The Big Topic 2 - Iraq

[Wavid]

Here's a biggie, then. Loads of things to think about, like:

Was it right to go to war in the first place?

Were the reasons for the war sufficient?

Was the way the war was fought the best way?

What about the post-war American running of Iraq?

What can be done about the insurgents who keep bombing and beheading people?

What is the future for Iraq?

[Colyngbourne]

I think in very simple political terms usually, so excuse my rather simple and thin opinions on this.

It was not right to go to war without the UN's authorisation and on the spurious WMD issue (and the invalid connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda [sp.?]. It was pre-emptive interfering and illegal in my eyes. The fact that it's now defended on regime-change grounds is beyond the pale. An 'evil' dictator has been removed, yes, but there was no adequate plan for the aftermath and how the political stage might be reformed.

Now everything's in such a mess (and the US are awarding all the rebuilding contracts to themselves), a different kind of war has been enflamed. It's unfair :wink: of the US to ask the UN to help out now that they've cocked everything up, and when they so blatantly disregard any international rule of law themselves. I haven't got a clue how it can be sorted out without the UN though. I think the top four in Bush's administration (inc. Bush) should be impeached.

The insurgents and the rise of terrorist acts are the most terrifying things. I see no way in which the anger and aggression against the US (and the West) can be calmed or dealt with. Sorting out with the Israel/Palestinian Territories would be helpful :wink:

The long term problem with this and the wider issues, is that of fundamentalism and imperialism - religious and social and cultural and economic fundamentalism, both in the west and the middle east. It sounds small and petty but avoiding fundamentalism in business practice or education or in the media/culture is one way to discourage the extreme positions that we have seen taken. Educating children to have respect for others, and to value and appreciate the differences between belief systems, is the way forward (on a micro-scale).

Saddam should not be executed either.

[NottyImp]

Was it right to go to war in the first place? No.

Were the reasons for the war sufficient? No.

Was the way the war was fought the best way? No.

What about the post-war American running of Iraq? No.

What can be done about the insurgents who keep bombing and beheading people? Oh, don't worry, TWOT will sort them out.

What is the future for Iraq? Unstable.

[pandop]

But the UN is becoming increasingly worthless

[NottyImp]

Largely because the US undermines it at every opportunity.

[gil]

I've probably said this before, but it bears repetition.

Churchill once apparently said:

"The Americans can always be relied upon to do the right thing... once they have exhausted all the other possibilities."

____________________________________

To tell the truth, at the time I was in favour of duffing up Saddam. I hadn't realised that they hadn't planned how to do it. All this business of bombing strategic targets and civilians indiscriminately may have saved American lives in the first place, but it hasn't paid off in the long run. I really believed that they would have had firm agreement from a number of the Shiite groups that they'd join in. The Kurds made the invasion of the North easy, just as the Northern Warlords in Afghanistan helped with that campaign. The Americans seem to have learned absolutely nothing from all the wars since WWII - Korea, Malaya, Vietnam, Cambodia, Somalia, you name it. They still think the Hiroshima solution is going to win their wars, despite much evidence to the contrary. It's arguable that even Hiroshima didn't win the Japanese war, really. I'm sure I've heard the Japanese were already getting ready to surrender when the bomb arrived.

[skanky]

They were and several of the US generals were saying so at the time (including ones you'd expect were the pretty "gung-ho").

The UN is not just undermined by the US (though being the most powerful nation, they do probably have a dispraportionate effect. All countries use it (mainly) as a means of futhering "national interests". There are problems within the executive branch (as in all executives), but the big problem is that individual countries act, within an organisation created with (publicly stated) altruistic purposes, for (mainly) selfish means.

The UN may not be the ideal model (a bit like the EU), but it could be modified to be a better model and this could be the best line of action, rather than ignoring it. Of course, this line of thought is hopelessly naive and totally impractical.

[pandop]

It isn't just the US that is the problem with the UN, but that so few countries are spending reasonable amounts on their armed forces (well except those countries with very dodgy human rights records) so that it is becoming increasingly difficult for the UN to back its words up.

