FWIW, my equally irrelevant opinions lie in pretty much the same place, some of which may or may not have been visible amid the Sun Tzu stuff :)
# posted by  Paul Davies @ 14:31

 

We were obligated to do something.
Can I ask if you would apply that argument to support the UK's involvement in regime change wars against all oppressive totalitarian governments?

This might sound like an attempt at cheap points scoring or the rehashing of old arguments but that's not my intention. I'm genuinely interested to know. Apologies if you've already addressed this in a post I've missed.
# posted by  CuriousHamster @ 18:37

 

No, fair question. And the answer is yes, within constraints of:

1. What's possible in terms of being politically feasible and bearing in mind trade-offs of cost (i.e. not to the extent of bankrupting the NHS, etc.).

2. What's prudential, taking each decision as it comes. Sometimes military action might not be the best way to proceed (some might say it wasn't the besty way this time...). But as a liberal, I work on the basis that we're always obligated to do something.
# posted by  Jarndyce @ 18:43

 

Your 'kid drowning' is a good analogy, but I'm almost bound to retort with the suggestion that of all the things we could have done to save him, we chose a running dive-bomb that filled his lungs with water. Now we don't know whether he'll drown on his own vomit.

We were morally obligated to do something, but we weren't morally obligated to do it in a really fucking stupid way.

However much you pose and preen, your best guess at a known unknown doesn't make you a virtuous or evil person.

I like this, and have posted a similar sentiment myself, but from the other angle. My main problem with the whole war is the hypocrisy of our leaders. If they did indeed apply Iraq logic to other dictatorships, then I might have a bit more time for the pro-war argument.
# posted by  Robert @ 21:14

 

I see where you're coming from but would you say that your constraints might slightly resssemble constructing " moral cases for or against war on the basis of crude numerical analyses"?

My objections to the invasion of Iraq would broadly fit into the second constraint. I really wanted the West to get rid of Saddam but I really didn't want it done the way it was.
# posted by  CuriousHamster @ 22:15

 

Thanks for the 'intelligent'. FWIW, as well as 8 I go for versions of 1; 3 (yes, prosecute them - and ensuring that they get prosecuted is precisely why noise is being made about it now); 4 (according to the Lancet, it's not so much 'different people' as more people); 5 (not just window-dressing, a bad and dangerous precedent); 6 (the point is not that it should have deterred the government from a course of action that was justified for other reasons, but that it should have been one of the factors taken into account in deciding whether the invasion was justified in the first place). And 2 and 7 are trivially true, but I don't think that makes them easy to dismiss - rather, they are counts against any action of this type, which would need to be counterbalanced by high scores on the other six counts. But, in this case, weren't.
# posted by  Phil @ 23:12

 

A good read, and one that perhaps highlights the complexity of the issue.

Firstly, I would say that many people will argue for or against the war for many different reasons, and that these reasons will change according to what each person expects to gain or lose from the action. To bring it back to the drowning child analogy, you say that saving the child is an obligation, under any sensible moral code. But this "obligation" or appeal to some kind of absolute ethical standard doesn't transfer so easily in the real world. Many people would tell you not to risk your own life in order to save someone, particularly if you aren't trained or paid to do so. In this case, ethics is extremely subjective.

This can be expanded indefinitely, on both sides - there will be other reasons for action or non-action. Absolute ethics gets "fuzzier", for instance, if you're saving the child to demonstrate the power of your jacket, which you happen to sell. Similarly, what judgement would be cast upon you (as, I think, this is separate to individual obligation) if it turns out that you actually threw the child in the pond in the first place?

Many people may well justify the invasion according to Hollywood ethics, but this shouldn't necessarily preclude the question of what other reasons the invasion was carried out for.

