"More than 5,500 Iraqis died violently in just Baghdad and three provinces in the first 12 months of the occupation" [...] The human rights organization Amnesty International, based in London, estimated in March that more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed "as a direct result of military intervention in Iraq, either during the war or during the subsequent occupation."

Iraq has 18 provinces. Iraq body count also puts the civilian death toll at approx. 10,000, a figure which seems consistent with the violent mortality rates cited in the article.

Political killings for the period 1997-2002: 4000 (source)

Saddam Hussein is responsible for the democide of an estimated 500,000 people between 1979 and 2003. This is about 20,000 a year on average; 60,000 people were killed in the '91 uprising after the Koweit war. 180,000 Kurds were killed in the late eighties.

Excluded are about one million casualties in the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88). Around 25,000 Iraqi conscripts have died in the Iraq war.

...some 5,500 Iraqis killed violently since the occupation began ... this is significantly fewer deaths than under Hussein, [but he] expect the reports to avoid comparisons and focus on the raw number.

This is awful news even under careful comparison. The figures given for non-war deaths during Saddam's reign are 300k to 500k over 23 years, i.e. 13k to 22k per year. On average, a factor of 3 to 4 more than during the first year of occupation. But, two crucial points here:

The first: Our standards should be a higher than "only 1/4 as many deaths per year as compared to Saddam!"

Second point: Nearly all 300k-500k deaths were before 1993, the start of the containment period. If you look at the deaths after then, it's a VERY different story.

The data from the pro-war Iraq no-body count show that all events but but 7000 prison executions/cleansings occurred before 1993. Even those few are given as 1988-1999. By extrapolation, about half - 3500 occurred after 1993. Read that again: fewer violent deaths in Iraq 1993-2003 than in one year of the occupation. Using the pro-war apologists own data!! Even if we assume that all 7000 occurred after 1993, it's ~700 violent Iraqi deaths/year during the containment period.

The anti-war argument (well, the good one) was always that Saddam was contained post-1993, and that an invasion would likely increase turmoil and death. Your data support that argument very well.

You may say "we'll set up a peaceful and democratic Iraq as the end result". If we succeed, I will concede the point. But it had better be soon because at the current rates it would take the 1993-2002 contained Iraq a year to catch up for each month of the current carnage: 5500 dead in the first year of occupation, plus the war dead (10k? 20k?).

It is telling that pro-war arguments always use data from before 1993. Those same data were used to support the containment regime, and data since then argue that containment was extremely effective in a numbers-of-violent-deaths sense. You can't the same 1979-1991 data as justification for a new policy or evidence of the 2nd policy's success without examinining the effect of the first policy! Ten years 1993-2003 is more than enough to guage the success of containment as a trend.

So please, bring it on with your comparisons and fine print. They lose the numbers game, badly.

But what about the containment argument that I certainly heard ad nauseum about the millions of starving children killed by the cruel and heartless sanctions of the US and UK.

Now given that we know that Saddam bought off quite a few countries and large parts of the UN in the now scandalous OIF, I would posit that these numbers should be counted as wrongful deaths in the same way as direct political killings.

The whole containement argument was never a long term viable solution. Cost of maintaining the no fly zones were in excess of 30 billion dollars. Costs of maintaining these sanctions have cost the credibility of the UN and others far too much. It was too easy for Saddam to repurpose the money he got for oil into "other things".

That whole containment argument comes down to either extending the sanctions endlessly or simply dropping them without any verification whatsoever becuase you have become sick and tired of the whole mess. So if you drop it, how can you be sure that He doesn't start up the WMD race again?

containment argument ... millions of starving children ... Saddam bought off quite a few countries ... scandalous OIF

1) I think that no-fly and inspections were comparatively productive and sanctions comparatively counterproductive. The latter largely for the reasons you cite.

2) At worst you could ditch sanctions but keep continuous no-fly & surveillance, and occasional inspections (which did happen every few years), Saddam would still be pretty well locked down.

3) I would have at minimum attempted to re-evaluate/reformulate sanctions periodically to reduce impact on iraqis while maintaining as much effect on SH as possible.

4) Oil-for-food, (I assume you mean by OIF) was a sick joke exposing our most selfish motives and inviting abuse/corruption of the sort you mention. If we really did care about the people of Iraq we would have just given them food, which is comparatively cheap ($400mil/year would buy food and shipment enough to feed the entire Iraq population,don't give me sh*t about the cost it's a pittance of the war's $200bil) Much harder for SH to repurpose food into tanks. Let him sit there with his oil, unable to ship it at all.

Cost of maintaining the no fly zones were in excess of 30 billion dollars.

$30bil over 10 years, if you're right. $3bil per year.

War+occupation requisitions total $190 billion in the first 15 months. You lose. Retarded argument, try again.

containement argument was never a long term viable solution.

simply dropping them ... becuase you have become sick and tired of the whole mess.

You're telling me we don't have the nerve to stare down a pipsqueak mini-Stalin thug in baghdad for as long as it takes? We already occupied most of his airspace, for chrissake, and destroyed 70% of his military in 1991. I have more faith in the US than you do, apparently.

Our pilots kept up the no-fly for a decade without too much trouble. What makes you think they were suddenly about to walk off the job?

"Sick and tired" ... so it's okay to start a war just because you're impatient?

comes down to either extending the sanctions endlessly or simply dropping them without any verification...

