring any more than I’m convinced civil war is the fault of his removal. If the Iraqi people were given a chance at self-determination, it’s possible that leans toward better.
As a final note, Roth reminds us that the UN Security Council did not approve the Iraq War.
In conclusion, Kenneth Roth’s article did not sufficiently tug me away from my moderately negative position into a more solidly negative view of the Iraq War. I still believe American leaders may have genuinely thought the Iraq War could benefit the Iraqi people. He did, however, sufficiently answer his own question and prove his own point to me, despite my disagreements with him on some of the lesser criteria. The Iraq War was no humanitarian intervention — at least not outright. It may, however, have satisfied the criterion of humanitarian intention, if only as a secondary bonus to the primary intent of self-defense.
Ultimately, I still believe rational minds could have believed that starting the Iraq War was a righteous use of military force. Perhaps by proving how pre-existing sanctions and no fly zones could effectively have prevented any misdeeds by Saddam Hussein, Roth could have swayed me into his camp. Yet, this may be a high-bar. The US might have warned Saddam Hussein that large scale massacres would certainly lead to force, and perhaps the promise of inevitability might have deterred him. It might have.
Works Referenced
Orend, Brian. The Morality of War. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2006. Kindle.
Roth, Kenneth. “Was the Iraq War a Humanitarian Intervention?” Journal of Military Ethics 5.2 (2006): 84–92.
This essay is adapted from my original paper “a Response to Kenneth Roth,” written for a Middle Eastern Political Studies course at William Paterson University of New Jersey, October, 2016.