Then there is the desire to appease Muslim fundamentalists and other nasty Arab types (note: this is to say not friendly Arabs, not to imply all Arabs are nasty - I am not Kilroy :wink: ) that is prevalant across much of Europe.

This combination leads to the situation we have in the Sudan, where there is ethinic cleansing of Black Sudanese by Arab Sudanese. Nigeria, where Muslims are persecuting Christians.

This is not good.

Oh - and personally I think we (the UK) should have sorted Robert Mugabe out first - Zimbabwe is our problem .... as it was ours more recently, and more completely than Iraq was.

I also think that there would have been a more informed debate about the whole thing if more of our politicians had been aware that in relation to Iraq we had 'been there, done that' - and not just dismissed it in the way that they dismiss the whole of out colonial past

Hazel

[gil]

Zimbabwe? No oil, dear. Sorry. Next!

[NottyImp]

".... as it was ours more recently, and more completely than Iraq was."

True, but Iraq is our doing as well, as is the "Palestinian Problem" etc., etc.

We came, we meddled, we left.

[John Self]

We came, we meddled, we left.

...As in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, India/Pakistan... Is there any place ripe with ethnic tension that the British didn't have a hand in?

[amner]

East Timor. That's Portugal's fault isn't it?

[NottyImp]

Yes, I believe it is, and a fair portion of Africa's other problems can probably be laid at the door of the remaining European imperialist nations (France, Germany et al).

Oh, and lets not forget South Africa.

[skanky]

And especially Belgium (central mAfrica). However there is some blame now to be taken by a number of african leaders as well. Causes can be followed back as far as youy like, but the cahin of events can be broken. Of course, the Western assasination of Lumumba right when things were looking up didn't help.

Darfur has been left to go on as it did as no one in power in the west cared. That some people are saying stuff about it now shows that some public exposure can force the hand in democracies - though minimal amounts are done.

Of course, all of these genocidal events pale in comparison when you consider that (it's reported that) about 10,000 children in Africa alone die daily from easily preventable courses. The reasons? Drug companies' prices and concentration on "affluent problems" (e.g. infertility, balding, weight loss),some African governments and some Western governments are three main ones. All of that though comes within the economic system used. The easiest way to prevent those deaths is to pay those companies to give the drugs away (to effectively bribe them). At the moment very little of that goes on (despite the high profile news cases you see). Remember, whenever people talk about war and other disasters, one major cause of death in the (usually forgotten) aftermath is diarrhea.

Finally, when a UN mission is created, the Un firstly has to raise finance, then it uses that finance to try and secure troop levels. The reason why you see so many second and third world troops involved is that the funding is normally more per soldier pre day than they spend on their troops domestically (this may not be the case with more sophisticated armies). Some countries find it "beneficial" to supply troops for this reason - though there is some debate as to how disciplined they may be (rape and theft by UN troops is not that rare - and Western nations aren't immune, the private companies employed in the Balkans were known to run sex-slave rackets, including under-age girls).

These countries also often have to rely on equipment being leased to the UN by more advanced armies and these have to be paid for by the funding. So the UN has three obstacles, obtaining a consensous to get something done, obtaining funding, and obtaining troops and euipment within that funding budget. At each of these stages, the individual member nations tend not to be particularly helpful unless they perceive some benefit for themselves (even if that's obtaining experience and a "profit" on the use of their armed services).

[pandop]

True, but Iraq is our doing as well

I didn't say it wasn't, but more people have had their fingers in that pie since we were last there than is the case in some other places.

Re: Palestine. OK we were instrumental in creating the immediate geographic problem, we can't be blamed for the 4000 year old hatred!

Come to think of it, that is what Europe seemed to do in Africa, make countries that contained peoples who had hated each other for generations - and then leave them too it!

Hazel

[NottyImp]

"OK we were instrumental in creating the immediate geographic problem, we can't be blamed for the 4000 year old hatred!"

Indeed, but we took a country that had a relative history of religious tolerance and turned it into one that doesn't.

