Moral Inventory of the Iraq War

Libertarians believe that governments should be judged by the same principles as individuals. So armed with libertarian law, we can evaluated whether the Iraq action was just. The first thing to establish is who was the aggressor. This was obviously the U.S.A., since Iraq neither desired war, nor had the ability to wage a successful war against the U. S.A. To many, that would be the end of the case: BUSH is GUILTY; however, we may consider the remote possibility that this was a sort of offensive defense. This is shaky legal territory and can only be allowed if there is overwhelming evidence that an attack is imminent. Bush argued this to be the case, however, we have since found out that he employed others (Chalabi, Cheney) to fabricate and exaggerate the evidence. This is pure sign of guilt and would lead to the immediate verdict of guilty for any common criminal.

Crime

Aggression against a disarmed and defenseless nation that was not planning to attack.

Motive

Chalabi obviously had motive to lie about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, because he believed that he would be rewarded by being appointed as head of Iraq. Cheney obviously had a financial motive via Haliburton. Bush had a power motive: to place a permanent military base in the middle east and expand his empire of puppet regimes into the region.


While any action will have consequences that may be generally agreed to be both good and bad, what defines the morality of a war is the true reason for its occurring, which rarely coincides with the stated reasons of the aggressor. (Many would say that the aggressor is always at fault, but I will be open to the possibility that if one truly believed that such aggression would result in consequences that are overwhelmingly morally positive, then perhaps such aggression could be justified. This is a broader brush of acceptability than that imposed by international law (as defined by the United Nations), which holds that the only legitimate reason for aggression is because of an imminent and serious threat to one's national security: preemptive defense. )

Whenever a crime is committed, one must look at the intentions of the criminal to see whether the crime was intended or whether there was a perceived mitigating circumstance. In the Iraq war, it is true that many Iraqis from a corrupt Shiite-Christian regime that we had helped to put in power. It is also true that many rejoiced their liberation shortly afterward. However, to determine whether this was a just war, we must ask whether these results were in fact the motives of the Bush administration or whether they were politically-convenient collateral goodness.

Intention

Short of being able to analyze the neurons in George Bush II's brain, we can never be 100% sure of his real or major reason for war, but we can look at actions to help us to discern what was the probable reason.

Multiple Choice. Which of these is the most credible reason for George Bush to attack Iraq:

1. W wanted to help the poor Iraqi's to be free from Saddam Hussein and build a free and democratic nation.
2. W was helping his fellow Israelis, against whom Saddam indirectly funded terrorism by funding Palestinian "charities".
3. Naiive little W actually believed (despite any credible evidence) that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States security, despite no one outside of his hand-picked informants having advised him of that and several intelligence experts insisting that the evidence was false.
4. W wanted to gain control of the flow of oil in the region and award contracts to his oil buddies, including Dick Cheney.
5. W was using the military to settle a personal score with Saddam for sending an assassin to kill his father.

(While a majority may have welcomed freedom from Saddam immediately following the war, a majority of Iraqis do not welcome either the United States or the UN as foreign occupiers nor are they ignorant about the oil and "reconstruction" contracts that the Bush administration has rewarded his buddies. Of course, shortly after the U.S. leaves, the lackey regime that we instate will be assassinated and another regime" will come into power that will make Saddam, who being a rational secular dictator, never dreamed of attacking the US, despite our having bombed him into submission during the first Gulf War, look like a saint.)