question for the anti-war guys - NOT A FLAME

[marbles]

"It seems to me that there is a lot of blind opposition to military action without considering the issues involved."

--True, but there's been plenty of blind support as well. Have you heard anyone called "unpatriotic" for questioning the president lately? I have, and I find it pretty nauseating.

I, too, would like to see some policy alternatives, but they don't necessarily have to come from the left. Through all the debate and bickering, I'm still only aware of two basic options:
1. Wipe Saddam off the face of the earth.
2. Let Saddam ignore the orders of the UN and pretty much the entire western world.

As of this moment, neither option sounds particularly appealing, since both have pretty frightening repurcussions. I personally think option 1 is a little better than option 2, but I'm not particularly fond of either one. Can no one come up with a third route?

[MMMMMM]

I don't see other alternatives.

I think around 4 million Iraqi exiles and the majority of the population currently inside Iraq's borders favor option #1--if that means anything much to the anti-war crowd.

I'm truly baffled as to how so many public supporters of the Serbia/Bosnia war could not feel at least as much need for the approaching Iraq war on purely humanitarian grounds.

[Chris Alger]

Rhetoric aside, no one seriously believes that Saddam's violation of UN disarmament resolutions, by itself, justifies war. If his potential for aggression (internally and externally) can be contained without complete disarmament, then it makes no difference whether he's 50% disarmed or 100%. As it stands right now, Saddam has remained boxed in a no-fly zone for 10 years, his small airforce is at half-strength, his army is 1/3 the size it was in 1990, his armored divisions are in disrepair and he has no Navy. It is not likely that Saddam's army can even train for an invasion. Contrast this to a large US military presence in the Gulf and surrounding region that wasn't there when he invaded Kuwait. Further, his invasion of Iran was supported by the U.S. other western states, where any invasion he launched against anyone would be met with immediate annihilation by the U.S. All evidence suggests that Saddam has been and will continue to be relatively powerless and deterred.

There are three arguments you hear to the contrary:

1. Saddam is so dangerous that any trace of chemical or biological weapons in his possession present grave threats to the U.S.

Response: Saddam doesn't need WMD to terrorize the US, as 9/11 and Oklahoma City showed. Nor does he have any record of engaging in or supporting terrorism against the US. The rhetoric from the Bush adminsitration to the contrary is just that.

2. Saddam's material breaches of Security Council resolutions undermine the rule of international law.

This is a better point, but the U.S.'s refusal to allow UN resolutions to be enforced against its client states make it irrelevant.

3. We should be "on the safe side" and go to war as long as any risk remains.

This is criminally immoral but also asssumes that war is risk-free. War in the middle east could just as easily unleash a wave of terrorism and WMD acquisition that would not otherwise occur.

Two more points:

1. The US cannot be trusted to refrain from invading Iraq even if Iraq disarms. Complete disarmament of all conventional and WMD would therefore render the people of Iraq as well as Saddam vulnerable to a war of aggression. This is part of the current dispute over the range of Iraq's missiles.

2. The disarmament process has only been taking place in earnest for a few years, although it has achieved concrete results. It could take a decade or more, but the trend is for Iraq to become grandually more impotent.

[MMMMMM]

So for the sake of argument let's assign a relatively small weighting to all of those points--now add that smallish weight to the large humanitarian call to liberate the people of Iraq from the Butcher of Baghdad, and we may have a case for war still. As I've said elsewhere, I find it hard to see how intervention in Serbia/Bosnia could have been justified if intervention in Iraq is not. The counter-argument that we don't liberate all oppressed peoples won't fly here, because the question is not the degree of our moral perfection (or lack thereof) but whether the plight of the Iraqi people is sufficient to merit intervention on their behalf. I believe most strongly that it is.

[IrishHand]

This thread is priceless. Someone asks a legitimate question for "the anti-war guys", and promptly gets 22 responses. Too bad 18 of them are from the pro-war crowd, and there's really only 1 response of any substance from an "anti-war guy" - and that's the last one. Sort of defeats the purpose of the thread, doesn't it? Although Chris' attempt to actually answer the question(s) is admirable, I prefer Clarkmeister's approach of just shaking my head at the process. Iit's pretty clear from reading this thread how little interst the pro-war crowd - or at least the select few responsible for offering their hollow versions of the "anti-war" positions - have in actually hearing the reasons the vast majority of the world disagrees with them.