Give me a break, I know you're smarter than this. You don't "verify" sanctions; verification is about weapons enforcement. Sanctions, no-fly, surveillance, and inspections are four rather separate elements of containment. Even if you ditch sanctions, you have three containment elements operating. Maybe sanctions could have been improved. Use your imagination. Think of other combinations.

Yeah, containment had its problems, costs, and deaths. But it was less gruesome and less expensive than the war, and you have zero evidence that it was failing to produce results.

The reason you have zero evidence is that is was producing results. This is why your side has to keep going back to crap that happened in 1982 - stuff we already fixed in 1992 - to justify your 2003 policies.

cost the credibility of the UN

Sure, ok. So how do you rate this effect relative to the loss of US credibility after starting a ~30 kilodeath war over WMD worries that turned out innacurate? (Think "crying wolf") Oil corruption vs. 30 kilodeaths, which is worse? UN credibility vs. US credibility, which do you care about more?

how can you be sure that He doesn't start up the WMD race again?

One can never prove a negative. Can you prove that Canada doesn't have a secret WMD program? This is a BS argument, a logical fallacy, and a pathetic justification for any decision, much less one as serious as a war.

I can't prove that my neighbor doesn't plan to kill me. Can I shoot him?

But ... given occasional ground inspections we knew more about Iraq's weapons than anyone's. How many other nations had 2 years of inspections every 5 years?

I think the truth comes out; this is about impatience. War gives you instant gratification, the feeling that you're "doing something". To hell with results ... the actual number of deaths and money expended, the loss of political capital and credibility: none of that matters to your mindset.

The bottom line on credibility:
Containment: oil-for-food corruption makes U.N. and France look sleazy.
War: WMD "wolf cry" makes USA look untrustworthy, int'l support at lowest levels in memory.

The bottom line on money:
Containment: $30 billion per decade, assuming your figure is valid.
War + occupation: $190 billion in 15 months.

The bottom line on deaths:
Containment: less than 700 deaths per year.
War: 10k-20k deaths in 3 months.
Occupation: 5500 deaths in 1 year.

These are YOUR SIDE'S NUMBERS I'm using. Every figure is from your post or a right-wing site. What's your argument again?

I reckon we should have never rebelled against Britain since it was not a war of 'necessity' and certainly innocent people suffered. Another advantage would have been that nothing could have ever been blamed on the US. I wonder of the French feel the same way about their many revolutions?

Might I suggest that, since we have already invaded Iraq, it might be more productive to try to determine ways to reduce that count over the next twelve months rather than going on about how we should or shouldn't have invaded? I'm reasonably confident that arguments about the wisdom of the invasion are now OBE. I also concur that 5,500 deaths is way too many, so finding methods to cut that down as much as possible ought to be a goal we can all support.

One way to cut down the attacks will be to cut down on the number of bombs insurgents use against their own people.

The other thing we need to do is get the insurgents to stop using the Iraqi people as human shields.

I think because of their fanatical nature and lack of central authority we are going to have to kill 90 to 99% of them before their compatriots get the message.

The thing is because of the cost the American people let the Vietnamese people down.

I do not wish to let the Iraqi people down.

In 12 years we have established a democratic Kurd enclave. Can we have 5 years for the rest of Iraq?

BTW the Kurds love us. George Bush all the way. (Me too - except the drug war)

The old never surrenders to the new without a fight. The birth of a new nation is painful and often involves the loss of blood.

Interesting how the doomsayers are making common cause with the terrorists.

For the first time in over 30 years, Iraqis are getting a taste of freedom. And the doomsayers are trying to take it all away before they can even experience it.

Franky, more people are murdered in Detroit per year then Iraq, and I don't hear anything about getting the US out of Michigan. Last time I checked the Free Press, Detroit was bragging how it was no longer the #1 murder capitol of the US.

And IdahoEv's argument over foreign support is bunk. It seems more countries can hate us, but they still are cracking down on terror. Witness, Jordan, Tunisa, Morrocco, Indonesia, even France has stepped up efforts recently. Didn't Machivelli say it was better to be feared then loved?

(Lurker:) ... reckon we should have never rebelled against Britain ...

This is relevant how? Because the French army which invaded the colonies freed us from a violent dictator and managed to prevent thousands of political executions per year?

There's no parallel here, and sarcasm alone isn't an argument. Try again.

(Andrew:) it might be more productive to try to determine ways to reduce that count over the next twelve months rather than

Agreed, and I'll stop. I just hear a lot of rhetoric "proving" the war's success has been successful based on the number of Saddam Hussein-caused-deaths that it has and will have prevented. The numbers don't support that claim, and it ignores the huge success of a decade of containment. The relevant section comment of the original post RE: "naysayers will ignore the comparison but focus on the numbers" had a strong ring of that fallacious and very tired argument.

So, we agree that the outcome to date has been poor and start to brainstorm solutions/improvements. What do y'all think of the plan Bush unveiled today?

The concept of forcibly imposing a democracy without going all out and exhausting the will of a nations people is laughable. We almost did it in Vietnam, but it took over millions of vietnamese lives and tens of thousands of our own, and we didn't even make it to the finish line. I think foribly installing democracy is possible (we obviously did it in Germany, though the argument for Japan is shoddy if you know much about the Japanese "Democractic" process), I just think it requires the ability to use much more force than the American public is willing to embrace without some greater justification that involves personal defense.

