Just War Criteria | Iraq | Libya |
1) Lasting, grave, certain damage inflicted by the aggressor | Saddam had supported terrorists before, paid the families of Palestinian terrorists, and asked Osama bin Laden to settle al Qaeda in Iraq. In addition, he was openly anti-American, and had openly sought weapons of mass destruction. Also, he violated UN cease-fire agreements, and violated UN weapons agreements. If anyone was morally certain to be a potential deadly threat to the United States either directly (using WMD himself) or indirectly (selling WMD to terrorists), it was Saddam. | Ghaddafi is supposed to have personally ordered the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. Since then, Ghaddafi, or Libya, has done nothing to the United States or any of its Allies. The only thing Ghaddafi has done is use relentless force to curb rebels in his own country. |
2) Last resort: all other options have played themselves out | Saddam had flouted UN and cease-fire agreements for nearly 20 years. He turned the oil-for-food program into a way to line his own pockets, and sanctions did little to curb his policies. No-fly zones and cease-fire agreements resulted in nearly 200 American soldiers dead, since the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. | Libya paid a monetary compensation for Lockerbie in 2002. If the problem is Ghaddafi’s treatment of his own people, then the aggression is not against the US or any other nation. Supporting the rebels or even sending peace-keeping forces in early in the situation were never tried or considered. |
3) Serious prospects of success | Defeating Saddam was not the issue, it was when. The Iraqi military had no airforce of which to speak, and only its Republican Guard had any real loyalty to Saddam. The real question was how to establish peace and stability once Saddam was toppled. | The current situation in Libya is almost a full scale civil-war. Who is the enemy, though? Certainly Ghaddafi’s forces, but how are we to know the rebels are friendly to the United States? Will the rebels even defeat Ghaddafi with our help? |
4) Use of arms must not produce greater evils than that which are to be eliminated | Although the numbers differ depending on who is doing the counting, the aftermath of the invasion isn’t pretty. Say what you want about Saddam and his sons, at the very least, the country was stable. Now, inter-tribal and inter party conflict is on the rise. Christians are persecuted now more than ever. It is nearly impossible to judge how many people could potentially have died from a WMD Iraq sold to al Qaeda or used itself, but we do know that Saddam and his sons had no problem gassing their own countrymen, or torturing people for the fun of it. Perhaps, just perhaps, Saddam’s death total equals that of the post-war aftermath. I don’t know if we’ll ever know for certain, though. | Libya’s different tribes are held together by Ghaddafi. The rebels, much like the Afghan rebels against the Taliban, are allied only against Ghaddafi. Once he falls, what will happen? Hard to say. We could be looking at another Iraq. If Iraq and Egypt are bell-weathers, expect a sharia-based constitution with Islamist and jihadist leanings. Then expect open season on Christians, much like Egypt and Iraq. |
A couple of points about the Just War criteria.
1) Lasting, grave, certain damage: The Twin Towers are gone, and over 3000 Americans are dead...that is lasting, grave damage. We are morally certain al Qaeda committed this act (moral certitude is perhaps the best we can get in today's day and age, especially with no one--or everyone--claiming responsibility for certain things). Just like a moral certainty is sufficient for who committed the acts, likewise a moral certainty that a grave act of aggression will occur is sufficient. In this case, one could argue that the Iraq War met this criteria. I don't think there is any case in which active engagement, that is actively and directly causing injury or death to people who did us no harm, can meet this criteria. Advantage Iraq.
2) Last resort: People use the phrase "in the run up to the Iraq War", as if that period was only a few weeks long. It goes back much, much longer than that; it goes back to the cease-fire agreement between Iraq and NATO in 1992. Since that ceasefire agreement and the re-outbreak of hostilities in 2003, about 200 American servicemen lost their lives enforcing the no-fly zone over parts of Iraq, as Saddam violated the cease-fire agreement. Iraq faced numerous sanctions, and ongoing weapons inspections, which it was famously secretive about. In addition, Saddam was able to twist a humanitarian oil-for-food program into a corrupt cash-grab between French and Russian officials and Saddam. In the end, intelligence gathered by the US (both Democratic and Republican administrations) and Great Britain showed the Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction (it should be noted that while an advanced nuclear program was never found, UN-banned WMD programs like the SCUD missile were found, as well as evidence of chemical weapons depots). In addition, Saddam never curbed his pro-terrorist rhetoric. Contrast that with Libya and Gaddafi. After 1988's Lockerbie bombing, Gaddafi all but fell of the US foreign policy map. The only news we heard about him was him abandoning his nuclear program after Iraq was invaded. Again, one could conceivably argue that all other methods were attempted to no avail with Iraq. Nothing else but humming and hawing was done in regards to Gaddafi's treatment of his own people, not Americans or Europeans did a single thing to help them. Advantage Iraq.