Secondly, if you're going to invade anywhere, at least do it properly. War - or rather, global politics - isn't just about soldiers and technology, but I certainly get the impression that these are what people place their faith in when considering the situation. If you feel morally obligated to invade to save a population, then you should also feel morally obligated to consider the impact of your actions, to take risk and uncertainty into account, and to determine contingency strategy based on these assessments. I don't have much doubt that the current climate in Iraq was unforeseen by those sending in the troops. If our leaders can't understand consequences, let alone admit to them, then I don't see they deserve any particular faith in future actions.
# posted by  Scribe @ 13:51

 

Scribe,

"Similarly, what judgement would be cast upon you (as, I think, this is separate to individual obligation) if it turns out that you actually threw the child in the pond in the first place?"

I don't follow. What judgement would be cast upon you if you threw the child in and then DIDN'T save him.

If, as many stoppers insist, this is the case, this re-doubles our moral imperative to save the child. Indeed, this reverts us to the first half of Jarndyce's analogy.

Imagine that there were 20 others looking on. If no-one acts, all are to blame. But if WE THREW THE CHILD IN IN THE FIRST PLACE, the other 20 - even though they could have acted - are relieved of a large chunk of the blame.

The blame would lie entirely with us if we threw the child in. This makes the case for war STRONGER surely?
# posted by  The Pedant-General in Ordinary @ 15:32

 

Pedant-General,

I agree with you to an extent - hence the distinction made between the obligation felt by an individual, and the judgement of that individual by others - that is, the difference between the imperative to act in the first place (which may depend on the lead-up to the situation, but which are also an individual imperative), and the motivations of the actor which may influence future consquences (which will affect others in the process). Would you feel a moral obligation to save a child you had just thrown in, if all you wanted to do was throw them in again? Context, context, context.

Some people may well choose to distance current actions from the motivations for those actions, the history of the situation and the consequences of those actions. I, for one, tend to think that if you do so, history will continue to repeat indefinitely. For me, the sorriest thing about the whole shebang is the arrogance and non-responsibility of blair et al to relate their actions with any consequences - whether recently, or over the last 50 years.

Furthermore, instigating or encouraging a particular situation still isn't necessarily proof that war is the best solution, nor that the details of the war should be ignored.

(A more psychological take follows... I'm writing as I'm thinking, so it might not make any sense ;)

Perhaps there are differences in opinion due to the extent of "alignment" that people feel with the decision-makers. Was the war in Iraq initiated by the decisions of a select few, or by the representatives of the many? If you're inclined towards the former, you may consider yourself to be more "external" to the government, and thus in a more judgemental point of view. On the other hand, if you're inclined towards the latter - perhaps a patriotic way, or even just as a result of the democratic system - then maybe you're in a more "decisional"/internal point of view, that implies personal responsibility and action.

Or maybe I have cause and effect mixed up. Would be interested to know if it makes any sense, anyway...
# posted by  Scribe @ 16:14

 

Your argument is somewhat limited. Imagine there are many children drowning, in several ponds. Which do you save first? And when saving them will mean certain death for many of the saviors as well as other children happily swimming in the same pond, is it moral to save that child?

I am certainly sympathetic to saving children arguments, however, and yours is the best I've seen yet. I am pretty glad that we eventually got round to saving some of those children in Bosnia, by the way, as well as Somalia.

Oh well. Analogies are limiting, aren't they?
# posted by  KathyF @ 20:01

 

The "it might work in 20 years" is a complete BS cop-out. So is the saving a child thing. It wasn't a child in a pond it was bloody country. A country with a complex ethnic and racial mix etc etc.

Saying in effect "it was worth a try" is morally repugnant and irresponsible.

If you supported the war you should have had a good look at the army that was going to prosecute it, the leaders, and possible problems etc. Not sit there and hope for some Utopian outcome because it served your worldview.
# posted by  Jeremy @ 22:37

 

I think three points.

