The end of Saddam was justification enough

Murdoc Online doesn’t believe I should be so mystified by the failure of Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush to state clearly that the end of Saddam Hussein’s tortures and murders is justification enough for the liberation of Iraq.

Murdoc says Blair and Bush put their chips on Saddam’s refusal to come clean on weapons of mass destruction and on the threat posed by WMDs, and so they are tied to that justification for the military action. And I agree with that to a point.

Murdoc also gives Bush and Blair credit for freeing Iraq, but only as a side-effect:

“We didn’t go to war with Nazi Germany to prevent the slaughter of the Jews. Even after that horror became public knowledge, we didn’t present it as a primary reason for war against Germany. We stopped the genocide, eventually. But we wouldn’t be right to say today that doing so was our reason for war in Europe.”

Nevertheless, ending the crimes against humanity by itself would have justified the war.

Murdoc continues:

“I believe that the humanitarian crisis in Iraq might have been justification for war by itself. And the issue was brought up by leaders of the coalition of the willing. I don’t think that Bush is wrong to point out the evils of Saddam against his own people, and I don't think he's wrong for claiming credit for stopping it. But the fact is that neither Bush nor Blair gave the Baathist atrocities as a primary reason for war.”

There’s where I disagree. Bush did make the atrocities a primary reason for removing Saddam. And he made freedom and democracy a central objective. The illegal weapons were only a last straw - important, but not everything.

In President Bush’s Sept. 12, 2002, speech to the United Nations, Resolution 688 was the first U.N. resolution he cited as evidence that Saddam Hussein was an international outlaw.

That was the resolution ordering Saddam to stop repressing the Iraqi people. And when the Security Council adopted U.N. Resolution 1441 on Nov. 8, 2002, that new resolution cited Resolution 688 as one of several U.N. orders Saddam had failed to comply with.

“Liberty for the Iraqi people is a great moral cause, and a great strategic goal,” Bush told the U.N. in his 2002 address. “The people of Iraq deserve it; the security of all nations requires it.” Then he went on to challenge the U.N. to enforce all its resolutions.

The point is, the removal of Saddam’s regime was justified on several grounds, including Saddam’s failure to stop repressing his people, his failure to comply with other terms of the 1991 cease-fire, and his failure to cooperate fully with U.N. weapons inspectors. And each of these failures is listed in Resolution 1441.

To me personally, freeing Iraq from a fascist dictatorship and giving that nation a chance for democracy were reasons enough to take Baghdad from the Baathists. But this wasn’t simply my personal preference. These reasons were written into international law, from the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 to Resolution 1441.

So I was not surprised at all one year ago when Bush labeled the invasion Operation Iraqi Freedom, rather than Operation Find-the-WMDs –or-Give-Iraq-Back-to-Saddam.

What perplexed me then and continues to puzzle me is how Prime Minister Tony Blair in particular has refused to argue that liberation is justified for the sake of liberation alone.

And despite what Bush told the United Nations in 2002, he, too, is hesitant now to restate that case that Saddam had a unique obligation to end his repression and that every Iraqi always had the right to be free.

Why the reluctance to reject dictatorship as a crime and to honor freedom as the highest cause? Why do neither Blair nor Bush remind us that repression forced the invasion and liberty justifies the liberation?

Frank Warner

Comments

[murdoc]

Excellent post. I still don't agree that Blair has given up the moral high ground, but I do agree with everything else you write.

I posted more about this here: http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/001106.html

Thanks for the link.