[pandop]

Iraq - yes

Palestine/Isreal - not so sure

Hazel

[pandop]

Interesting article from the Times suggesting that the Iraq war was no more illegal than the one in Kosovo:

Saddam's bloody cruelties made the Iraq war legal
William Rees-Mogg



TONY BLAIR has fought two wars, one as the ally of President Clinton, the other of President Bush. His first war was fought, with European support, against Serbia. The second, with European opposition, against Iraq. Both ended in victory. Both were fought against aggressive dictators. The first war had the sympathy of the Left; the second has faced the Left’s hostility. Was either of them lawful, and, if so, on what ground?



The Kosovo case was taken by Yugoslavia to the International Court of Justice in the Hague; Britain argued on a technical point that it fell outside the court’s jurisdiction which the court, with apparent relief, accepted. Saddam Hussein did not take the Iraq war to the Hague court, and is no longer free to do so, though he still claims to be the President of Iraq. It is unlikely that the Hague court will ever give a definitive ruling on the legality of either war, and if it did it would presumably be an advisory ruling, like that on Israel’s wall, and not binding.

The British Government has naturally argued that both wars were lawful, though Robin Cook, who was Foreign Secretary at the time of Kosovo, believes that the Kosovo war was lawful but the Iraq war was “probably unlawful”.

It is strange that the British Government thinks that both wars were lawful, but on radically different grounds. It is stranger that its legal justification for the second of the two wars is much more old-fashioned than the justification it gave for the first. In the international legal thinking of the Government, time seems to march backwards.

The Butler inquiry may review the process by which the Government decided that the Iraq war would be lawful, but we know the conclusion from the statement the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, made at the time to the House of Lords. The Government argued that United Nations Resolution 1441 had been breached by Iraq and that the allies were therefore entitled to invade, without a further resolution.

That argument seems to accept that the invasion of Iraq was lawful only if it was authorised by the UN. This had been a universal opinion from the time of the signing of the UN Charter down to the 1990s. The Government’s diplomacy before the Iraq invasion did not question this view of the law. It made the most strenuous efforts to secure a further UN resolution to authorise the war, but was blocked by the French.

On this argument the question of the legality of the Iraq war turns on a comparatively narrow point. It seemed to be agreed that only the UN could authorise war, except in self-defence. The critics of the war alleged that Resolution 1441 did not give the necessary UN authority, but required a further resolution. Supporters of the war maintained that 1441 was sufficient in itself. There is no consensus on this point, though the majority of international lawyers probably think a further resolution was needed. There is even a story that this had been the original view of the Attorney-General. Perhaps Lord Butler will tell us.

So far as the Government is concerned this reverts to the old doctrine of the Charter of the United Nations. The only question is whether the Iraq war does or does not meet the test of UN approval. However, Kosovo was argued on a different basis that might have also been applied to Iraq but was not.

There was no UN resolution to approve the Nato invasion of Kosovo and no prior UN approval could have been expected. Although France was in favour, two other permanent members of the Security Council, Russia and China, were opposed and they had veto powers. Quite another legal doctrine was advanced, one which had developed only recently but had considerable support among younger international lawyers of progressive views. This was the doctrine supported by activist opinion on the Left.

This doctrine greatly extended the right of nations to intervene in each other’s affairs. It was argued that oppressive regimes should no longer have a sovereign right to act as they wished without foreign intervention, even where there was no UN action. This doctrine was derived partly from the international conventions on genocide and torture. The whole world had been shocked by the UN’s failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda; that strengthened support for intervention.

The convention on torture gives a general right to extradite, arrest and try officials responsible for torture, even in cases where the torture has occurred entirely inside their jurisdictions. That largely does away with the legal doctrine of sovereign immunity. In the case of General Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator, the Court of Appeal had upheld his sovereign immunity, but the House of Lords overturned that judgment. It was willing to extradite him to Spain, a country with which he had little connection.

Nato may have lacked a UN resolution to authorise the invasion of Kosovo, but it had ample evidence, which was shown on television, of Albanian refugees being forced to flee. Nato also had experience of the massacres in Bosnia which the UN had not been able to prevent. The Nato governments argued that they could not stand by and allow the “ethnic cleansing” of Kosovo to continue. They had the support of their own electorate, particularly on the Left.

