Baghdad Falls, redux

My post from a ten days ago on the liberation of Baghdad, and my ambivalent feelings about it, generated some very thoughtful posts and emails in response. I wanted to respond to one theme that kept appearing, which is the question of the moral right involved in overthrowing an obviously tyrannical regime (before you even get to the question of what you put up in its place.) A number of people responded to my concern about our routing around the U.N. with this consolation: what we did was ultimately the right thing to do, and so if we couldn't persuade the security council to support it, too bad for them.

The problem with this line of logic is that the world is filled with actions whose moral rectitude reasonable people disagree about. To roll out the usual examples: I happen to think that it's morally wrong to give a massive tax break to the richest 1% of the country at precisely the point at which the distribution of wealth is the most extreme it has been since the 1920s. Many, many people agree with me on this point. But quite a few disagree, and many of them have actually been elected to run the country. So odds are, they'll win out, at least in the short run.

And I'm okay with that. Because that's what democracies are all about: they're explicitly designed with the assumption that reasonable people will disagree about fundamental values. And so when one of those disagreements flares up, there's a process for dealing with it. The same goes for international conflicts. There is certainly a case -- even a progressive case -- for using military power to overthrow Hussein's regime. But there is also a case against it, and many people whose knowledge of the region and of history I greatly respect have been making that case. So you need a system to resolve these disputes, some kind of global democracy that recognizes conflicting values, and creates a process for managing them. Right now the UN is the closest thing we've got. Could it be reformed? Absolutely. It would certainly be nice if all the member states were democracies themselves. And I'm not so sure about the veto power. But unilateral action in global affairs is just as dangerous -- probably more so -- as unilateral action in national affairs. Just because something's morally right doesn't always make it the right thing to do.

Comments

[Peter]

Part of the problem with basing actions on moral grounds is that morals tend to be cultural artifacts. As an example, take a look at cultures where human sacrifice is an accepted medium of worship. To them, such a sacrifice is not only morally acceptable, but it's desirable. To us, it's morally repugnant, and thus "wrong".

Similarly, in today's day and age, suicide bombers are viewed through western eyes as inconceivably immoral, whereas to the fanatical groups that spawn such behavior, their actions are not only a moral solution, but one they see as morally mandated. To give your life to advance the cause is perhaps the most moral thing you could do in their eyes.

I don't think that anyone (except perhaps your average tyrannical egotistical dictator) would disagree that the things Saddam was doing were morally wrong. However, there is plenty of disagreement on whether our actions as a country were morally justified.

Obviously we see that they were. But the world is full of people who act on what they consider moral judgements that make no sense to us. (Abortion-doctor killings, Timothy McVeigh, the Taliban, the Crusades, the Salem Witch Trials, Kamikaze pilots, the Spanish Inquisition, etc.)

We are standing in the middle of our morals, and see everything through their lens. Without a group consensus of fellow human beings to provide a balanced picture, our own judgement is not necessarily sufficient.

Unfortunately, I believe the dischord in the UN was primarily due to politics, pushy uncaring diplomacy on our side and cautious uncertainty on theirs. But I believe it would have been better for our long term interests to have listened to and processed that insecurity rather than brashly and recklessly driving our country's personal agenda forward.

I don't know that the war was the right thing to do. I do know that at the most it is only HALF the right thing to do. Removing Saddam is clearly not the complete solution, but only part. The more important part is making sure some other egotistical tyrannical dictator doesn't take his place. Even though we "got Saddam", I would have to deem the effort a failure if he was merely replaced by another power-hungry tyrant, even if that tyrant were friendly to the United States.

My two cents, anyway.
Peter

[David Weisman]

The UN is actually pretty far from being a represaentative democracy. I think most of the problems with invading Iraq would have been just as serious even if most of the world and the UN were saying 'Go get em!'. Of course the blame could be more widely distributed if the ultimate result was horrifying, but I'm honestly not sure how UN approval would make it easier to build an Iraqi democracy where the Shia didn't make laws that it was OK to kill Sunni, and the Kurds didn't provoke Turkey to war.

I'm hoping we can still do these things, but I don't honestly see how UN approval or even global popular approval would help much.

[DebC]

No.

[Richard Bennett]

You're saying the Iraqi people chose Saddam to be their oppressor, that he represented their destiny and future, and that they fought America and Britain tooth and nail to keep him in power?

[DebC]

No.

I'm saying that they are a sovereign people. It is their right to independence, not our right to liberate them. It ought to be their process, their choice, their history, and their future.

[Richard Bennett]

People aren't sovereign, DebC, nations are, and the word you're looking for is "autonomous", as in "free from foreign control". Autonomy is one measure of a government's legitimacy, but it's not the only one. Another is consent of the governed, which Saddam only achieved by force, as you can clearly see in the reaction of the Iraqi people to his downfall. They're happy, even if you aren't. And another measure of a government's legitimacy is its relations with other countries, which in Saddam's case included a couple of invasions, one of which resulted in the UN telling him he had to disarm or lose power. He didn't disarm, and the rest is history.

Saddam came to power by overthrowing the previous government by force, and he lost power by force. That's how things work in Iraq.

The Iraqis seem pretty happy about the way things have worked out, DebC. Do you have information that suggests they wish we had left Saddam Hussein in power? And BTW, who authorized you to speak on behalf of the Iraqi people?

[Richard Bennett]

Actually, Peter, there are limits to the expression of cultural mores in today's world, which we recognize as Universal Human Rights, without which there would be no hope of ever constructing meaningful international institutions. And we aren't at a point right now where we have such institutions, but they certainly would be a nice thing, right after univeral electricity, water, food, medicine, education, and broadband. Maybe in the next hundred years we'll get there.