First:

We were obligated to do something — something to replace "let's starve them of medical supplies and food for the another decade

I used to think this, but me and Brad DeLong went through the numbers in 2002. Actually, the oil-for-food programme was beginning to work, as were the no-fly zones and Saddam was not torturing people in particularly great numbers. The Saddam government was weakening and there was every chance (by the standards of the region) that things would get better. Furthermore, Wolfowitz was actually *right* when he said that "Iraq has few ethnic or religious tensions"; before it became a Hobbesian non-state, it didn't.

2. The answers to the semi-rhetorical questions in your 4) are, in order: Yes it does, yes it is to within a reasonable margin of error and yes you do. There's nothing crude about the numerical analyses in question; deciding whether to save one or zero drowning children is exactly the same kind of analysis in principle. Numbers matter. In particular, a 50% increase in the death rate of a populous country matters a hell of a lot, particularly when it was predictable and avoidable.

3. I think most importantly, you're not giving 5) a fair shot. If you've decided that a war might "be moral" in some sense, it is still relevant that having one illegal war weakens the general principle that wars of aggression are not to be tolerated. I might be able to prove to you that it would be morally correct to beat up my next door neighbour, because he's a hell of a cunt, but there are good principled reasons why actions of this kind are judged as members of the relevant class, as well as considered purely in themselves.

(and you recognise the connection between 4 and 6 but once more; numbers matter).
# posted by  dsquared @ 23:00

 

Thanks to you all for the comments — apart from the obvious twat who didn't take the post in the spirit it was intended. [Jeremy: you've now left the same retort three or four times here and once on your blog. It's approaching a workable definition of spam. There's a kernel of a good point in there, but it's lost among all the moronic shite. Please go away.]

Anyway, I can't answer all of them. I wasn't trying to persuade anyone, only to explain why I think what I think, so I'll just take up on the thread related to "4. We've killed a lot of innocent people."

So, one supplementary question on this. Clearly the death rate is way up on 2002/1 at the moment. However, if this only lasts a year or four and you factor in the possibility of Saddam passing down to a murderous Uday or Qusay, does that effect the calculation? And if you don't factor in Uday or Qusay, perhaps thinking the succession would have been stopped somehow, don't you have to ask yourself: how? Without bloodshed?

Oh, one more. I still get the impression that most of these (all decent) objections would melt away if people really believed that this would work. Am I wrong?
# posted by  Jarndyce @ 08:12

 

1) There is no getting angry with me because you were gullible enough to believe this idiotic escapade could work
2)IT COULD NEVER HAVE WORKED. That is the point.
# posted by  jeremy @ 09:17

 

I'm not angry, Jeremy, just bored. Please tell me that's your last contribution... In fact, I'm telling you: unless you say something different, intelligent or interesting, that's your last contribution. I'm not holding my breath. Goodbye.

One correction to the above: I didn't mean "melt away". Maybe "become surmountable" is closer.
# posted by  Jarndyce @ 10:24

 

However, if this only lasts a year or four and you factor in the possibility of Saddam passing down to a murderous Uday or Qusay, does that effect the calculation? And if you don't factor in Uday or Qusay, perhaps thinking the succession would have been stopped somehow, don't you have to ask yourself: how? Without bloodshed?

Basically the answer is "it effects the answer less than you think, because we would have retained the option to fight a war at a later date". I wrote a post on this on my own blog for fellow economics types but I need to write another one for a lay audience. The idea is that wars are non-reversible processes; you can easily fight an unfought war, but you can't unfight a fought war. Therefore, part of the cost of starting the war on Day Zero is that you no longer have the option of starting the war on days 1,2 [...]. Unless the situation is one in which the cost of waiting is very high (in economics, a high interest rate; in humanitarian wars, a high immediate death rate), the option to fight the same war on better terms at some point in the future is actually quite valuable.

