Iraq has wrecked our case for humanitarian wars

[Nambe]

Guardian Newspapers Limited

- For the first time, a significant section of the mainstream left has been forced into open defiance of its leadership over a decision to go to war. Many of these, typified by the resigning ministers Robin Cook and John Denham, were committed humanitarian interventionists who had supported the war in Kosovo. Pitted against them were many of their former allies, using many of the arguments they had developed together. It is the split within this camp that threatens to have the most enduring consequences.

Before September 11, there was substantial agreement between them about the principles that ought to underpin a progressive foreign policy. There was consensus on the need to move beyond narrow realism by accepting wider humanitarian obligations as part of a responsible global citizenship. There was a belief that it was time to act on the promises contained in the universal declaration of human rights. And there was a willingness to use military force, in extremis, to achieve these objectives. -

There is a need for what the Canadian-sponsored international commission on intervention and state sovereignty (ICISS) has called "threshold and precautionary criteria" to impose limits on the right to intervene.

It is here that the humanitarian interventionists divided over Iraq. Those who supported the war often cited the ICISS report, The Responsibility to Protect, in their defence, but their case failed even to approximate the criteria it sets out. The requirements of "just cause" and "last resort" demand large-scale human suffering that cannot be averted by other means. The Iraqi regime was certainly vile, and had the case for intervention been made when Saddam Hussein was gassing his own people it would have been a strong one indeed. But there was no immediate crisis to be averted in 2003. ---

Ride Don’t Drive It’s Global Cool

[tameszu]

1. Pacifists may not agree,

but Blair himself may be forced to admit, when he looks back, that this is the saddest aspect of his Iraq legacy.

I don't know if history will forgive him for overestimating/overselling the Iraq WMD threat. But history will certainly be much less forgiving if, because of his overzealousness, has helped damage a growing international consensus on humanitarian intervention that could have prevented a future Rwanda or Bosnia.

[T_i_B]

2. And you know what gets me

It's the tendency of the Blairites not only to attempt to portray Iraq as a humanitarian cause (it is quite manifestly nothing of the sort).

Then there is the attempts by the chickenhawks to portray all of us who opposed the war as pacifists. The invasion of Iraq was the first war in my lifetime that I have opposed the UK's involvement in. I know that I am anything but alone in this regard. I opposed the war because there was quite simply no just reason for it. No reason that was given washed with me. The war on Iraq was not essential in the slightest and Britain has not gained as a result of Blair's involvement in this shambles.

[brokensymmetry]

3. Interesting insight. n/t

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