In Vietnam, there was at least a somewhat legitimate worry about communists rolling over the world, especially in the context of the times. Now that Saddam is gone (who it is now apparent wasnt a threat to us at all), what are we defending ourselves against? Only a shitstorm we have created in the form of militant islamists. Sure, if we were able to install a democracy, Iraq would possibly be better off. But Iraq isn't exactly a united national entity, and supposing they do get democracy, it is a bit naive to imagine that it will result in anything other than bloody civil war, with Iran likely throwing its weight behind the Shiites and Turkey stepping in and doing to the Kurds in Iraq what they have spent decades doing to their own Kurdish population, slow genocide.

Democracy is great, but democracy rarely works when a population doesn't go about establishing it on its own, or doesnt have its will completely broken by an occupying power while having enough in common culturally to accept western enlightenment values (something Germany and Japan both had, humanitarian aspects excluded, which the Iraqi population doesn't). In fact, I can't really think of any examples where democracy has worked without one of those two preconditions haven't been met, but I haven't exactly exhaustively researched the matter, so I could very well be wrong. I am just not aware of any. Basically, it just seems inherintely paradoxical to think an external power can impose democracy on a population. Arguably we arent imposing democracy in Iraq, so much as removing the infastructure of a dictator, but Im not sure the people of Iraq's concept of self governance is exactly in line with our image of what constitutes a democracy. Time will tell I suppose.

While I think that IdahoEv's statistical backflips are at best risible, I have to object to the claim that fewer people are killed in Iraq than in Detroit. I'm fairly certain that Detroit didn't see five thousand violent deaths last year. Here's something that suggests that it was closer to five hundred. If you meant "per capita", say so.

I'm a little taken aback that the violent death total in Iraq was that low. Five thousand? Really? I'd think we'd be approaching that just from terror bombings and IED-related fatalities, let alone the kidnapping wave, the political one-off murders, gangsterism, and general lawlessness.

No people has ever formed a democracy under a ruthless tyrant without outside help.
Saddam wasn't a threat to us? Saddam was a threat to the entire Mid East. It was long-time official US policy to remove Saddam.
The public case has not been made sufficiently for "neutralizing" Iraq.
Who killed those 10,000 Iraqi's? Islamist militants, I'd say.
I'll buy your non-equivalence argument though.

The "true" reasons for establishing a base in the Middle East have not been adequately explained (sold?). However, the strategy is working.

IdahoEv,
I wasn't being sarcastic at all. It was a likely feeble attempt to point out that there are other issues to consider besides body counts. Is this really how you want to measure human progress? That we should always take the path of the fewest possible deaths over an arbitrary time frame?

Those who propose action or inaction must consider and acknowledge all of the consequences of their positions. Unfortunately, just like closing out the books every quarter, there are many values that just don't show up in the ledger.

If you could rewind history, and cancel the Civil War and save all of that death and destruction, would you? Would you do it even if slavery were still the law of the land in the USA? Or perhaps in the CSA? Would you want to make your current argument if you had lived in those times? Would you say to Lincoln, “The Union is not worth preserving , some innocents might die!”. How do you balance this in your ledger?

(Conrad:) Interesting how the doomsayers are making common cause with the terrorists.

When the facts no longer support your position, slander your opponent: it's called an ad hominem argument.

I have a reasoned and researched opinion that current policy is not in the best interests of either the US or the Iraqis. Gee, I'm practically ready to crash a jetliner.

(Conrad:) ...Iraqis are getting a taste of freedom. And the doomsayers are trying to take it all away before they can even experience it.

Right - I argue in favor of policies I honestly believe improve the chances of Iraqis 1) staying alive and 2) keeping their new freedom, when i believe current policy is failing. But, since it's not current policy, obviously my motivation is to enslave Iraq. Dude, you're a caricature.

Don't forget: Liberals hate America!

You might be surprised to know that I believe there were good, as well as bad, outcomes to this war. I count the Iraqis' freedom among the good outcomes, along with the US exit from Saudi Arabia. But the point I was refuting was about violent deaths, and no I don't think we've made an improvement so far.

(Brian:) ...Frankly, more people are murdered in Detroit per year then Iraq...

Actually per capita they were very close over 12 months but Detroit was a bit higher (Detroit ~3 per 10,000 per year, Iraq ~1.8 per 10,000 per year). Though that's not a great sign in Iraq where most of the population is rural and there's no drug culture. And it means ... horror ... that for the last 10 years a lot fewer people were murdered under Saddam Hussein than kill each other in Detroit.

But the relevant point is that people ARE advocating drastic measures and changes of policy in Detroit due to the violence there. So isn't it valid for me to argue that the violence demonstrates a change of policy may be necessary in Iraq?

(Brian:) IdahoEv's argument over foreign support is bunk. It seems more countries can hate us, but they still are cracking down on terror.

Um... you lost me. They're cracking down on terror because it's in their own best interests to do so, and they started immediately after 9/11. How does that justify us having lost credibility over Iraq? How does it have anything to do with Iraq at all? Are you saying they started cracking down because we invaded Iraq? Or because they fear the U.S.? Huh?

(Brian:) Didn't Machivelli say it was better to be feared then loved?