When the Kosovo war occurred I still accepted what might be called the Charter view that only the UN can authorise war. That has the great advantage that it defines narrowly the right to intervene in the affairs of foreign nations. If such a rule had been enforced the aggressive wars of the 1930s would have been clearly unlawful, a possibly basis for collective action.

However, I no longer believe that. Necessity is the most powerful of arguments. The world community can no longer stand by and watch genocide occur, either because it is happening inside a sovereign power, or because the UN will not act. Experience has brought me around to the Kosovo doctrine; that crimes against humanity must be stopped.

That settles for me the issue of the legality of the Iraq war. It was lawful to intervene because the Saddam’s regime had been genocidal, on a huge scale, and continued to be violently oppressive towards its own people, and potentially towards the neighbouring people of Kuwait. Saddam continued to practise torture as a normal instrument of maintaining his power.

If the intervention in Kosovo had been justified, then intervention in Iraq was equally justified, by the same legal and moral arguments. The moral failure belonged, and belongs, to those who would simply had left Saddam to continue to oppress his people. This justification does not depend on UN resolutions, one way or the other, but I recognise that the Government’s reliance on Resolution 1441 is arguable both ways. In this I accept the American view that the real purpose of invading Iraq was to change the regime, which has now been done.

I expect international law to continue to move in this direction. Certainly the human rights lawyers, who helped to draft the convention on torture, will continue to expand the area in which human rights are protected by law. Their energy is not exhausted. Global problems, social, political, medical and environmental, will continue to press for international legal solutions.

Yet at the same time nations are becoming more aware of the failures of international institutions. Whether one is discussing the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank, the World Health Organisation, the European Union or the UN, one hears ever rising criticisms.

Nations set up institutions to solve problems they cannot solve on their own. Then the institutions reach the point at which they become the problems. It is not in human nature to accept these institutional failures meekly. Kosovo and Iraq were both serious problems the UN could not solve; they were UN failures. That is the real justification in international law for the United States and Britain to have acted outside the UN.

Hazel

[skanky]

His whole argument is based on the premise that both interventions were done to aid the non-Serb Kosovans and the Iraqi people. A very dodgy one, who's supporting only evidence is the words of the people who went to war.

[pandop]

The point I was getting at, was that the only difference was UN approval! Ignoring the UN for the moment, you can argue that Kosovo was illegal as easily as you can for Iraq. Nothing is clear cut in these matters and the UN doesn't help - as it can be too easily manipulated by the likes of France.

Hazel

[skanky]

By the likes of France, the Uk, the US, Russia, China (e.g. the five permanent members of the security council who all act within their own selfish spheres). France's refusal to back the resolution calling for military action was in the form that it was in. France itself came up with a plan of escorted inspections with an increasing military presence at every extra step.

The US has vetoed more resoilutions than any other country, including one calling for countries to act within "International Law". So no, the UN doesn't help but it needs reformation rather than merely disbanding. This should be done along side the reformation of the idea of the nation state - which is long overdue.

Merely arguing on the basis of one or other military action or one or other international organisation (World Bank, IMF, etc.) is narrowing focus to what becomes a single issue again. It enables people to be hypocritcal about whether they support one military action or another.

Considering that the UN was created to maintain the prevalence of the five permanent members over the rest of the world, it is interesting how much those five have ignored and undermined it over the years and how these days certain people are calling for it to be disbanded.

[pandop]

So no, the UN doesn't help but it needs reformation rather than merely disbanding. This should be done along side the reformation of the idea of the nation state - which is long overdue.

Yup it desperately needs reforming - but how will that mesh with the proposed EU army? Will it work in the way NATO does - will France and Germany spend some decent money on their forces and stop expecting everyone else to?

Hazel

[skanky]

Well firstly my opinion is that all countries should spend a gret deal less on their armies, but:

UK military expenditure:
Amount: $42,836.5 million (2003)
Percentage of GDP: 2.4% (2003)

French military expenditure:
Amount: $45,238.1 million (2003)
Percentage of GDP: 2.6% (2003)

German military expenditure:
Amount: $35.063 billion (2003)
Percentage of GDP: 1.5% (2003)

Post WWII there has been a strong political reason for reduced German military expenditure and involvement.