[marbles]

"no one seriously believes that Saddam's violation of UN disarmament resolutions, by itself, justifies war."
--I would agree with that. But I do believe that it justifies action. Unfortunately, no one has come up with an appropriate action other than war (unless you consider containment an "action").

"1. Saddam is so dangerous that any trace of chemical or biological weapons in his possession present grave threats to the U.S."
--I dismiss this pro-war argument.

"War in the middle east could just as easily unleash a wave of terrorism and WMD acquisition that would not otherwise occur."
--I dismiss this anti-war argument.

"2. Saddam's material breaches of Security Council resolutions undermine the rule of international law.
the U.S.'s refusal to allow UN resolutions to be enforced against its client states make it irrelevant."
--Well, I wouldn't say irrelevant. Sure, we play by slightly different rules than the other guys, but that goes with being the big kid. I know it's tempting to compare all UN resolutions like they're apples-to-apples, but every situation is a little different. We do have more say, and that just goes with being the superpower.

Believe me, I don't think Saddam is the greatest threat the US faces today, but I can't stomach the thought that he could call our bluff and come out roses. I don't like war, and I don't want Saddam Hussein to be running a country, particularly without disarming. Can't someone give me what I want?!?

[marbles]

"Correction- make that 23 responses total, 19 from pro-war crowd."

--In all fairness, 10 (now 11) of the responses are from me. Of course, I don't think my position (or my posts on this thread, for that matter) is all that pro-war. I am fairly pro-action. I am most definitely anti-Saddam.

BTW, Irish, I value your opinion; assuming you are against military action, could you concisely answer the initial question at the top of the post? I just want to know what the thought process is, and still no one has told me.

[IrishHand]

I shall respond directly to your questions in a new thread, so as to create the vague possibility of a discussion where I don't have 3 people offering bad versions of my arguments. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Chris Alger]

"Sure, we play by slightly different rules than the other guys, but that goes with being the big kid."

Fine, but then let's dispense with the nonsense about the little kids having to play by rules. One either accepts the limits set by international law or one doesn't. When law is applied only arbitrarily, it isn't really law but -- at most -- a phony pretext for the actions of those with power..

"Believe me, I don't think Saddam is the greatest threat the US faces today, but I can't stomach the thought that he could call our bluff and come out roses. I don't like war, and I don't want Saddam Hussein to be running a country, particularly without disarming. Can't someone give me what I want?!? "

Saddam and his coterie are probably the only people on earth that want him to remain in power. I agree that this is a real problem, but it doesn't justify mass killing and certainly not "regime change" under the control of a superpower that could care less about the well-being of Saddam's future victims, having stood on the sidelines and applauded his treatment of victims past..

If we're serious about the worst governments in the world, then let the UN or at least the Security Council agree on what constitutes a "bad" government and put into place a series of measures designed to isolate them and encourage their replacement and reform. This isn't in the cards, however, in part because the US -- hardly alone this time -- wouldn't tolerate it.

Further, I'm not sure why him "calling our bluff" is such a bad thing. In the first place, it's not just him, but most of the rest of the world. The world views the U.S. as both a benevolent promise and a threat. If Bush unilaterlalism is proven unworkable, then we'll have to redouble our efforts at persusasion and diplomacy and rely less on brute force. Everyone is better off.

[B-Man]

I came to the thread prepared to discuss the issue with an apparently objective undecided poster and before I can respond there are 2 long sarcastic antagonistic responses from yourself and Bman intended, apparently, to prevent that discussion.

Come on Clarkmeister, my sarcastic response prevented you from discussing the issue? How so? You could have done any number of things, including posting whatever you were going to post before you read my response.

For the record, my post was not intended to prevent discussion. I would love to hear some anti-war arguments which make sense (so far I have heard exactly one that I agree with, but I do not think it outweighs all the arguments in favor of disarming Iraq, by force if necessary).