Yeah, and another pretty smart guy said something along the lines of "do unto others".

Fear is how Saddam kept his people in line. And how the USSR kept the eastern bloc in line. You're advocating that the US function the same way?

Saddam was a threat to the middle east at one point in time, but not really in any significant capacity after 1991. We pretty much took the teeth out of him, and he clearly got the message. Based on his remaining arsenal that we saw after Gulf War 2, it was pretty clear that, if he did have any ambitions of another invasion, he was ill prepared for it. His remaining military seemed mostly designed to supress regional dissent, not for any large scale invasions. Even supposing he did try such a thing, it would have taken us all of a few months to cage him back in. Saddam was smart enough to know such a move would be stupid after the first gulf war, and I have no reason to suspect he would waste a great deal of personal resources for such a futile endeavor. To say saddam was a threat to the US just seems a nearly indefensible position at this juncture, given the absence of WMDs.

Now, Saddam would have been a threat had we just, say, left him alone and did nothing, but we weren't and it doesnt make much sense to predicate the assumption about his level of threat on complete inaction, since that wasn't our policy. Our policy was containment, and given that policy, Saddam wasn't a threat to anyone outside of Iraq. Of course, he was a terrible threat to those in Iraq, but I imagine that things won't be drastically different in another 5 or 10 years under whatever new ruler Iraq has then. Hopefully I am wrong on that count, and democracy will work, I just dont have a lot of reason to believe it will.

As far as people minimizing the cost of Iraqi lives because they are caused by militants, people act as if that isnt a consequence of our invasion. Those militants are there explicitly because we are there. We are responsible for that. This is not to say they aren't reponsible too, of course, just that it should have been a consideration prior to invasion. This was an obvious and realistic outcome of our invasion/liberation, whatever you want to call it, and has to be treated as such. To cry "No fair, no fair!" doesn't alleviate responsibility for the consequences of the Hawkish strategy. This is part and parcel of such an approach, and to try to act as if it isnt is to ignore the realities of the costs of the forceful execution of such policies.

Just as it is silly to argue the media is losing the war. Of course the media will report everything bad. News flash, its the news. They have a tendency to do that when allowed. That should be taken into account in any political strategy. If the media can't be managed properly, then the strategy is flawed. Either adopt a means to deal with this problem, or realize the approach is inherintely problematic. It's like complaining "I would have won that boxing match, except that the crowd kept heckling me." It's part of the game. It has to be dealt with if one wants to compete. If the strategy cant incorporate and manage such problems, it is a shitty strategy that won't suceed.

All of these tortuous discussions over body counts and unceasing observation/criticism of the post-invasion plans are important, but they ultimately only cover a small portion of the larger situation.

It's true that Saddam was "contained", at least conventionally. We were in no danger of him sending a fleet of tanks or paratroopers into the US, and it was unlikely he could do the same to the Saudis, Iranians, Kuwaitis, or even Kurds.

Of course, we were in no danger of being invaded by Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan in 2001 either, and elements from both of those countries managed to pull something remarkable off. So clearly there are other means by which Saddam could pose a threat. Especially over the long term, which is what no one on the anti-war side ever seems to address, aside from vague suggsions of "we should find out why they hate us and then throw money and diplomats at them".

In the near long-term, there was growing political pressure on the US and Britain to remove the sanctions, since Saddam was doing such a good job of stirring up propaganda about diseased children and starving millions. Even the vaunted newsorg CNN was prevented from truly reporting what was happening over there, lest they lose their precious access.

So let's figure it likely that we'd give up the sanctions due to deafening world outcry. Soon after that, we'd be getting pressure to end the no-fly zones ... I mean, after all, with sanctions lifted and Saddam being allowed to do business with the French, Russians, Germans, etc. again, clearly the case could be made that he was showing evidence of joining the world community again.

And eventually, as is the nature of things, the inspection process would start running out of steam ... since we now "know" that there was no WMD production going on. Why waste money and time on a process that had worked? Issues of fairness and funding would be used as the rationale for pulling out. After all, weren't the Iraqis cooperating fully?

Certainly by this point America could probably care less what was going on in Iraq, since we wouldn't be getting much in the way of news aside from dry-as-a-bone reports about oil contracts and troop withdrawals and maybe occasional news out of Kurdistan involving a car bomb here or there...

(Let's assume at this point that a) we'd be proceeding apace with actions in Afghanistan without having the war spill over into Pakistan and thus India; and b) hadn't engaged in a war with North Korea or Libya when we discovered their weapons programs.)

So where are we? Saddam essentially being left alone, with a token UN presence left behind to oversee the most obvious of transactions.

And what's more: Uday and Qusay still existing and in roles of immense power. To say nothing of Chemical Ali, Izzat Ibrahim, and God knows how many more ruthless family members waiting in the wings.

We'd still have a lot of troops just across the border in Saudi Arabia, irritating the Wahhabists. Iran would be proceeding apace with its nuclear ambitions, as would Libya.

All of the above is speculation and conjecture, of course. It's only one thread of an infinite number of spools.

But under this kind of scenario - which I think is as reasonable as, say, the UN negotiating a peaceful abdication of power by Saddam to a representative democracy - what happens? Do Saddam and his underlings start digging out old manuals and buying a little extra materiel on the side from the Russians? Flush with their new funds and relative free access, do they start handing out gobs and gobs of money to poor Saudis, Palestinians, Egyptians, Algerians?

