To judge the morality of a war after it’s over, you have to look at it from two different perspectives — purposes and means. What did we intend to accomplish, and how well did we do at accomplishing it? Was our manner of waging war appropriately restrained?
From the first perspective — and probably the second, too — judgments about the war in Iraq can only be tentative for now. Secretary of State Colin Powell told Pope John Paul II the American government considers Iraq a just war, but it's his job to say that. The fact is, it's much too soon to be sure.
Even so, some interim judgments are possible. Here are a few.
As a military exercise, the war was a brilliant triumph for coalition arms. Is that a surprise? The U.S. has spent billions upon billions of dollars on high-tech military hardware for years. It takes nothing away from the bravery and skill of our military people to say the investment paid off in a smashing victory against an overmatched foe.
Credit the coalition, too, with trying to hold down civilian casualties as just war doctrine demands. Still, cruise missiles and the smart bombs sometimes malfunctioned or went astray through human error, and many innocent people—we may never know the true number—were killed or maimed.
That raises the question of whether, good intentions notwithstanding, the enormous destructiveness of sophisticated modern weaponry makes observing just war criteria like “proportionality” and “discrimination” a practical impossibility in a largescale conflict today.
As to the war's purposes — Saddam Hussein is gone, and the departure of this tyrant and his evil regime is a big plus. The danger is that Saddam's toppling might be used as precedent for more, reckless adventures in regime-toppling — the United States as Lone Ranger, one might say. It's a troubling prospect.
What about the famous weapons of mass destruction? None have been found — at least, not yet. Perhaps they will be. But if not, it will be hard not to escape concluding either that American intelligence was very bad or the American government played fast and loose with facts to get its way. Or possibly a bit of both.
Again — troubling, to say the least. As are the early signs that victory on the battlefield in Iraq may not have reduced the overall terrorist threat.
The war's political consequences are similarly worrisome so far. Creating an Arab democracy in Iraq was a noble goal, but it's something that, in the long run, Iraqis must do for themselves if it is to be done at all —and it is far from clear that will happen.
U.S. policymakers seem to have underestimated (for public consumption, at least) the obstacles to creating a democratic polity among fractious people sharply, even violently, divided along ethnic and religious lines, with a Shia Muslim majority that may be hankering for theocracy rather than liberal democracy.
One ugly scenario suggests Iraqi groups competing for power may shoot it out after the Americans and British leave. Having come as would-be liberators, will we be obliged to remain as occupiers to prevent a regionally destabilizing bloodbath?
Nevertheless, postwar Iraq is a work in progress. We are far from knowing how it will turn out. Triumphalism and prophecies of doom are equally premature at this stage. All that can be said with certainty of — and by — those of us who opposed the war on moral grounds before the fact is that military victory hasn't proved us wrong. What comes next is anybody's guess.
Russell Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, D.C. You can email him at RShaw10290@aol.com.
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