I agree that "if it worked" I would not object nearly so much; I'm the Anti(this)War(now) Left. A lot of the reason I opposed the war is that the fact we fought the war we did in March 2003 makes it impossible to fight a better war later. It also discredits the general principle of humanitarian intervention and makes it more difficult to fight wars that should be fought in future, but that's a separate point, as is the point that the commitment of force makes it quite literally impossible to do anything about Darfur.

In general, my main beef with the pro-war side has always been that the quality of their analysis has been a) poor (unacceptably poor in the case of those war advocates who had access to an intelligence service and an army) and b) in all too many cases, clouded by a general enthusiasm for war, America and American wars. This doesn't really apply to you, going on the basis of the above points, but it really is relevant; you don't have to be an economist or even a utilitarian to insist that the costs and benefits of a policy are *not* morally irrelevant details.

(I'd also repeat my general gripe that "the war" and "the decision to lie about the war in order to mitigate its political consequences for the Republican Party in the USA and the Labour Party in the UK" are two different issues which are practically and morally separable, it is entirely possible to be in favour of the first but against the second and I damn well wish more people would be).
# posted by  dsquared @ 10:42

 

(note also that my argument for not having fought the war in the first place based on the value of options can be turned into an argument for not getting out now, because by doing so we would no longer have the option to leave at a future date on better terms. I think this is about right (in the sense that it's a valid application of the theory; I wouldn't want to be committed to the conclusion because I haven't done the work).
# posted by  dsquared @ 10:45

 

the answer is "it effects the answer less than you think, because we would have retained the option to fight a war at a later date"

Which is a brilliant answer I hadn't thought of or heard before. Shame on me as I'm a sort-of-lapsed-economist aswell (give me the original link if you have it). My reply would be: real political opportunities to fight that war don't present themselves very often. In fact, hadn't for 12 years. "Now or never" might have been the choice in 2003. Unrelatedly, from a UK perspective, the war was going ahead anyway. Our decision was, do we join or not? It's not a defence I'd rely on myself, but from a certain angle is valid.

"the war" and "the decision to lie about the war in order to mitigate its political consequences for the Republican Party in the USA and the Labour Party in the UK" are two different issues which are practically and morally separable,

Well, that's basically my position, but plenty on the anti-war side won't have it. I marched and protested against the war in 2003, not because I was against the war, but because I thought it folly to go into the war like that. Nothing that's happened since has changed my mind. Like you say, there will be unwise over-conservatism for foreign involvement in the future if Iraq doesn't work. And if it does: those voices that say "international law is there to be ignored" will just be louder and appear valid. So, whoever "wins", poor arguments will "win" too.
# posted by  Jarndyce @ 11:06

 

real political opportunities to fight that war don't present themselves very often

disagree. Surely if Iraq 2003 tells us anything, it's that when it comes to "political opportunities" you make your own luck. An equally bogus WMD scare story could have been tricked up at more or less any point. Also, if the war was going ahead anyway we *certainly* shouldn't have been part of it because that way we get all the bad consequences while the good ones would have happened anyway. The difference, I would suppose, would be if the war is better because of our involvement but I'm not really seeing that. As you detect though, this is a long way from the mainstream anti-war position.
# posted by  dsquared @ 12:36

 

when it comes to "political opportunities" you make your own luck

Disagree. To enter into a war, or at least to do so and hope to remain in power for long afterwards, you need a decent stock of political capital to expend. In this sense, I'd say the analogy of going to war is less with buying an option, and more with exercising a Bermudan style option - you only get to do it at certain dates, and you have to hope the environment you do it in is more favourable than in the other potential times, which is of course unknowable.
# posted by  Andrew @ 16:29

 

D2: Also, I'd guess that the position of most pro-war Tories like myself is the one that you wish more people would hold - that the war is/was the right thing to do, but that the lies told to get into it were not so great. Of course, that's more partisan than principled, but feh...
# posted by  Andrew @ 16:37

 

don't you have to ask yourself: how? Without bloodshed?
It's certainly not easy to suggest one practical proposal. My opinion is that with several billion dollars to spend, Saddam could have been removed without the need for a military invasion.

objections would melt away if people really believed that this would work. Am I wrong?
For me, I'd have to say yes but with conditions.