Today, the only democratic institutions that exist on this planet are the parliamentary bodies of a handful of democratic nations, so we'll just have to make do with their judgment until something better "emerges". It's best not to get so focused on a wished-for global democracy that we neglect the fact that it can only be built on the foundations provided by genuine national democracies.

At the end of the day, you have to decide what's more important to you: a global process that's not democratic, or a national one that is.

[Jave Lehmen]

"At the end of the day, you have to decide what's more important to you: a global process that's not democratic, or a national one that is."

And who exactly do you mean when you write "you"? The American who gets to vote for the leader he/she wants or someone living outside the US without any chance to influence if Bush gets elected or not? That's how we define dictature my friend. No better than Saddam, Khaddafi or Musharraf. Stay off the crackpipe before writing your next post dude.

[DebC]

The problem with the 'right thing to do' justification is that it is All About Us. How could the US stand idly by? We had an obligation.

What about the sovreignity of the Iragi people? What about their right to choose their destiny and future? What about working with them rather than bombing them to freedom? What about asking them what they wanted and offering our resources and our help to them to achieve it?

Of course this approach is 1) not All About Us 2) would take longer, possibly a very long time and 3) might result in a country that reflected Iraqi, middle eastern, Islamic values rather than ours.

[Richard Bennett]

What about the sovreignity of the Iragi people? What about their right to choose their destiny and future? What about working with them rather than bombing them to freedom? What about asking them what they wanted and offering our resources and our help to them to achieve it?

You're kidding, right?

[patrick payne]

I am all for setting up a democracy in Iraq, but we do need to make sure that we don't shove our western ideology down their throats while doing it, otherwise we will have bigger problems than Saddam on our hands.
Not to mention the fact that we will be forcing our ideology down their throats, which I would venture to say falls into the "morally wrong" category, but as was touched on earlier that is a comepletely different bag of worms.

[Richard Bennett]

The Ba'ath Party's ideology is Western, but it doesn't come from the rosier side of our legacy. It was founded in the 1930s as a Fascist Party, but managed to segue into Stalinism in the 50s.

Representative Democracy is a Western notion, and there's not really an Islamic alternative other than Mullah Oligarchy, which isn't going to fly. But just as the Third World has been able to digest Western ideas just as the Scientific Method, they don't typically have a big problem with Representative Democracy once the foundations have been laid: rule of law, univeral education, literacy, etc.

[back40]

Those who have mentioned that SBJ is reasoning by false analogy, likening the UN to a democratic nation, have a sound point. Likewise, the argument that the UN is the closest thing we have to a global democracy is extremely weak since the UN is very little like a global democracy... thankfully.

Democracy, in the sense of elected leaders, isn't a useful metric. Authoritarian tyrants get elected by deeply oppressed populations. There are many different types of government under the democracy umbrella and many of them fall far short of the common idea of a self governing population freely speaking its minds, choosing representation and giving informed consent.

Pretending that there is universal support for an action under any circumstances commits the primary gaffe of mistaking majoritarianism for universalism. The true test of democracy is how minority opinion is accommodated rather than how majority initiatives are pursued. Only democracies that give meaningful choices to diverse polities that respect the views of minorities, and willingly adapt policy in consideration of minority views, have moral legitimacy, can truly claim to represent a nation.

We Americans that didn't want war, a minority, were accommodated by the US in the way the war was conducted and the way the peace is being pursued. We didn't get what we wanted but we were not ignored, our concerns affected policy. British opponents of war, even those that were paid shills, also affected policy. European opponents, increasingly shown to be crassly self-interested and oblivious to moral arguments concerning Iraq, had more influence than seems reasonable. It's hard to imagine any other nation or group of nations doing a better job of dealing with this issue. The UN seems very, very low on that list of associations likely to do good work.

Living in a Star Trek fantasy, imagining some sort of world government, leads some people to believe that this shallow vision is possible and near at hand. This is false. Wallowing in such fantasies is a major reason why opposition to the war was so ineffective. No compelling case against the war was argued and no sensible alternative coalition was possible. More's the pity.

[nicolas]

It is remarquable that on such an issue, the opportunity or lack thereof to trigger the war, everyone points at the other's difference.
This doesn't help to understand the real debate around.

Everyone agrees that Hussein fall was a legitimate goal to pursue, as he was a terrible dictator.
Also, everyone agrees that it would clearly have been a better option if the security council had been backing it up.

So your position can be legitimately defended.
But, knowing that such a agreement was impossible, the opposite position can also be legitimately defended.

So the difference are not that big between rational pro and rational anti-war.
The real question is: why was there such a political discrepancies among the major worldplayers?
For Russia, they had a big interest to show there politically harmful potential
For France, as I see it, was the combination of:
.Being a hardliner on an sensitive arabic issue would have ruined their whole credit in this area, which is one of france big playground.
.It allowed to get closer to its all-pacifist ally, Germany.
.Finally, the fear of aggressive reaction from the important (10-15%) muslim population: the army had been given preventively civil power, and the former (left) prime minister Chevenement said an engagement of France in that war would trigger civil troubles.

Anyway, the real question is: what motivated the governments to do what they did.
Because on the rest, almost evryone agrees, even if the stances are blurring the case.

[Kevin Coughlin]

Before you continue to repeat the phrase "massive tax break to the richest 1% ", you may wish to look at the facts of the case and put percentages in their proper pespective.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/prtopincometable.html

Regards,
Kevin Coughlin

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