3) Serious prospects of success: Getting rid of Saddam was foregone conclusion. After the Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991, the Iraqi air-force was all but eliminated. In addition, the only loyal troops were Saddam's Republican Guard, the rest were drafted citizens. Iraqi equipment wasn't much newer than what they used during the Gulf War, whereas the US and its allies were using state-of-the-art military equipment. In that regard, success against Saddam's Iraq was never really in doubt. In this case, the Iraq War meets this criteria, hands down. However, if one expands this criteria to mean the post-war Iraq, there was a reason why the Secretary of State James Baker urged George H.W. Bush NOT to push on to Baghdad: a post-Saddam Iraq would be unstable and unpredictable. The current conflict with Libya is nothing like the Iraq War at all. We are not invading a country, we are bombing strategic installations to stop Gaddafi's forces from pounding the rebels (at least that is what a no-fly-zone is supposed to be). We are assuming that with the Libyan air-force out of the picture, the rebels will defeat Gaddafi. Everyone knew Saddam would topple because he was facing the might of the US and its allies. The same cannot be said of the Libyan situation. Advantage Iraq.
4) Use of arms must not produce greater evils than that which are to be eliminated: James Baker knew a few things about the Iraq and the Middle East that apparently George W Bush and Dick Cheney forgot: Saddam stabilized Iraq and politics in the Middle East. While Saddam was not a benevolent dictator, it was clear that his malevolence was for his opponents, Sunni, Shiite, Kurd, or Christian. He had all but eliminated partisan conflict (except the Kurds) and at the least the Christian community in Iraq was without hostility. Since the overthrow of Saddam's regime, partisan conflict has resumed. The body count of the post-Saddam Iraq turmoil is hard to get, and thus it will be nearly impossible to compare the carnage of Saddam's despotism with the aftermath of his overthrow. Still, it is hard to say that the carnage of a post-Saddam Iraq would equal an Iraqi sponsored and facilitated terror attack against the US. However, none of this could be known for certain by the Bush Administration or the generals planning the entire operation. Who could have foreseen the regular infantry deserting their posts en masse and then resurfacing as militant "terrorists" trying to make a buck (these same infantrymen were targeted by the US command to be trained as a police force and national guard type force to keep the peace)? Who could have anticipated the ineptitude of the American ambassadors and leaders of the rebuilding effort? I don't think we can blame Bush for these failing when he made the decision to go to war (note, however, that when things were going really bad in the aftermath, he switched personnel and switch strategies, so at least he tried). On the contrary, President Obama has history as his guide. He's seen what happened when two despots in Arab/Muslim countries are deposed (Saddam in Iraq and Mubarak in Egypt): partisan strife, increase in militant, anti-American sentiments, support for al Qaeda, etc. His decision to participate in the round-about removal of another despot of an Arab/Muslim nation means that his guilt is greater than Bush's. Advantage Iraq...kind of.
Be aware, that I am not making a moral judgement on Iraq one way of the other. The arguments for Iraq not being a Just War are compelling, as are the arguments for Iraq being a Just War are compelling. All I am saying is that while one could legitimately and rationally make the case for Iraq to be a Just War, I don't think that is possible with Libya.
UPDATE:
It appears that the USCCB has decided that while Iraq was not a good thing and did not support it, this Libyan "kinetic military action", to them, "seems to meet the criteria of a just war". They simply have "reservations" concerning it, while they criticized outright the war in Iraq. I mean, Iraq had been actively and overtly harming Americans since the end of hostilities in 1991, and even supported Al Qaeda with money (and who knows what else). In addition, we clearly stated at the beginning, that our mission's intent was the overthrow of Saddam ("Operation Iraqi Freedom"). We don't even know what the point of this excursion is ("Operation Odyssey Dawn"), and it seems to change every day ( and now it appears we want to arm the rebels, which have numbers of Al Qaeda operatives in them. Smart.), and yet they only have reservations?
The Bishops derided Bush's decision to invade Iraq as "unilateral" (even then-Cardinal Ratzinger had the same concern), despite the wide spread support of his decision among the international community (49 nations actively supporting the war effort). France and Russia both critics of the move, it was found out later, had backroom deals with Saddam in the oil-for-food program scandal. Obama gets a pass because the UN votes for involvement (with Germany and Russia, among others, abstaining), however he actually has less international support than Bush did. Still, Bush acted unilaterally, while Obama is acting justly.
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