Justifying the war based on Iraqi WMD and links to al Qaeda has done an enormous amount of damage to the credibility and reputation of the US and UK governments around the world, and particularly among Muslims. On this, I think we agree. My opinion is that the costs of this (increased alienation, suspicion, distrust, etc) are likely to be greater than any benefits delivered by the invasion even in the longer term. That is, as you say, a matter of judgement but for me, I couldn't support a war based, in part, on the idea that Saddam was in league with Bin Laden. I thought and still think that that was very dangerous and very stupid and very wrong.

If they had on relied your argument to justify the invasion, and if I thought there was a realistic chance of delivering a stable peaceful Iraq, then I'd have supported the war.

One other point I failed to make before. The long term view you put forward got me thinking. Perhaps, just perhaps, things will look very different in 10 years time. It's no justification for the incompetance and stupidity of the US and UK governments and I realise you don't intend it to be. I just thought it worth mentioning that reading this post has, at last, enabled me to fully grasp why some people who I consider to be very sensible (such as your good self), supported the war.
# posted by  CuriousHamster @ 22:40

 

I basically agree with a lot of your points made, particularly;

Oil is the reason, forget the other bullshit. Does it really matter that our motives were insincere if it turns out good for Iraqis in the long term?

But the other important point for me was that this war was not a UK decision. Blair couldn't have stopped this war if he had wanted to. Is it possible he thought it was worth it to be a restraining influence on Bush's worse excesses (the alleged plans to bomb Al Jazeera comes to mind).

Getting concessions on Climate Change and African aid at the G8 might also have been another hope that Blair had. Using Iraq as a negotiating tool with the US. As it happens it looks like the US have given us f all.

All in all, I'm not sure about Iraq. My initial impulse was that this was a bad idea, I never believed and still don't, all the human rights/WMD bullshit. I then thought Blair had his reasons, but always thought the inevitable added terrorism was going to make it a bad idea. All in all I think we should have let the US get on with it on their own. But it aint a clear cut thing.

By the way, I think its bad practise to threaten to ban someone from your site, even if they are annoying you. If you don't like Jeremy's repetitive points, just ignore them, but it's a suppression of free speech to stop him from posting them.

Fair play to banning someone who is offensive but not because you disagree with them or think they are tedious. Thats my opinion anyway. Thats the policy I follow on my site. I've never had to ban anyone and I've been insulted like crazy.
# posted by  Neil Harding @ 23:39

 

At the time when I, like almost everyone else (probably including Blair and Bush), genuinely believed that Iraq had WMD, would develop more and nastier WMD if left alone to do so, and would probably eventually either use them against another country or allow them to fall into the hands of some kind of terrorist group, I concluded from that belief that the cost of inaction would rise, perhaps steeply; that at some point action would become unavoidable; and that accordingly the right course must be to act now before the cost of action rose to unacceptable levels. But I always also believed (and argued publicly at the time) that action against Iraq could be justified only if it had broad international support and was formally approved by the only body entrusted by international law with the power to determine when the use of force in international affairs was necessary and justified, i.e. the UN Security Council; that if we or the US or anyone else acted without the approval of the Council, the damage that it would do to the fundamental principles and purposes of the UN Charter would far outweigh any benefits accruing to the attack on Iraq; and that if the Council withheld its approval, the task of western diplomacy should be to negotiate an international consensus on the circumstances and timing on which the use of force would be accepted as necessary.