NATO is an anachronism and really has no justification for continued existence (if it ever di have one). There have been attempts to create one for it, including the wholely inappropriate one of the Kosovo intervention.

How would a new UN (the first thing to do is remove the permanent security council) mesh with a European army? How does it mesh with any national army? What are the purposes of national armies?

[pandop]

NATO is an anachronism and really has no justification for continued existence (if it ever di have one). There have been attempts to create one for it, including the wholely inappropriate one of the Kosovo intervention.

How would a new UN (the first thing to do is remove the permanent security council) mesh with a European army? How does it mesh with any national army? What are the purposes of national armies?

National armies are there to defend the nation state and its interests in the first instance - hence their role in the Falklands. Our Navy is involved in the prevention of drug smuggling. This works with the UN, as individual nations can decide, or not, to assist the UN in the protection of others, prevention of war, stopping persecution etc

However, a EU army is another matter, as more countries would have to agree before action was taken, even with UN approval - these delays could be fatal (in fact the lack of action in Sudan is proving fatal)

Hazel

[skanky]

Yes it is, and that's because, despite the UN and other organisations trying to raise the issue at every opportuinity, individual nations weren't/aren't interested. Collective action could be very quickly made. It just hasn't been in the interests of the five permanent members. Persecution, occupation and war are pretty much continuously going on around the world at the moment (and have been for as far back as humans have been around). I don't see the presence, or not, of the UN has made much difference. That's not necessarily an argument against it, though. Do we merely concentrate of the people killed in conflict though? Do we ignore disease, for example?

The Falkland was an interesting one when compared to Diego Garcia and its island group.

What are a nation's "interests" that aren't part of a nation state? Should a nation be allowed to defend places that aren't in it's nation state? Does that supporting "friends" and neighbours count? Isn't that what escalates wars?

[Wavid]

Yet more madness from Donald Rumsfeld, here (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3685340.stm).

So the insurgents don't like the US and the current Iraqi government. And Rumsfeld reckons the best to way resolve this is to have elections which disenfranchise those same insurgents, so that the next Iraqi government will be just as lacking in legitimacy, as far as they are concerned, as the last one. Duuuuh.

Can anyone see where this is heading?

What with the continuing violence and the ordeal being suffered by Kenneth Bigley at the moment, I think it must be clear to everyone that this war was The Wrong Thing To Do.

[NottyImp]

Couldn't agree more. it may not be another Vietnam in military terms (although, of course it probably feels that way to Iraqi citizens), but it certainly looks that way from a political perspective.

I simply cannot see a happy conclusion to this within at least several years at the current rate on non-progress.

[John Self]

Extraordinary figures released today by The Lancet, which suggests (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3962969.stm)that the death toll in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003 is more like 100,000 than the 15,000 or so that the scrupulous Iraq Body Count (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3962969.stm) survey suggests.

[RC]

Lancet or no Lancet, the method by which the more recent figure was compiled doesn't seem very reliable to me.
However a large part of the discrepancy may hinge on who would fall into the category of 'civilian' nowadays in Iraq. In the US, civilians proudly bear arms - so if an Iraqi takes his gun to town is he still a civilian, defending his ground, or is he now a 'fighter'. As far as I'm concerned (need it be said?) there is no more justification for killing those people than the unarmed ones.

[Wavid]

Still, at least the UK's great leader is appreciated in the US (http://www.thankyoutony.com/index.html)!

[RC]

Could they not just have done it on the sly? - Surprise, Donny, you're under arrest.

Rumsfeld cancels trip after accusations


Friday 21 January 2005, 13:23 Makka Time, 10:23 GMT


The US defence secretary was accused of war crimes



US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld cancelled a planned visit to Germany after a US human rights organisation asked German authorities to prosecute him for war crimes, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) has learned.


Rumsfeld has informed the German government via the US embassy that he will not take part in the Munich Security Conference in February, conference head Horst Teltschik told dpa on Thursday.

