Kant and Mill in Baghdad

The American Prospect ^ | Issue Date: 6.1.03 | John B. Judis

[Jolly Rodgers]

Kant and Mill in Baghdad

By John B. Judis
Issue Date: 6.1.03

In justifying their war against Iraq, the Bush administration and its supporters based their case primarily on the threat to the United States posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and ties with al-Qaeda. But to date, American and British troops have found no signs of a chemical-, biological- or, more importantly, a nuclear-weapons program and have uncovered only low-level ties to al-Qaeda. And even if they subsequently find a few canisters of mustard gas, or railway tickets from Kandahar to Baghdad, it would hardly confirm America's claims that Saddam Hussein's regime posed a threat to the United States. On the contrary, the absence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), in particular nuclear weapons, combined with the ease with which the United States rolled over the Iraqi army, strengthens the claims of administration critics that Hussein's regime could have been contained without going to war.

It also looks increasingly implausible that the Bush administration simply made an error of judgment in pressing its case against Iraq. Prior to the war, the United States failed to produce compelling evidence of Iraqi WMD or ties to al-Qaeda. According to United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix, the evidence that the United States gave him of Iraq's WMD was "pretty pathetic." The Pentagon was also prepared for a short and easy war. That suggests that by the time of the invasion, the Bush administration was primarily concerned with advancing a geopolitical strategy in the region rather than defending Americans against future attack. In all likelihood, George W. Bush lied to the public about the dangers posed by Iraq.

Indeed, since the war's end, the administration and its supporters have changed their argument for the invasion. They now contend that even if the United States has not eliminated a looming WMD threat, it has eliminated a heinous regime. Wrote New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, "Bush doesn't owe the world any explanation for missing chemical weapons (even if it turns out that the White House hyped this issue). It is clear that in ending Saddam's tyranny, a huge human engine for mass destruction has been broken." But Friedman and other supporters gloss over the thorny moral issues raised by the invasion. Can the morality of our actions -- whether as individuals or nations -- be judged simply by the eventual results? Isn't this an instance of the ends justifying the means?

The question of whether the war was justified can best be understood as a conflict between the moral philosophies of Immanuel Kant and those of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and the utilitarians. Kant argued that in order to be morally justifiable, actions had to be universalizable -- susceptible to becoming universal laws applicable to any individuals. If it is right for A to steal from B, then it will have to be right for B to steal from A, or C from D. Kant's categorical imperative assumes a moral universe of equal beings, all of whom would be subject to the same rights and prohibitions. In making moral choices, Kant contended, human beings treat one another as "ends in themselves." By contrast, the utilitarians, in their most basic form, argued that moral decisions must be judged according to whether they maximize happiness.

Kant and the utilitarians were not trying to say what should be moral but to describe the underlying logic by which we justify our actions. In this respect, each philosophy had its limitations. For instance, a utilitarian could conceivably justify enslaving another human being if it turned out to contribute to the overall sum of human happiness. A Kantian might justify pacifism as universalizable even when his country was threatened with extinction. Ultimately the two principles of moral decision making act as limits on each other: Both must be present in some form for an action to be morally justified. Decisions must respect rights, and they must not make things intolerably worse.

Kant's and the utilitarians' principles were designed to explain how individuals, not nations, justify their actions. But they also helped to explain, and to influence, how nations legitimated international actions. In the 19th century, advanced capitalist countries justified their imperial conquests on utilitarian grounds, claiming to be bringing civilization and prosperity to the backward countries of Asia and Africa. (Karl Marx would credit bourgeois imperialism with drawing "even the most barbarous nations into civilization.") But the rise of modern imperialism, and of rivalries between the imperial powers, led to violent nationalist rebellions and two world wars in which millions perished. These sad events prompted a fundamental reappraisal of international morality.

After World War II -- in the Nuremberg trials and the formation of the United Nations -- the world's countries embraced a Kantian approach to international relations based upon the recognition of nations as equal sovereign persons (regardless of their size or stage of economic development) with inalienable rights. The UN Charter forbade the "threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state" except if "an armed attack occurs." Similarly, the Nuremberg tribunal stated that "to initiate a war of aggression … is the supreme international crime." Utilitarianism was present, too, but in a supporting role: the UN charter assumed that by granting them inalienable rights, the world's nations would help remove a major cause of war.

In the decades after World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to violate these principles in Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and Southeast Asia -- but in the name of defending themselves against one another. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, however, the world seemed ripe for the application of Kantian principles to international relations. UN support for the Gulf War was a textbook case: The world's nations were coming to the defense of a small nation invaded and taken over by a larger, more powerful neighbor. NATO intervention in the Balkans, and particularly in Kosovo, was open to debate but could be justified as the defense of a nation and a people against Serbian aggression without aiming to overthrow and replace the Serbian regime itself. The U.S. and British protection of the Kurds was justifiable along similar lines. And the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan after September 11 was an act of national self-defense.

