A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq

by Thomas Cushman (Editor)

Current debate over the motives, ideological justifications, and outcomes of the war with Iraq have been strident and polarizing. "A Matter of Principle "is the first volume gathering critical voices from around the world to offer an alternative perspective on the prevailing pro-war and anti-war positions. The contribu-tors-political figures, public intellectuals, scholars, church leaders, and activists-represent the most powerful views of liberal internationalism. Offering alternative positions that challenge the status quo of both the left and the right, these essays claim that, in spite of the inconsistent justifications provided by the United States and its allies and the conflict-ridden process of social reconstruction, the war in Iraq has been morally justifiable on the grounds that Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant, a flagrant violator of human rights, a force of global instability and terror, and a threat to world peace. The authors discuss the limitations of the current system of global governance, which tolerates gross violations of human rights and which has failed to prevent genocide in places such as Bosnia and Rwanda. They also underscore the need for reform in international institutions and international law. At the same time, these essays do not necessarily attempt to apologize for the mistakes, errors, and deceptions in the way the Bush administration has handled the war. Disputing the idea that the only true liberal position on the war is to be against it, this volume charts an invaluable third course, a path determined by a strong liberal commitment to human rights, solidarity with the oppressed, and a firm stand against fascism, totalitarianism, and tyranny.

Genres: Politics, History, Middle East, Essays, War

384 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Thomas Cushman is a professor of sociology at Wellesley College and the founder and editor in chief of the Journal of Human Rights. He is the author of numerous books and articles on cultural dissidence in Russia, the war in Bosnia and Hercegovina, genocide and the sociology of intellectuals and war. He was a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellow for 2002, a fellow of the Salzburg Seminar academic core session on International Law and Human Rights, chaired by Lloyd Cutler and Richard Goldstone, and a former visiting scholar at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University; he is currently a faculty associate at the Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University.

Reviews

[Muhammad Ahmad · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book would be comical if the subject matter weren't so tragic. Here is a gaggle of neocons and liberal hawks, championing George W. Bush as a humanitarian crusader who is going to bomb all evil out of the world. For a bunch of self-styled 'contrarians' the book ends with a whole section on Tony Blair, celebrating his 'liberal statesmanship'. By this token, you could also describe Manchu royal eunuchs, and other courtesans as dissidents.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 3 out of 5]

The ideas in this book deserve to be taken seriously, even if they aren't right. Part of the reason for this is the type of people who are in this book: Christopher Hitchens, former Solidarity activist Adam Michnik, British MP's, philosophers, and activists. Many of these people have seen or been victims of the crimes of governments like SH's, and they at least deserve a listen if they're arguing for the invasion of Iraq. This is a compendium of prowar liberal/humanitarian arguments favoring war with Iraq. It's unevenly edited, and many of the essays are of mediocre quality. But if you take the best of the essays, plus the excellent Tony Blair speeches at the end, the net effect is a set of compelling ideas. Those who us who argued (and continue to argue) that we shouldn't have invaded Iraq (like me) need to respond to this book in a serious way, unlike some goodreads reviewers.

The liberal hawks in this book justify the war on a number of grounds: it's the right thing to do regarding SH's crimes and tyranny, it will give the Iraqi people a chance at being democratic, it will make international law more relevant and respected, responsibility to protect against/punish genocide, a chance to shake up a stagnant region, human rights, and self-defense. Interestingly enough, they don't much like that Bush defended the war on WMD/rogue state/terrorism grounds. Many of them were skeptical of those claims and didn't like that the US was finally dealing with SH seriously only because it was threatened, not because he was a horrible criminal. In other words, these people are anti Bush but pro-Iraq War. These writers do a good job bolstering this moral case, and they thoroughly demonstrate the idiocy of some popular antiwar arguments. For example, many antiwar folks argued that America was hypocritical and inconsistent in opposing Saddam in 2003 because we had supported him back in the 80's. The logical extension of this claim is that the US should persist in being wrong for the sake of consistency rather than do something . Whatever your position on the Iraq War is, you should agree that this is weak sauce. The usefulness of this book is that it forces skeptics of the war to be sharp in their argumentation.