Shortly before the attack on Iraq was launched, in the face of strong opposition from a clear majority in the Security Council, I attended an anti-war mass meeting which passed a resolution to the effect that there was no justification for the use of force against Iraq. I incurred a good deal of obloquy by opposing the resolution on the grounds that, on the contrary, there were many powerful reasons why the use of force against Iraq could be justified and that it was futile to ignore them: the issue was whether the use of force at the relevant time commanded broad international approval as expressed through the Security Council: and that if it didn't, it would be contrary to international law, not a technical infringement but a murderous assault on the whole basis on which international peace and security needed to be regulated by international authority in accordance with the Charter. That remains my view. Even if the American and British invaders had found Iraq to be up to its eyebrows in WMD, their attack would have been a gross crime in international law. It has set a catastrophic precedent which will sooner or later be ruthlessly exploited to justify aggression and the domination of weak countries by stronger ones; we are back to the law of the jungle.

If we think in terms of an analogy from national as distinct from international law, the point perhaps becomes clearer. The law is there to protect us all, especially the weak. It imposes constraints that may be frustrating at times; but none of us, or few of us, would seriously argue that any higher principle justifies taking the law into our own hands because we know better than the society which has made the law and has reserved the judgement on its application to itself. Alan Watkins, sharpest of political commentators, refers to Blair as 'the young war criminal'. Only the attribute 'young' can be seriously disputed. We should not seek to devise arguments in favour of war crimes.

Brian
http://www.barder.com/ephems/
# posted by  Brian @ 21:47

 

Neil, am I understanding it right?

Oil is the reason, forget the other bullshit. Does it really matter that our motives were insincere if it turns out good for Iraqis in the long term?

Are you implying the oil thing is somehow good for the Iraqi people in the long term?

How we can see an obligation to intervene against a brutal dictatorship by launching raids from other ones is beyond me.

The only differences are a lot of oil and a regime that wouldn't play ball.

Blair couldn't have stopped this war if he had wanted to. Is it possible he thought it was worth it to be a restraining influence on Bush's worse excesses

More like wanting second dibs on the oil.

over the next few years we hit crunch point on oil, and when there's not enough to go round someone's going to have to go without. Bush and Blair are doing their job by protecting our interests. If we want the oil we've got to stop the Chinese or whoever taking it.

More, if we take control of the supply then whoever wants what we don't use has to be nice to us.

Bringing democracy? Given that less than 1% of Iraqis think occupying forces give any improvement in security and over 80% want troops to leave, are they going to do so any time soon?

Or do we stay there because we know what they want better than they do?

We didn't so much 'save the drowning child then nick his wallet'. We went in saying we were going to save him, but actually just nicked his wallet and left him in there.
# posted by  merrick @ 03:48

 

More, if we take control of the supply then whoever wants what we don't use has to be nice to us.

Don't be ludicrous. Oil is sold through a central world market; people buy the oil at the price that they think it is worth. It's called... well... a market.

Sure, if we controlled the oil in Iraq we could restrict the flow, but then that would simply push the price up and make oil more expensive for us to buy. And since the oil consumption of the US and UK is many times the output of Iraq (over any comparable amount of time, obviously) that would be rather sily, wouldn't it.

On the other hand, I suppose that we could try to keep the oil flowing and thus keep prices down but, given world consumption and Iraq's maximum output, it is unlikely that we would have much effect, frankly. Besides, we would then be shooting ourselves in the foot since the revenue from the Iraqi oilfields would drop with the price.

More here, but mainly this:

Firstly, the selling price of a barrel of oil is not set by the producer, but by the market. The market rate is largely determined by production (or production expectations) and consumption, the former of which is heavily influenced by OPEC. Hence it is OPEC which plays the major role in determining the price of oil, although their control is limited to a reasonable extent. And last time I looked, no large American oil company was a member of OPEC.

Of course, the US could try to abolish the central oil market, but then that would destroy the value of the dollar as a worldwide currency and completely fuck the US economy. That wouldn't be too clever either.

So -- and this applies to Harding as well -- when you say that we went there for the oil, what, precisely, do you think we are going to do with the oil?

DK
# posted by  Devil's Kitchen @ 04:17