Or does Saddam's or his heirs' rule get so completely intolerable that an indescribably horrific and lengthy civil war starts up, with the US and the West in general sitting on the sidelines? Think of the players in such a scenario: an apocalyptic mix of brutal Baathists (including Syrians) and Islamic nihilists/fundamentalists (with ample Wahabbi cannon fodder from Saudi Arabia, Shiite fodder from Iran, and Sunni fodder from everywhere else) - and of course, the Israelis might have a stake in such a conflagration as well. The Turks too. All of them armed to the teeth with guns, mortars, RPGs ... and who knows what else.

And all of this directly atop the fuel source for the worldwide - not merely US - economy.

From my point of view, that's what I'm not getting from the anti-war side. Not what they would have done in 2001, or 2003. Or even what they'd like to do in the next few months. I don't know what their longer-term fears/hopes/plans entail, something beyond merely "Well, let's get rid of Bush first, then we'll get the world back on our side again and go from there". Their treatments of world conditions just don't seem to take certain realities - or even likelihoods - into account.

I don't see that as evidence of stupidity. I do see it as a kind of naivete and a lack of imagination. That's not a left-right/antiwar-prowar thing; all sides can be guilty of that, as 9/11 proved.

In my thinking, I think our military involvement in Iraq was inevitable - it was just a matter of on what terms and in what conditions. I also am dubious that any amount of cajoling or pleading or delaying would have brought the world to our side without some catastrophic attack in a major Western population area.

Reagan, for all of his communication skills, was pretty much loathed by Europe. Similarly, the loquacious Clinton had a hell of a time persuading Europe that intervening in the Balkans was a good idea, and even then the commitment was half-assed, despite it being in their back yard.

Indeed, even with the whole world nominally backing us after 9/11, there was still a hell of a lot of resistance to actually using military force in Afghanistan.

Apologies for the windbaggery.

Steve in Houston: Thank God for you. I don't have time to respond right now as I'm under deadlines this evening, but you have cogent and thoughtful arguments and a willingness to reason things out and I have been despairing for finding that from someone on the other side lately. I come here (instead of, say, the choir at Atrios), looking for a real debate on the issues, and I'm sad when I get "The doomsayer is siding with the terrorists!!" instead.

I sincerely wish I had the option to sit down for coffee or a beer with you and talk - just talk - for a few hours. It gets old talking to the choir here in L.A.

(Mitch H.:) While I think that IdahoEv's statistical backflips are at best risible

Hmm... I was pretty careful with my math, actually. I generally used only data from conservative sources in an attempt to err the other way, as well. If you let me know which ones you consider "backflips" I'll be happy to take another look at them and either explain my reasoning or admit my mistakes/misinformation where I'm proven wrong.

(Lurker:) I wasn't being sarcastic at all. It was a likely feeble attempt to point out that there are other issues to consider besides body counts.

Of course there are other issues! I was responding specifically to a body count issue, and an implication that we have actually improved the likely body count situation WRT to Iraq. I believe that position to be wrong. I also responded to (silly) arguments that the war saved us from the ballooning expense of containment and it's associated credibility erosion.

If you want to accept that the losses were high and debate whether other gains made them worth it, that's a totally different argument and I'm more than willing to hear it. The point is, be clear what you're debating. But make your claim clear (i.e. which effects were worth it?) and defend them! Your sarcasm about skipping the American Revolution was not at all a clear statement of the point you were trying to make.

Would I skip the Civil War? Don't know; the issue is more complex than I can grasp at the moment. If slavery would have fallen anyway, I might be willing to excahnge 618 kilodeaths for a pair of separate nations rather than one: it's not clear to me that people wanting independence should be forced into unity at gunpoint. But I'm sure there are lots more issues I don't understand with that conflict, though, so i'll defer to experts.

I certainly wouldn't have the US allow WWII to destroy Europe unabated, nor erase the War of Independence. I'm neither an idiot nor a pacifist. There are clearly times when fighting is necessary despite the costs.

For my part, I think that there were two very good effects of the war: freedom of the Iraqi people and removal of US forces from Saudi Arabia (a major recruiting point for Al-Qaeda in the 1990s). I'm not yet sure how it balances out. It matters if the Iraqis get to stay free, whether or not millions die in a civil war, whether or not the war fever proves a more powerful recruiting tool for al-Qaeda, and how it plays out with the region. If some of those go very badly - it wasn't the right plan. If we see roses soon ... maybe it was. I'm waiting to see. right now i think the news is not good and 12 months of foolish policy decisions have dug a much deeper hole than necessary. Either way, I think there were better options, and better executions of this option.

If you want my position more specifically, General Zinni's opinions just posted this weekend are quite close (>90%) to mine. S'all the time I've got today, sorry.

"If you want my position more specifically, General Zinni's opinions just posted this weekend are quite close (>90%) to mine. S'all the time I've got today, sorry."

I have to question Zinni's conclusions because he makes several questionable statements.

1) the claim that you have to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict first. All the Arab nations have a vested interest in NOT solving it (or rather their only acceptable solution is for Israel to not exist). They have refused to do their part to solve it for 50 years. Putting that first is putting the cart before the horse. it allows them to string us along forever, using "the poor Palestinians" as an excuse for funding suicide bombers (as Saddam did), all the while encouraging Palestinian irredentism.

