Moral Justification

Wars receive their moral justification after they have begun. The inciting incidents are often naked aggression, or perceived threats that don't have much to do with moral considerations. I wrote earlier about the "9/11, Q. E. D." argument for the war.

Katrina and Judge Roberts have pushed the Iraq War to the back of the mind. However, events in Iraq this week indicate that the country still suffers from uncontrolled internecine bloodshed between factions. The U. S. military presence further enables and intensifies the bloodshed and hatred. However, the war remains at the back of the agenda for the President and Congress.

How can this be? One simple reason is that there is often an unquestioned justification for the war. The U. S. is supposedly engaged in building a free and democratic Iraq. The moral justification excuses inattention since the idea is that all's well that eventually ends well. You can goof around and screw things up all you want as long as morality is on your side. Out of sight, out of mind becomes the norm.

The proposed Iraqi constitution tells a different story. If adopted, a dicey proposition in itself, the Iraqi constitution will result in three well armed Islamic states, two with oil resources and one without. The Iraqis don't need our help setting up three independent well armed Islamic states. They already know how to do it, and when you strip away the veneer of moral theorizing that's what they want.

Iraq President Talabani made the big Freudian slip of saying that 50,000 U. S. troops could be evacuated by the end of the year. The Bush administration put him back in line.

The polls indicate that increasingly people view all the justifications as mere cover for a very bad strategic mistake in the war on terror. Nothing good will happen until the mistake is rectified by pulling out the troops.