Between Iraq and a Hard Case : Part Two: Sudan > Saddam.

In my last post (written many eons ago), I promised that in this blog post I would attempt to answer, with typical bluster,swagger and know-it-all-ness, a question that has plagued human rights scholars, military morality philosophers and Dick Cheney ever since it became clear that there were no secret weapons stashes hidden in the deserts of Iraq, just sand. That question is 'Even if it turns the intelligence that Saddam had WMD's and was best buds with Osama was a complete and total farce, doesn't that fact that we got rid of Saddam anyway make the world and the Iraqi people safer and justify it all anyway?'

But it turns out, trying to write this blog post was a complete and total disaster. Turns out that this is a pretty difficult question to answer, and while most of my posts are written quickly, often when I am annoyed, sometimes when I am sad, occassionally when I am drunk (see if you can spot which posts convey which emotion, kids). But with this post, I've agonised for weeks over several drafts. The first time I tried I ended up writing a pretty heavy-handed defence of Saddam Hussein's (and Iraq's) right to sovereignty. But I decided a blog post entitled 'Who's Sane? Hussein?' would shred my valiant co-blogger Paul's wavering faith in my ability to have ideas and probably make him cry at the thought of his blog being reduced to this. My next draft went the other extreme, and defended the right of the US to intervene in any situation where there was the slightest whiff of Human rights abuses. Then I realised I had just justified, in my own head, a reason for the US to invade New Zealand on account of our Electoral Finance Act. It was at this point I decided I needed a lie-down. The issue is terribly convoluted, and even now, I'm not convinced I've been effective in outlining my position. So here are some general thoughts, and I may return to the topic later, perhaps in a more contemporary situation.

Firstly, I believe that there is a legitimate case for military intervention by a foreign power (preferably the UN, but unilaterally if necessary) in cases where there is gross persecution, genocide, breaches of fundamental rights by a government against its citizens. Genocides such as Rwanda, and the current horrific disaster in Darfur represent dark stains on the conscience of the international community. Obviously the most effective and enduring form of long-term regime change isn't one that comes from the guns and cowboy diplomacy of a foreign military that can't possibly understand (and in many cases makes no effort to understand) the subtle naunces, the political culture and the social norms that underpin that country's politics, it comes from an internal revolution. But in many cases an internal popular revolution, a la Les Miserables, in a country where the tyrannical government has a solid grasp on the military is just code for a lot of innocent and helpless getting mowed down. In situations where there is vast 'firepower' inequalities between those in power and those who would overthrow power, the only way that there can be realistic regime change for the better is with the help of a foreign military, which can stabilise a tattered country, prevent a power vacuum by which insurgencies can flourish, and create the conditions for which a new government can begin to rebuild a decent society.

I realise that in saying this , I am effectively telling the American mother in Kansas with three sons in the military that not only will her children put their lives on the line in defence of their country, they will also gallivant over the world saving people in places she has never heard of, from the action of governments whose leaders have names she can't pronounce. Also, her tax dollars will pay for this. I realise that it would be political suicide to suggest it, and good reason to at least wait for the UN to dictate that this is a situation that justifies an intervention on behalf of the entire world. But the UN Security Council remains moribund, and it's inability to gain traction on issues that cry out for intervention, such as Darfur, render it at best an embarrassment, at worst, criminally incompetent. And even if it is politically untenable, it doesn't detract from the moral force of the case for intervention. There must be action to avoid a second Rwanda, to end or prevent humanitarian catastrophes. America, as the leading military power in the world, as well as other Western nations with a conscience must exercise the UN's responsibility to protect, even if the UN doesn't want to play ball.


But I could bang on about morality all I want, but as I have already pointed out, there is no political mandate in an economic recession and in the aftermath of two flailing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to justify humanitarian intervention. This is why justifying Iraq on the grounds that 'it got rid of Saddam' is so wrong. Firstly, in cases of humanitarian intervention even more important than the overthrow of the tyrannical government is the stabilisation and security of the area, this is what lets the voters and the taxpayers back home know that lives were lost in the pursuit of peace, not in some hopeless cause. But Iraq was so poorly handled that the American civilian was subjected to years of Iraq turning from a country ruled by an iron-fisted dictator to the country where the rule of law was a joke, and the quality of life of the Iraqi people even worse. That reinforces the idea that interventions can never work.

Secondly and more importantly, Saddam, for all his evil, was a lot less worse than many other nasty regimes. Think the military junta in Myanmar, the Hutu extremists running riot in the Congo, the Janjaweid militia in Darfur, Mugabe's goons in Zimbabwe....the point is that if you set the 'threshold for intervention' at Saddam, then you force yourself to take on a whole basket of conflicts in all far-flung parts of the Earth. The voting public look at the possible expenses, both in terms of lives lost and financial cost, and baulk. Humanitarian intervention needs to be justified as something that happens in 'really, really bad cases', where there is a broad consensus that a government is denying citizens the ability to survive, rather than just breaching what Westerners would consider to be a valid human right. The goal is to prevent genocide, not install America as 'World Police'. But by neo-conservaties declaring Iraq as a 'Charge of the Rights Brigade', instead of just showing some balls and admitting they fucked up their intelligence, an already difficult case for humanitarian intervention becomes almost impossible to make.

In conclusion, Genocide sucks.

Alex