2) Zinni claims that Bush acted because there was an imminent threat. Bush repeatedly said he wanted to take out Saddam BEFORE the threat became imminent, so Zinni is setting up a straw man.

3) He repeats the false accusations of "rush to war" (a year and a half debating at the UN is not a rush) and "unilateralism (over 40 countries in a coalition is not unilateral). More straw men.

4) He wonders why we didn't get the imprimature of the UN. Duh. Russia and France sold Saddam most of his weapons and had lucrative oil contracts, then there's the unfolding OIL scandal. The UN is a cesspit - the Iraq war is exposing it. This alone justifies it (retroactively) IMO.

5) He claims that Bush expected Iraqis "throwing flowers and dancing in the streets." Bush said repeatedly it would be a long hard struggle, he never said cakewalk.

I'm going to stop there. Zinni is just repeating the standard thoroughly debunked antiwar arguments, and his faith in the UN is unreal at this point. So I didn't read the rest.

IdahoEv,

Your "Saddam was finished killing" argument has been made before.

It fails in several respects.

It assumes that the figures quoted are correct, and I'm not sure these figures for pre- and post-Saddam deaths are consistent or 100% reliable. (I seem to recall a 2002 Kurdish report of a fresh 2000 person mass grave (children included), but I can't find the cite, atm.) But let's use these figures for a moment.

It also assumes that Saddam was, in fact, finished killing (the oddly sanitized term you use for this is "contained"). Given that, in order to maintain power, the man slaughtered children by exposing them to noxious chemicals, it is an assumption I am not willing to grant. Although Saddam could have foresworn genocide 2 minutes prior to the invasion, it is more likely that, in view of his past behaviour, he would have eventually engaged in further murderous sprees.

It is true that Saddam often (but not always) killed large numbers of people over a short period of time; but it is not clear why we should not average these numbers over a longer period of time. After all, war opponents had to reasonably expect that Saddam would remain in power over the medium-term (their position, in fact, supported this situation). (It seems more likely that Saddam's regime would have continued even after his death under his sons, but let's leave that aside.) War opponents' preference for the "reformed" Saddam over the "butcher" Saddam when arguing is never fully explained. Why should we artificially parse Saddam's killing rather than examine his entire genocidal career? Why take the earlier 10 year period rather than the later 10 year period? Why are we examining all this against a single year instead of longer term evaluations of potential genocide?

You could retort that Saddam's later behaviour is, given a certain view of psychology, a more useful guide to his future behaviour. I could counter that by claiming that Saddam kills (a) when he believes he can do so with impunity and (b) in times of political stress. Thus, I might suggest that the "butcher" Saddam was the more likely to emerge.

The purely utilitarian "body count" argument still comes out in favour of the pro-war side. For this reason, and others, it was immoral to oppose the war.

The purely utilitarian "body count" argument still comes out in favour of the pro-war side. For this reason, and others, it was immoral to oppose the war.

Was it immoral, by the way, when the very same Republican crew supported Saddam against Iran, at the very height of his killing frenzy?

You might say that the anti-war position was mistaken for a number of reasons, including Saddam's internal butchery, but I suggest you be a little more careful before bringing out the unqualified "immoral" allegation.

Andrew,

There might be similar humanitarian arguments in favour of intervening in other conflicts (namely, Sudan, Congo, Rwanda, etc.). However, the present argument is about the utilitarian case in favour of intervention in Iraq. These are distinct arguments. Pointing out that the Administration has inconsistently applied their utilitarian principle only demonstrates that the state actors act inconsistently; it doesn't affect the correctness of the application of the utilitarian principle to Iraq. It is an ad hominem tu quoque.

"Was it immoral, by the way, when the very same Republican crew supported Saddam against Iran, at the very height of his killing frenzy?"

To the extent the past administrations gave "support" to a genocidal tyrant, the provisional answer must be "yes". (There may have been other reasons for supporting Iraq against Iran, but the moral case would weigh heavily against any nation who supported a man while he used chemical weapons against human beings. France, Russia and China will, no doubt, soon publish apologies to the Iraqi people for their continued and steadfast support for Saddam throughout his rule. See SIPRI report re: Iraq arms sales and UNSCAM.) This, however, does not make the present intervention by the current Administration more or less moral. As such, it is an irrelevant fact. That is, its truth or falsity can have no effect on the truth or falsity of the main argument. If you believe otherwise, feel free to make your case.

I have argued the immorality of opposition to the war elsewhere. I suppose war opponents could have mistakenly and unreasonably believed that more would die in war and its aftermath, and objected to the war on those grounds, while maintaining that their position was moral. It is the difference between a morally negligent position and an immoral position. Human Rights Watch, for example, took a morally negligent position.

Apart from this, I stand by my position: it was immoral to oppose the war. When an anti-war leftists begins a discussion with "Of course it was a good thing that Saddam was removed but..." they quietly concede this point, while hoping their opponent won't notice that their position would have left Saddam to enslave 25 million people. Well, I notice. I'll remember the writers, poets, actors, politicians, pundits, activists and academics who tolerated slavery and genocide when it would have taken so little to stand against it, who accepted the devil's bargain: oppose America but condemn Iraqis to their hell. Don't expect me to forget any time soon.

