First Things first

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - 4:35 PM Share

Over at the First Things blog, Keith Pavlischek seems to think that I am off base in thinking our presence in Iraq immoral, but thinking also that leaving would be more immoral. He calls me out for supposedly disagreeing with St. Thomas Aquinas. Yet I think Aquinas's second condition for waging war justly, which he cites, underscores my point: "Secondly, a just cause is required...."

I've written to Pavlischek and to First Things asking how invading Iraq pre-emptively on false premises meets that standard. No responses yet.

Lawrence OP/Flickr

EXPLORE:IRAQ, MILITARY

(2)

HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE

WALKING WOUNDED

1:08 AM ET

April 1, 2009

choice, or preemption?

IMO, you've pretty well ceded the point in the way you formulated the question. The response is bound to be: "If we thought it was preemption, and only some of the premises turned out to be mistakes, exaggerations, lies being such a harsh word...'

Instead, ask straight up: "Was it preemption of something desperately bad that Iraq could not be deterred from, or was it a choice to invade and terminate (one might say preempt) UNMOVIC inspections that were generating a negative WMD result?"

There wasn't much doubt at the US and Brit flag officer / senior analyst level that we were fixing the intel around the policy in late 2002. Secular, frightened Iraq wanted to sell us oil, and couldn't defend their territory or airspace against us since '91. Even a C student can see that's no threat.

If the answer is 'yes, this war was a political choice of national policy, merely justified by post 9/11 arguments of a preemptive defense...', then the aggressive nature and moral conundrum of our invasion/occupation doesn't get lost in who knew when about Curveball and the 17 words.

Pavlischek certainly scores on Democratic leadership that smacked their lips while selling Baghdad brand coolaid. My country wanted sweet revenge against Arabs, and Saddam's Iraq was the waxy yellow buildup we'd grown accustomed to hating.

JAMES S.

6:00 AM ET

April 1, 2009

False premises?

False premises? That wording implies a deliberate lie. Mistaken premises would be a better way to put it. Saddam Hussien should be very proud of himself while he's burning in hell. He managed to trick pretty much every intelligence agency in the world, including ours, into believing he had WMDs. He did this by letting all his Generals think that, while they in particular did not have any WMDs, the battalion/ regiment/ marching band next door probably did. He pulled off the most successful Red on Red (Blue on Blue from his perspective) deception operation in history. Why would he do this with the World's most powerful military breathing down his neck? This is going to seem crazy, but he considered the U.S. threat as secondary to the threat posed by Iran. He wanted Iran to think he had WMDs. He wanted the rest of the region to think he was still the big bad neighborhood bully. So he lead the rest of the World along until he got invaded. If Hans Blix, who turned out to be a Casandra in this situation, had managed to convince the world that Iraq had indeed gotten rid of his WMDs the cat would have been out of the bag. He would have been a regional laughingstock. That is until sanctions had been dropped, he pulled out all the scientific and planning notes we found, and he built a couple things we would have regretted. We followed the Just War philosophy. Being wrong about a premise does not make the decisions you made from it immoral. You can be wrong without being immoral. You've just got to deal with the mess you made with your decision.