Tactical Grace
13-01-2005, 03:46
No need to furnish a reference, load up BBC, CNN, FOX, any international news website, and you can see that the search for Iraqi MWDs has been called off and will not be resumed.
The conclusion of several different teams of experts is that there are no weapons to be found. Nor indeed, were there any weapons to be found.
And let's face it, if there was even a single Scud-B loaded with stale (and most likely ineffective) nerve gas somewhere and the insurgents looted it in the post-invasion confusion, you would think they would have fired it at something by now. But no.
So, where does this leave us? Well, the reason for the war was pretty clear, to disarm Iraq of its MWDs. It is even written down in some official UN documents, which the US and UK have used as the underpinning of their legal justification for war. The latest UN SC Resolution was even written by them. But no victim, no weapon, no crime. (Incidentally, the gassing of the Kurds does not count as that was carried out while Iraq was the US/UK's ally against Iran, with US/UK-supplied chemical agents).
Now a lot of people will say something like this ... you know what, yes the war was technically illegal, but it freed the Iraqi people from a brutal dictatorship, doesn't matter if we supported it in the past, the important thing is that a good deed has been done now, and it outweighs arguments of legitimacy, which are a trivial diversion in comparison.
A reasonable argument, in theory. However, it does nothing for me, because I honestly do not give a damn about spreading democracy. If someone put it to me in those terms right at the start, should we invade Iraq to free its people, without mentioning the MWDs, I would have said, no. Not worth the greater trouble that would result, especially the grave implications for world energy security. (LOL, where is the "liberal" stance there?) So, changing the justification after the act, while satisfactory for some, does not satisfy me. If anything, I view it as an insult to my intelligence.
The war was, and remains, illegal under international law.
Accepting its illegality, the subsequent moral justification, I consider irrelevant.
So there's my position. It is clear now that MWDs were a concensus-building tool, a non-issue in reality. Given that history is being revised to place far greater emphasis on a moral case not actually made at the time, I feel it is important for people to reassess where they stand. For me, nothing that has happened since the war has changed anything.
The conclusion of several different teams of experts is that there are no weapons to be found. Nor indeed, were there any weapons to be found.
And let's face it, if there was even a single Scud-B loaded with stale (and most likely ineffective) nerve gas somewhere and the insurgents looted it in the post-invasion confusion, you would think they would have fired it at something by now. But no.
So, where does this leave us? Well, the reason for the war was pretty clear, to disarm Iraq of its MWDs. It is even written down in some official UN documents, which the US and UK have used as the underpinning of their legal justification for war. The latest UN SC Resolution was even written by them. But no victim, no weapon, no crime. (Incidentally, the gassing of the Kurds does not count as that was carried out while Iraq was the US/UK's ally against Iran, with US/UK-supplied chemical agents).
Now a lot of people will say something like this ... you know what, yes the war was technically illegal, but it freed the Iraqi people from a brutal dictatorship, doesn't matter if we supported it in the past, the important thing is that a good deed has been done now, and it outweighs arguments of legitimacy, which are a trivial diversion in comparison.
A reasonable argument, in theory. However, it does nothing for me, because I honestly do not give a damn about spreading democracy. If someone put it to me in those terms right at the start, should we invade Iraq to free its people, without mentioning the MWDs, I would have said, no. Not worth the greater trouble that would result, especially the grave implications for world energy security. (LOL, where is the "liberal" stance there?) So, changing the justification after the act, while satisfactory for some, does not satisfy me. If anything, I view it as an insult to my intelligence.
The war was, and remains, illegal under international law.
Accepting its illegality, the subsequent moral justification, I consider irrelevant.
So there's my position. It is clear now that MWDs were a concensus-building tool, a non-issue in reality. Given that history is being revised to place far greater emphasis on a moral case not actually made at the time, I feel it is important for people to reassess where they stand. For me, nothing that has happened since the war has changed anything.