So here goes: sadly for these writers, morality cannot be the only vector by which we make foreign policy, especially in regards to the use of force. Very few of these writers even discuss the practicality of invading another country and rebuilding it in the face of concerted and violent opposition on multiple fronts. Like the Bush administration, they assume that democracy will take root in a different culture if given a chance and that the cost/duration will be reasonable. I found myself writing "just wait" to many of the optimistic claims of these writers (most of the book was written in 2004). It would be really interesting to see these writers' opinions of the war once Iraq went totally to hell from 2006-2008. You can see much of this uncertainty in some of their writings. To sum up, just because something is morally justifiable doesn't mean it should be done, and the morality of an act doesn't make it okay to do it incompetently and create the conditions for just as much suffering to occur as under Saddam. This collection's deepest flaw is separating the moral from the practical too completely.

This collection also falls into the false dichotomy that to be antiwar was to be pro-Saddam. The policy of containment was the third option, designed to limit his ability to create WMD and threaten the region. To some extent, it also sought to undermine him from within, especially through coup attempts. One could oppose the war and still seek a policy that punishes, weakens, and maybe topples SH in the long run. It's a testament to the lack of good strategic and military thinking in this book that containment was basically ignored.

I will say this in praise of this volume: the takedowns of leftist opponents of the war were excellent. They showed that the left had little coherent criticism to offer other than cultural relativism, an apathy to events in Iraq, and reflexive anti-Americanism. The left generally romanticized anyone who opposed American power and thereby totally discounted how awful SH really was. They created false moral equivalencies between the US and Iraq. They pursued conspiratorial thinking, seeing the conflict as a war for oil or 9/11 as an inside job. Lastly, they ironically failed to show solidarity for the Iraqi people, treating Saddam's continuation in power as the best outcome for them. Indeed, the incoherence, radicalism, and moral obtuseness of the left during the lead-up to the Iraq War probably helped the Bush administration make their case seem more superior. In addition, countries like France and Russia offered basically no coherent alternative to invasion as the battled with the American from 2002-2003, another crucial failing.

This is a good book for reminding us that these issues are incredibly complicated and that good people (indeed, people who share many of my beliefs) can come to very different conclusions about what's right to do. It puts war skeptics on the spot and demands that they respond to the moral case. No one can say the Iraq War was the wrong thing to do without confronting their ideas first.

[Steve · Rating 1 out of 5]

Choose your wars carefully. An international group from the UN was investigating the claims of WMDs. An international group should make the decision that regime change was needed.

The world was made a much worse place with the unjustifiable decision to go to war in Iraq.

Bad ideas need to be recognized and refuted. Good arguments can be made for bad ideas. But still bad ideas and bad decisions should not be followed.

[Hayden · Rating 4 out of 5]

To accept the humanitarian case for the war in Iraq appears to be a risky step for any modern liberal. Yet Iraq represents a complex case, in which, while the official reasoning and justifications were more than a little mangled, an independent case for invading based upon the regime's horrors existed. Indeed it seems that distrust of allied motives managed to swamp any concern for the conditions best for Iraqis - the possibility that Iraqi-American interests could coincide appeared a horrible one for many to entertain. For certain anti-war protestors, presuming that Iraq's population were content with the status quo, without evidence, appeared disingenuous - it's hard to shake the notion that their opposition was narcissistic and idealistic; more about maintaining opposition to the ideological enemies they saw in Bush and co., about the selfish and cowardly assumption in which to refrain from invading was to keep clean hands, whilst to take a controversial decision in deposing tyranny was to further darken the stain of imperial guilt. For Westerners to place personal purity above improving the conditions of less fortunate souls appears self-indulgent and hypocritical; the antithesis of traditional liberal values, in which totalitarianism can find excuse neither by relativism nor national sovereignty.
In saying this, I'm not approving the blunders committed in the process of the invasion. The death toll left a lot to be desired, but forced regime change was never going to be bloodless - for consequentialists, the calculus of casualties v prospective further suffering under Saddam is an interesting and perhaps irresolvable one. But this book collates instead articles occupied with the virtue of liberating an oppressed Iraqi people.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

A clearly unjustified position in retrospect, one some were too short-sighted or ignorant to see.