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The Humanitarian Case

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We know that the security case for the Iraqi war is gone. Saddam had no weapons and no weapons programs to speak of, and Iraq’s conventional capabilities were meagre. We know that the anti-terrorism case is gone, because despite our ability to question virtually all of the top Iraqi leaders and many of the top leaders of Al Qaeda, no connection has manifested. That leaves the humanitarian case and the democracy case. I have an extraordinarily generous soul, so I’ll concede to war supporters that the evidence on the democracy case remains out. The humanitarian case, however, is as dead as Caesar’s ghost.

Matt Yglesias makes this point today, channeling Jeanne D’Arc and Arthur Silber. Silber in particular points out that we have almost completely forgotten the Lancet study, in spite of the fact that its major findings remain unchallenged by competent authority. If the Lancet study is even close to correct, then the war was a humanitarian disaster very nearly akin to the tsunami that hit Southeast Asia. We have killed or allowed to be killed more people than Saddam would have accounted for in twenty years. Moreover, the killing shows no signs of abating, as the Coalition remains incapable of providing basic security for Iraqi citizens.

Matt Yglesias wants to grant, at least, that those killed by insurgents should be on a different moral ledger than those killed directly by US action. Others have argued that insurgent deaths and Iraqi military deaths should not be included on the US slate. I disagree with both of these arguments. Destroying a functioning state and replacing it with nothing is exactly equivalent to destroying an irrigation system or a food distribution network and replacing it with nothing. The consequences are the same; mass death. Moral responsibility isn’t divisible; if you watch someone being murdered and raped in the street and do nothing, you are no less responsible if a dozen others stood and watched with you. That insurgents pull the trigger does not relieve our responsibility. Similarly, hostile military deaths are a necessary evil in a war fought for security. Killing a substantial number of enemy soldiers has no direct bearing on a security justification. Once the security justification is gone, however, hostile military deaths are no more acceptable than civilian deaths. Any genuine humanitarian military intervention will kill both civilians and hostile combatants. This is part of the cost of such actions, and needs to be included in evaluations of past decisions and in the calculation of new interventions.

Yglesias is quite right to bring up the opportunity cost argument. Even if the humanitarian case was shattered on its own merits, the opportunity cost of the Iraqi operation would weigh heavily against its justification. Iraq was not the worst humanitarian disaster in the world in 2003. Far from it; Iraq had a functioning state that could provide for internal security. Dozens of states in Africa lack this distinction, and violent death rates in those states are much higher than in Iraq. An administration genuinely interested in humanitarian intervention would be forced to put Iraq very low on its list. The intervention in Iraq has made intervention in these other, far deadlier areas impossible. Of course, this does not even begin to consider what could have been done to save lives through non-violent means in much of the world.

Security case: dead
Anti-Terror case: dead
Humanitarian case: dead
Democracy case: Not looking good, but jury remains out

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