"Have you made similar statements w.r.t. Rwanda, the Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Turkish Kurdistan, and the Balkans, or does this rule of immorality only apply to conflicts you wish to engage in for quite unrelated reasons?"

I suppose I'd give more credence to this argument if there were widespread and vociferous marching and agitating on behalf of these beknighted areas. You know, the kind that numerous high-minded human rights organizations participated in when condemning US actions against the brutal autocrat Saddam Hussein.

Maybe I'm missing it, but I'm just not seeing the outrage w.r.t. those situations. I suppose the US efforts to help police Liberia (forcing out the murderous Charles Taylor in the process), Haiti (cooperating with the French in deposing the corrupt Aristide) and basically waking up Europe to try to do something about the Balkans (how's Slobodan Milosevic's war crimes trial going?) were simply motivated by the desire to get at those countries' vast natural resources so we can go to McDonald's in our SUVs. I suppose those protests are being suppressed by the corporate-owned media fascists.

You can add Sudan to your list as well. The Security Council rejected a strong condemnation of the Sudanese government's culpability that was sponsored by ... the United States. Of course, the whole thing simply reinforces the rhetorical shell game that is the United Nations - diplomatic maneuvering makes sure that no one criticises anyone for anything, really. Except Israel.

Hey, just because the tranzi left uses its smug, moralistic self-negation to excuse it from doing anything about anything except chat over coffee and build puppets doesn't mean the rest of us should shackle ourselves as well.

Steve and Mark, I have never made any claim that opposition to intervention in Kosovo or Sudan (etc.) is immoral, although in some cases it may be mistaken. It isn't enough for you guys to believe that you're right, you need for your opponents to be positively immoral and evil. Maybe that's your way of stiffening your spines (or whatever) when the outcome of your Iraq Adventure doesn't follow the plan, and the grownups have to clean up your mess. It's OK if everything is FUBAR, because the alternative was immoral. Nice try.

The problem I have with your argument is that, by cutting off the liberal after, "It's good that Saddam is gone", you have specified no criteria why you don't follow your own reasoning into Sudan and Zimbabwe. It would also be good if Mugabe were gone. It's a most curious moral imperative that can be applied at whim.

And this doesn't even get into rudimentary cost/benefit analysis. Would it be worth it if America has to treble the size of its army and bring back the draft? Thousands dead a year? Hundreds of billions of dollars a year? If a civil war ensues as bloody as Saddam? How about intangibles, like notions of state sovereignty and casus belli? If you wish to wallow in the moral argument, you can hardly stop when the cost becomes too great.

"It isn't enough for you guys to believe that you're right, you need for your opponents to be positively immoral and evil. Maybe that's your way of stiffening your spines (or whatever) when the outcome of your Iraq Adventure doesn't follow the plan, and the grownups have to clean up your mess. It's OK if everything is FUBAR, because the alternative was immoral. Nice try."

I'm not making a claim about the personality of opponents of the war. I don't need for my opponents to be anything; I'm not interested in who or what they are, except insofar as it is relevent to the argument. I'm making a claim about the immorality of a position that would have condemned 25 million people to slavery, genocide and mass torture, when it was possible and reasonable to humanely intervene.

Surely, when you considered the consequences of your anti-war position, you knew what that meant for Iraqis. You did the calculations about the costs of future innocent deaths, enslavement, genocide, mass torture, etc weighed against the horrors of war. You cannot now retreat from this uncomfortable moral sum, just as proponents of the war cannot now retreat from flawed Iraqi reconstruction.

Iraqis, not surprisingly, overwhelmingly prefered that Saddam's regime end. You chose to preference the opposite outcome. Every justification for this outcome proferred by the anti-war left was unsatisfactory.

Hence, the anti-war position was immoral.

I dispute your contention that Iraq is FUBAR. See 25 million free Iraqis, closing of mass graves and nascent democracy.

Can I take it, Mark, that if Iraq becomes FUBAR beyond even your ability to ignore, you'll reconsider your position?

Andrew,

The reasonably anticipated consequences of the war had to form part of any consideration of the morality of it. I have implicitly adopted this principle; it's why I have such a problem with the anti-war position. It was not only reasonably foreseeable that Iraqis would continued to be enslaved had war opponents prevailed, it was a certainty.

If you can successfully argue that (a) the majority of Iraqis are worse off now than they were under Saddam and (b) this was reasonably foreseeable at the time war was declared, then I'd have to concede that my (pro-war) position was immoral. If you can prove (a) but not (b), then I have to concede that my position was, while well-intentioned, mistaken and naive. (Imo, the most dangerous development for Iraq had to be a refugee crisis or civil war: either of these conditions, resulting in massive innocent death, weighed against war and were reasonably foreseeable.)

The problem for the anti-war left is that Iraqis would almost certainly be better off after the war than before, and this was reasonably foreseeable. Iraqis knew they would be better off; Iraqi exiles repeatedly told this to anyone who would listen before the war. This positive post-war condition has been confirmed by Iraqis themselves - a damning fact that anti-war leftists are understandably loathe to acknowledge.

Let me put a question to you, Andrew: do you, in view of (1) the brutal, inhuman condtions previously endured by the majority of Iraqis, (2) their newfound freedoms & emancipation, (3) their approval thereof and (4) the pre-war reasonable foreseeability of all these facts, concede that war opponents had only a weak moral justification for their position?

