The Redhunter

None other than yours truly submitted his week's Homespun Bloggers symposium question , so if you don't like it you'll know who to blame.

Do you think that the elections in Iraq vindicated President Bush's decision to invade Iraq?

I asked this question because I've heard it said by various commentators that the success of the elections validated the President's decision to invade Iraq.

It is tempting to just answer "Hell Yes!" and leave it at that. My support for the invasion is well known to readers of this blog. And given that the insurgency has been harder than expected to put down, and with all of the violence that preceded it, that it went off so well is good news indeed.

Also, having had to put up with various groups of naysayers who are always predicting gloom and doom, as well as election defeat for George W Bush, it is tempting to throw it in their faces and say "See what happened?!?!" They've called the president a liar, and without a scintilla of evidence to back up their claims, that the temptation to use this as a partisan tool is almost overwhelming. Almost.

And further, it was a victory for the Iraqi people, and indeed for oppressed people everywhere. They have taken their first step towards establishing a democracy. The utter failure of the terrorists to stop the election is a huge victory for the "good guys." It is eminently possible that this will be the catalyst that will spread democracy throughout the Middle East. That we still have a hard road ahead is no reason not to feel joyous today. The naysayers warn us that Iraq could turn into an Iranian-style theocracy; I respond to them that it is at least equally possible that a new Iraq could force Iran to reform itself.

But tempting as it is, this does not really answer the question. Let's break things down.

Ex Post Facto?

"The recent elections justify President Bush's decision to invade Iraq"

In order to determine of this is correct, we need to ask some questions;

1. Was turning Iraq into a democracy part of the President's original justification for war?
2. If not, is it acceptable to justify a war ex post facto?
3. If yes, then were the elections successful?

Wikopedia offers two main justifications used by the Bush Administration:

1. Weapons of Mass Destruction
2. Links to Terrorism

As for WMD, the primary justification for the war was that Saddam Hussein had not complied with Security Council resolutions requiring him to destroy his stockpiles of WMD. Stockpiles, mind you, that he admitted to having after the Gulf War. It was believed by most of the world's intelligence services that he not only maintained some sort of production capacity but had WMD stockpiles ready for use. That the intelligence has been shown to be incorrect does not invalidate the justification, since it has also been shown that the war planners were acting in good faith.

Regarding terrorism, while some of the intelligence was faulty (what we got from Chalabi), there were indeed "links", even if no "operational relationship". A better question is whether we acted in good faith. The evidence I have is that we did.

In addition, before the war Secretary Rumsfeld offered several more justifications:

• end the Saddam Hussein government
• help Iraq's transition to democratic self-rule
• find and eliminate weapons of mass destruction, weapons programs, and terrorists
• collect intelligence on networks of weapons of mass destruction and terrorists
• end sanctions and to deliver humanitarian support (According to Madeline Albright, half a million Iraqi children had died because of sanctions.)
• secure Iraq's oil fields and resources

In addition, there is the Clinton-era Iraq Liberation Act, which states as it's purpose (Sense of the Congress)

It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.

A whole host of justifications are listed, from the attempt to assassinate ex-President George H W Bush to attempts to thwart United Nations inspectors.

Answer to Question 1: Yes, spreading democracy was a stated justification for the war. Not the primary justification, but a justification.

Answer to Question 2: (updated 02/05/05) One may not justify a war with reasons that are made after the war has begun. To do so is to violate the rules of a Just War. Since we did not change our objectives during the war, we did not violate the rule against ex post facto justifications.

However, while not applicable in this case, the issue does deserve further exploration.

Let's quickly examine three wars; the Korean War, the Gulf War, and the American Civil War.

Our original justification for involvement in the Korean War was to save South Korea from northern aggression. We achieved this within eight months, after the successful landings at Inchon and push north from Pusan. In the face of the collapse of the North Korean army, we decided to expand our objectives to include reunification of the penninsula. By doing this we violated the rules of a Just War.

Our stated objectives during the Gulf War was 1) to free Kuwait from Iraqi opposition , and 2) to eliminate most or all of Saddam Hussein's WMD programs. At the end of the "100 hour ground war" we had achieved the former and were well on the way to achieving the latter (or so we believed). For us to have expanded our objectives to include invasion of Iraq and toppling of the regime would have put us in violation of the rules of a Just War. That it may seem today that this would have been the "common sense" thing to do does not change this conclusion at all. If we had wished to effect regime change we would have needed to state this as an objective from the start.

The justifications for the Civil War are complicated and seemed to vary as the war progressed. I am no expert on this aspect of the war and have asked another blogger to add his thoughts as to whether Lincoln changed his justification for the war as it progressed.

From what I understand, the North's original justification for fighting was simply to preserve the Union. As the war progressed, the elimination of slavery was stated as a "sort of" additional objective, but it never replaced the original one. Lincoln never pushed the anti-slavery aspect hard. The Emanciplation Proclamation, for example, only freed slaves in areas already occupied by Northern forces. The paradox is that although the cause of the war was the issue of slavery, neither side used it as their primary purpose for fighting. The South claimed "states rights."

Answer to Question 3: The answer to this question depends on your criteria. My answer is that the elections were successful given the current environment in Iraq. Some have set their standards higher, saying, for example, that unless Sunni Arabs are voting in large numbers the new government will not be legitimate. This misses the point; these elections were not meant to be the end-all-to-be-all. They were meant to be a start. And as such, they succeeded. We would do well to recall that until the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was passed fully 50% of the American population was legally barred from voting for president.

More tests will come in the future, and we're not out of the woods yet. But as for now we may have turned the corner in this war.

Yes, the elections were successful.

Conclusion

The elections do help to justify the invasion. They are not the justification, but then they were never meant to be. We would not have invaded if the goal was simply to spread democracy. WMD were and are a valid justification, even though no weapons were found. The reason is that we did have reasonable cause to believe that such weapons existed.

Update

Alert reader Zach, author of the Mad Poets Anonymous blog, caught a serious typo in my original post: instead of copying from Wikopedia the reasons Rumsfeld gave in support of the war, I copied the reasons his opponents gave. There is a big difference, of course. According to Wikopedia, opponents of the war said that it was fought primarily:

• to maintain the wartime popularity that the President enjoyed due to his response to the September 11 attacks (in contrast to his father whose wartime popularity faded when the electorate began to focus on the economy)
• to channel money to defense and construction interests
• to ensure the US had military control over the region's oil as a lever to control other countries that depend on it
• to assure that the revenue from Iraqi oil would go primarily to American interests
• to lower the price of oil for American consumers

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