This post is in response to Brad's post of 1/28. As always Brad, a fine and clear analysis. Your account of the WMD question seems to me to be corrrect. However, I think it was unfortunate that the administration went in that direction in arguing for military operations to the American people. I think it was done for domestic political reasons. The judgment was made that the American people were satisfied with the status quo, and needed some self interested reason to resume military hostilities. Americans have a long history of isolationism. This assumption about the American people, however true, was unfortunate since it led to the impression that we were going to war, and the application of Just War theory pertained to the conditions of jus ad bellum.

But then I come back to the first part of your essay. I do not understand how anyone could think we were not in a continuous state of war with Iraq from 1991 on. They were in violation of the conditions of the cease fire, which cease fire was not an end to the war but a cessation of major military operations. Even though this war was not being conducted by major military operations, we were, as you note, certainly engaged in military operations controlling the sovereign airspace of Iraq. By any legal standard, to control the sovereign airspace of another country against its will is an act of war. As you note we were being fired upon and firing upon. However, the most significant feature of the war we were waging against Iraq was the economic sanctions supposedly justified by its not meeting the conditions of the cease fire. I am of the opinion that the use of such sanctions on the scale we were using them constitute in principle unjust means in war (jus in bello). In principle they target the economy of a nation on such a scale that it constitutes targeting the civilian population. If various nations imposed such massive sanctions on our economy, I have little doubt that we would conclude that those nations were waging war on us by other means than military. And of course, let us remember that it was our military power that was to a great extent used to enforce these sanctions. Starvation at the point of an unfired but loaded gun looks like a military act to me. It does not cease to be a military act because it is unjust. But even if one could make the principled argument that sanctions on that scale are a just means of warfare, it was clear de facto that they were not meeting the conditions of proporitionality in war. I am too lazy to go back and look it up, but if memory serves, in the year 2000 the World Health Organization estimated that as a direct result of the sanctions the infant mortality rate in Iraq had doubled to the tune of 50,000 more infants dead a year throughout the previous decade. That result, de facto, is manifestly unjust. And it does not even consider other aspects harmful to the health and welfare of the civilian population of Iraq. Again, if other countries imposed sanctions on us that had that effect, there is little question we would conclude they were waging war on us by siege and consequent starvation.

One of the more disturbing features for me of the debate that took place leading up to the return to major military operations was the extent to which those who opposed such a return relied upon sanctions as a satisfactory solution to the problem. They quite often argued that the sanctions should be allowed to stay in place, though perhaps they needed to be tightened and "really enforced," and they would over time solve the problem. Given the manifestly unjust character of our sanctions, I was amazed to hear public figures calling for their continuation, indeed for a more draconian enforcement of them. So it strikes me that in fact the question was not about the just conditions for going to war, jus ad bellum. Those had either been met or not when Kuwait was invaded. On the assumption that they had been met, the question then was whether we were meeting the conditions of justice in war, jus in bello, over the decade of the 90s. I think manifestly we were not. That situation left us with two possibilities. We simply cease to wage the war altogether, which may well have been advisable. Or we return to just means of waging that war, namely, the use of the military to attack just military targets. We did not have that debate because by and large the American public, and certainly those most vocally opposed to military operations were satisfied with the status quo of the manifestly unjust means of siege and starvation we were employing to wage war against Iraq in the 90s.

Just my opinion,
John

ps. The question of WMD, and the excellent point you make, does seem to me to bear upon the question of whether it was just for us to continue to wage the war, ad bellum, through the 90s. Had anyone known then what we know now, it seems to me that one could have argued we should simply have stopped waging war on Iraq at whatever point we became cognizant of that fact, again assuming that the original decision to go to war on behalf of an ally who had been attacked was just ad bellum.