It seems that Andrew's point is that pro-war folks can't avail themselves of the moral argument to support the invasion of Iraq unless it is applied universally.

Andrew, have you a last conceded that the Iraq invasion has a moral component? This seems a valid conclusion since you imply that this claim is invalid only to the extent that it isn't universally applied.

If you do indeed agree that this war has a moral component, then you must concede also that it applies in the Iraqi case regardless of the other situations you mention, like the Sudan. The most you can accuse a hawk would be inconsistency, or maybe a form of hypocrisy. Neither of which, says anything in particular about Iraq at all.

First, I reject the premise of the last two comments that

(a) Arguments in favor of the war have a moral component

entails

(b) Arguments against the war must have an immoral component.

It might, for example, be true that both pro and con arguments have different moral claims. For example, one could make a morality-based argument for the vigilante execution of OJ Simpson, but it would be outweighed (at least, to my mind) by, among other things, a moral argument in favor of retaining the American system of justice.

My argument about Sudan, etc. is meant not to justify widespread invasions, but to point out that the mere moral argument does not explain the war in Iraq, unless Iraq was chosen by lot from a list of hellholes. Obviously, the moral argument has been conjoined to some other arguments. For example, some WoC commenters see Iraq as a base for operations against Iran and Syria whether the Iraq government likes it or no. Neocon Midge Decter said this week, "We're not in the Middle East to bring sweetness and light to the world. We're there to get something we and our friends in Europe depend on. Namely, oil." --Decter on the Warren Olney show, 89.9, Los Angeles, 5/21/04 What happens when we mix idealistic motives (democracy in Iraq) with not-so-nice motives (plunder Iraqi natural resources)? Somehow the moral calculus is a lot more complicated than "25 million Iraqis live better".

It seems to me that rather than an absolute, the Iraq War needed to be evaluated in terms of Iraq's threat to the United States, its threat to world stability, and our ability to improve the situation. The threat was frankly minimal, hyped all out of proportion, and we are rapidly discovering that Iraq is not going to be all that much more democratic after we leave than Afghanistan is. Indeed, the prospects of civil war, a kindler-gentler dictatorship, a second Shia theocracy, and/or a failed state replete with terrorists are all on the table. The pro-American pro-Israeli pipe dream blew away months ago, although only this month's repudiation of Chalabi makes that clear to all.

Andrew,

You raise a number of different issues.

You say that:

"I reject the premise of the last two comments that (a) Arguments in favor of the war have a moral component entails (b) Arguments against the war must have an immoral component."

I don't think I've made this claim. I would make a different claim, as follows.

There may, indeed, be some situations that demand no moral decision, that engage none of what we describe as our moral principles. Deciding to wear shoes or sandals, etc. There may be some situations where such moral engagement is disputed: rescuing a mouse caught by your house cat, for example. But there are some situations that clearly engage our moral principles; the liberation of Iraq was one of them. We had to decide whether to rescue 25 million people from slavery, genocide and mass torture. I don't know if there is a more paradigmatic moral situation than this.

So, to the extend that you claim the anti-war left is not caught in a larger moral evaluation where 2 or more moral solutions are offered for a moral problem, you would, I think, be wrong. When confronted with situations where our moral principles are engaged, one must present a moral argument or one will not be taken as morally serious. Anti-war leftists were not passive agents during the pre-war debate; they offered, and still offer, positions that would have condemned 25 million Iraqis to Saddam's hell. Their position was in competition with the pro-liberation view. Each position was incompatible and had dire real-world consequences. Set against each other, the anti-war position was not only weaker but also, I claim, immoral.

If your point about Sudan, etc, is now that the moral case alone cannot explain why the Coalition went to war, then I concede this point. I would only note that this does not prevent me from claiming that (1) the moral case for war was made by the Administration (I've seen some anti-war leftits try to deny this) and (my main claim) (2) the pro-war position was morally justified, and the anti-war position was not.

This leads us into motives.

You say:

"What happens when we mix idealistic motives (democracy in Iraq) with not-so-nice motives (plunder Iraqi natural resources)? Somehow the moral calculus is a lot more complicated than "25 million Iraqis live better"."

I have said before that moral action often involves mixed motives. Let's say I'm walking with my date and we come across a homeless person. Out of newfound sympathy, I want to help the man, but I also want to seem kind in the eyes of my date so that she'll find me more attractive, and be more likely to go to bed with me; lets complicate the example by noting that I wouldn't normally help homeless people. The former is an altruistic motive; the second a purely selfish motive. I give the man some money. Mixed motive, equally weighted; moral or immoral conduct?

I would suggest that one must look at all factors in assessing moral value: stated & unstated motives, sincerity, reasonably foreseeable consequences, etc. None of these alone is sufficiently determinative.

The anti-war left seemed to focus only on stated & unstated motives. ("All about oil, military bases" etc.) The principle they deployed seemed to be "Conduct is moral if and only if the motives for it are purely and solely altruistic". This, as I tried to show, is an untenable principle. It does not adequately capture moral conduct with mixed motives (US Civil War, WW2, Korean War, etc). War opponents ignored the other factors and, therefore, engaged in a flawed evalution.

Thus, the anti-war position, though it may try to explain the war, was an immoral position.