But the Bush administration, perhaps emboldened by its success in Afghanistan, proceeded to defy the post-World War II principles of international law. Last June, Bush announced a new doctrine of preemptive (really preventive) war against merely potential adversaries. That was meant to justify an invasion of Iraq. Even if this doctrine is seen as a legitimate nuclear-age extension of self-defense, however, the invasion does not seem justified. The United States would have had to demonstrate that the Iraqis had not merely a few chemical weapons (which had failed to deter Iran in the 1980s war) but a burgeoning nuclear program. But no such programs came to light during the inspections or the war. By Kantian standards, the war was aggression without justifiable cause.

Administration officials have tried to justify the war ex post facto entirely on utilitarian grounds -- that is, that the war will lead to the democratization or modernization of the Arab region. These arguments echo those of 19th- and early 20th-century imperialists, and indeed some neoconservatives, including Max Boot and Stanley Kurtz, have argued candidly for a return to imperialism. They have replaced the older promise of civilization with that of democracy or of modernization. The Bush administration, fearful of criticism from abroad, has steered clear of explicitly advocating imperialism, but it uses the same utilitarian logic in advancing its aims that European and American proponents of empire used a century ago.

The defenders of a new American imperialism insist that today's America will avoid the pitfalls of the older model. They argue that the United States is an inherently moral nation that will not commit the injustices perpetrated by past imperial aspirants. True, American history, like French and English, is filled with moments of greatness -- but also of ignominy, from the Indian wars to the slave trade to the brutal suppression of the Filipino rebels to the Christmas bombing of Hanoi. To put ourselves above the law of nations is to encourage our own tendencies, as well as those of other countries, toward lawlessness.

Defenders of the administration also argue that the United States, unlike imperial Britain or Wilhelm II's Germany, has no serious military rivals and can therefore do what it wants without encouraging a future world war. That may be true -- for now. But an arrogant America, strutting across the world stage and invading countries it deems to be merely future adversaries, can incite reprisals and can, over the decades, provoke genuine rivalry. And these rivals will hardly be bound to honor the very rules of international behavior that the United States has already spurned. In its victory over Iraq, the United States can imagine it is instilling democratic principles in the Arab world, but it is also undermining principles designed to protect the world's nations from an even worse fate than autocracy: the ravages of war and the humiliation of conquest.

[Jolly Rodgers]

Waging a war of aggression and subjugating the occupied population so that their natural resources can be controlled is not moral in any way. You know that, but flush with victory, you don't really care. What's a few dead Iraqis compared to the excitement of winning the big game. It's not like they're real people. Right?

[secretagent]

Anyone can charge war crimes - but lets look at whether we agree with them.

In short: (1) Iraq invades Kuwait (2) The US comes to the defense of Kuwait and forces Iraq out, and ceases fire, short of a justifiable regime change, contingent on Iraq agreeing to certain peace terms. (3) After 12 years of violation of those peace terms, the US resumes Gulf War 1 to change the regime - an understood consequence, 12 years ago, of Iraq's failing to uphold the peace terms.

Iraq has kept its aggressor status the entire time.

[Consort]

Waging a war of aggression...

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Try the word "liberation" and if you don't believe it, ask any Iraqi who is not a puppet of Iran, Suria, or Egypt. Get real.

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...and subjugating the occupied population so that their natural resources can be controlled is not moral in any way.

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You're batting .000 so far. If we wanted their resources we could have taken total control years ago and kept it all to ourselves. (You already know that).

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...flush with victory, you don't really care. What's a few dead Iraqis compared to the excitement of winning the big game. It's not like they're real people. Right?

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Wrong again. How did you get the way you are?

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

I love how everyone hates the UN and cheers that it has been rendered impotent, and yet still tries to cloak themselves in its authority in order to avoid war crimes accusations. You can't have it both ways. You can try, but it just doesn't work that way.

We enforced the justified UN resolutions, after they refused to do so.

[lib-r-teri-ann]

and I killed the murder victim because someday he might kill me?

I can appreciate your analogy here. And I can also see that it is completely false, misleading and out of context.

FIRSTLY, there was no murder here, there was a war. One is a civil crime between individuals, another is an international affair between governemnts and peoples. To falsely use the term "murder" in this context is absurd.

Second of all, there is no "victim" here. A tyrannical regime and nation got what it deserved; liberation and conquest.

Thirdly, pre-emption is a recongnized part of the right to self-defense, so yes, I can "kill" the "murder victim" before he kills me.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

Waging a war of aggression and subjugating the occupied population so that their natural resources can be controlled is not moral in any way.

Is sticking my fingers in my ears any more childish than the "No War For Oil" mantra which prompts it?

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

Just remember that I'm not the one who paraded out falsified documents in front of the world ... we just bombed a soveriegn nation that was doing its darnedest to capitulate to our every demand.

Zzzzzzzzzzz

[Outraged]

Those materials and programs were subsequently destroyed, as evidenced by the current lack of their existence. Their only true WMD program was bombed by Israel many years ago and has never been reconstituted. The remnants were tagged and bagged and under continuing inspection by the UN.

There is no evidence of your assumption of destruction, as evidenced by lack of proof. You imply that Saddam disallowed effective inspection and then just got Holy and decided to destroy his weaponary and then keep it secret from the U.N.(collection of dictators)...This strains credulity given the cost of his little non-existent shell-game cost him not only his throne but his life.