The New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights filed a
complaint in December with the Federal German Prosecutor's Office against Rumsfeld accusing him of war crimes and torture in connection with detainee abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

Rumsfeld made it known immediately after the complaint was filed that he would not attend the Munich conference unless Germany quashed the legal action.

German legislation violations

The organisation alleges violations of German legislation, which
outlaws war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide independent of the place of crime or origin of the accused.

The prosecutor's office in Karlsruhe reportedly is examining the
roughly 170-page complaint to see whether an investigation is warranted.

The Centre for Constitutional Rights said it and four Iraqis allegedly tortured in US custody filed a complaint with German authorities against Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet and eight other senior military and civilian officials over abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq.

The organisation said it had turned to German prosecutors "as a court of last resort" because the US government "is unwilling to open an independent investigation" and had "refused to join the International Criminal Court".

[RC]

Dahr Jamail reporting on "election refugees":

Let me describe the scene on the ground here in "liberated" Iraq.

With the "elections" just three days away, people are terrified. Families are fleeing Baghdad much as they did prior to the invasion of the country. Seeking refuge from what everyone fears to be a massive onslaught of violence in the capital city, huge lines of cars are stacked up at checkpoints on the outer edges of the city.

Policemen and Iraqi soldiers are trying to convince people to stay in the city and vote.

Nobody is listening to them.

Whereas Baghdad is filled with Fallujah refugees, now villages and smaller cities on the outskirts of Baghdad are filling up with election refugees.

Link: http://www.antiwar.com/jamail/?articleid=4615

[Maggie]

A prediction from Maggie !

I hope I'm wrong ! I hope this isn't so !

After the election, full scale civil war in Iraq. Iraqi fighting Iraqi and all white faces will be "sitting ducks". God I hope I'm wrong !

This opinion is based on a simple lesson learned long ago on the school playground. Never get between two brothers who are fighting. The fight will be two against one. The brothers will win.

Ted Kennedy spoke yesterday urging us to pull out a major portion of our troops BEFORE the election. He stated his reasoning as being the fact that the Iraqi's would feel they were more in control if there weren't so many U.S. forces. I'm thinking that Mr. Kennedy learned something on the school playground also.

[RC]

Voter-turnout numbers trumpeted after Iraq's election were based on nothing much. The figure of 60% was sometimes described as a percentage of eligible voters, sometimes as a percentage of registered voters - as if this were not an important distinction. Either way, it was no more than a wild optimistic guess. Neither total population nor voting-age population is known, and the 'registered voters' number may be based on lists of people eligible to receive food aid. There is a sober discussion of this matter here:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=10007880 83

[Maggie]

Our swaggering Commander-in-chief has a talent for making the numbers look pretty much any way he wants them to!

As for the attitude about war and those who favor it :

This about sums it up:


http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/03/general.shoot/index.html


:cry:

Maggie

[RC]

Check out this NBC news report:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6947745/

Interesting that this is being shown by the network, until now it would have been denounced as unpatriotic. I'm wondering, does it signal the beginning of a propaganda policy adjustment, and what would that portend?

[RC]

Another curiousity, it speaks for itself:

Top Stories - Los Angeles Times


White House Turns Tables on Former American POWs

Tue Feb 15, 7:55 AM ET Top Stories - Los Angeles Times


By David G. Savage Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — The latest chapter in the legal history of torture is being written by American pilots who were beaten and abused by Iraqis during the 1991 Persian Gulf War (news - web sites). And it has taken a strange twist.

The Bush administration is fighting the former prisoners of war in court, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq (news - web sites) that a federal judge awarded them as compensation for their torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime.


The rationale: Today's Iraqis are good guys, and they need the money.


The case abounds with ironies. It pits the U.S. government squarely against its own war heroes and the Geneva Convention.


Many of the pilots were tortured in the same Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, where American soldiers abused Iraqis 15 months ago. Those Iraqi victims, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, deserve compensation from the United States.


But the American victims of Iraqi torturers are not entitled to similar payments from Iraq, the U.S. government says.


"