So, to claim a priori as the justification is to confess having waged war on a false and immoral assumption.

So, to make this statement is hollow. Saddam had known links to Osama Bin Laden and would gladly have supplied or funded terrorist groups in their world dominantion interests...Saddam WAS a threat, he violated U.N. resolutions and used said WMD on his own people...He did not comply and therefore formally breached the contract which justified action.

[Outraged]

When we just bombed a soveriegn nation that was doing its darnedest to capitulate to our every demand? That's pretty cheeky of you.

You really have to put down that crack pipe. You have the logical capacity of democraticunderground.com, and the ability to selectively recall (outright ignore evidence to the absolute contrary) events that favor a genocidal maniac. That's pretty creepy of you.

[Jolly Rodgers]

The Justifications Crumble Creepy is the people who cheerlead for naked aggression and warmongering.

[lib-r-teri-ann]

this was a shameful violation of law

No, you are a shameful violation of conservative and American principles. We got a liberal here JimRob! Somebody with the admin rights needs to extirpate this idiot.

[Jolly Rodgers]

Somebody with the admin rights needs to extirpate this idiot.

Is that the solution? Just delete anybody who presents facts that you find inconvenient or uncomfortable? You must win lots of debates that way. hehehe

Like I said earlier, just put your hands over your ears and hum lalalalalalala. If that doesn't work, pull the sheets up over your face so the monsters can't see you. It works for lots of immature children.

[Jolly Rodgers]

Is sticking my fingers in my ears any more childish than the "No War For Oil" mantra which prompts it?

Are you trying to assert that the Bush administration is not going to take control of the Iraqi oil fields? Seriously? Bwahahahaha!!!

[section9]

I won't hide the fact that I'm not fond of Bush. However, this is not about personality worship. I am judging our actions based upon moral principle, right and wrong. The attack on Iraq was wrong and the occupation is compounding it. The solution? Bring our troops home and actually focus on national DEFENSE instead of building an American empire.

Then you are a fool.

International relations and strategic policy do not involve the determination of right and wrong. They involve the pursuit of national interest. That is all.

We had a national interest in preventing a bad actor from obtaining chemical and biological weapons. Why? Precisely because he could have shipped same to his allies of convenience in the terrorist international. To prevent him from doing that, even in the future, we destroyed his regime.

Whether it was morally right or wrong is immaterial. You can criticize Bush for doing something that you believe is morally wrong. You can also vote for Harry Browne to see how far that gets you. But George W. Bush acted in our national interest, pursuant to the doctrine laid down by Sun Tzu 2500 years ago: "War is the most serious business of the State."

You may pretend that we have an option to "defend the homeland" by bringing out troops home. That is a fool's errand. Doing so leaves the initiative with the enemy. We can only defend by attacking, by killing our enemies before they kill us.

Now then, how long will this last? For several decades. Get used to that. This isn't the Nineties and our enemies want to bring destruction to our homeland.

If that brings you discomfort, so be it. If it leads to dead Jihadis, all the better.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[activationproducts]

So why was Saddam so reluctant to have inspectors in and allow them to prove he had no weapons?

You need to understand that one of the conditions for ending the first Gulf War is that Saddam disarm of WMD's (all UN security council members agreed that he had them in 1991) and prove it. That is what he failed to do. This is the justification for Operation Iraqi Freedom. That's not too hard to understand.

[Jolly Rodgers]

Then you are a fool.
International relations and strategic policy do not involve the determination of right and wrong. They involve the pursuit of national interest. That is all.

Perhaps I am a fool, but that is far better than any man who shows disrespect for what is right and wrong.

[Jolly Rodgers]

This is the justification for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

No, actually, it is not. That justification would require agreement by the UN. There was none. Furthermore, the fact that the country is proving to be devoid of chemical, biological, as well as weapons of mass destruction (nuclear) would have defeated that rationalization anyway.

[Outraged]

You can do better than Bock...my mistake, you can't. Even his name is chicken speak. I will never forget the din of the antiwar crowd, replete with Mao shirts, Che-Guevera regalia. I went to one of these hate-ins and witnessed communists, homosexuals and other sordid socialists and neo-communists more bent on hating Bush than liberating the people of Iraq and ridding the world of a despotic dictator bent on Stalinist world domination.

I am sure your Kantian logic includes you in the ability to induct that there is a great deal of intel that we are not privy to for justified reason...In fact reason enough to convince Tony Blair, and it does not take a brilliant mind to discern that he was convinced enough to jeopardize his position.

On a more skeptical note, I would imagine sometime in the time-frame that the cacophany of the leftist reaches a crescendo, that plate of crow is going to be served up hot and WMD undeniably will be located.

[section9]

Perhaps I am a fool, but that is far better than any man who shows disrespect for what is right and wrong.

Well, that may be. But that doesn't help you if you end up dead now, does it?

Self-righteousness won't win any arguments here; indeed, it won't even get you a good cup of coffee.

However, you might win some respect from Ronald, for what that's worth....

Be Seeing You,

Chris