This is your fundamental problem. You perhaps cannot even see it. It's that YOU are going with YOUR plan to LIBERATE somebody, free from imprisonment, slavery, or oppression. The objective, the people you liberate are like a damsel in distress, a totally helpless entity, which then YOU then give a plan forwards they have to do. This is simply not the way democracy spreads.

It's the way democracy SHOULD spread. These people shouldn't have to fight alone, to be mowed down by automatic weapons. The only thing that is standing in the way of success is YOUR BRAIN. It's literally that simple. Western brains are the ONLY thing preventing worldwide democracy.

Perhaps it's difficult for you to understand how offensive the idea of a foreign military forces taking over your country and implementing changes to your society as you as an American never have had the threat of it (at least after the 1812 war).

I'm Australian. I realized in 2002 that I was in a unique position to argue the case for the 2003 Iraq war, because I was neither American not Christian (I was an atheist). That forces people to actually respond to the argument instead of dismissing me as a biased American.

Now to answer your actual point - why did 87% of Afghans support the US military intervention if foreign forces are so bad? Why did 50% of Iraqis support the US military intervention if foreign forces are so bad? What percentage of Australians do you think would support a US military intervention if we had a military coup and a cruel dictator? I would hope 99%, but I don't know. Whatever percentage it is, those are the only ones I actually care about. I don't care if my ideological enemy opposes my intervention. I will arm my ideological allies and they will take care of the rest.

Reminds me how the Soviets wanted to liberate us in 1939 using quite the same rhetoric. Lucky that both of my grandfathers came back alive from the war.

The difference is that for the Soviets, "liberate" means "communist dictatorship". For the US, "liberate" means "democracy". There's a huge difference. Can't you see it?

For starters, how about not thinking immediately of using military force to liberate / attack a country?

Or you think that would be somehow immoral thing to do?

My first preference is to write a nice letter to Saddam saying "Dear Saddam. Please stand down in favor of democracy. Yours truly, Paul Edwards (from Australia)". If he fails to act on that letter, then I will resort to force. Did you send such a letter to Saddam? What was your plan otherwise?

If Americans have difficulties with racial relations when slavery has been abolished a long time ago and segragation laws some 60 years ago, what about countries where those relations have been worse yesterday? You simply cannot assume there aren't huge problems in these societies, which have ended up with dictatorships. It's not as if before everything was just fine until somehow an evil dictator got himself into power and once you have taken away the dictator, democracy could flourish.

I don't believe that religious bigots/racists should determine Iraqi policy.

This is especially true in Iraq, as we have already seen. The only place where I could see a rather peaceful transition to a democracy and a justice state would be Belarus, if the present dictator would be toppled.

Plenty of places would be. E.g. Vietnam. It's very simple. All you have to do is a military defeat of the standing army, and then REUSE it.

Planning to use military force to oust Lukashenka in Belarus would be playing with the possibility of WW3.

Sure. Russia, despite being a democracy, is still full of immoral people, and that is reflected in their government. We have work to do to win them over now that they have freedom of speech. But I don't see how I'm going to convince them when I can't convince you.

You can't have a good act with bad intent. If a corrupt cop steals from a criminal who'd otherwise use it for a crime (without the cop knowing), the cop is still a thief.

But what if a 3rd party knows that the criminal is going to use the money for a crime? Should the 3rd party take action to prevent the corrupt cop from stealing a criminal's money? I wouldn't.

This is a philosophical question.

1. History of Success
There are many countries which are democracies in no small part to the actions of the US but past the Korean war, really none which came about as a result of a US invasion. Calling Iraq or Afghanistan flourishing democracies is simply incorrect, I looked for a democracy index which would describe them as such but couldn't find one, they all list them as authoritarian states and whether democracy survives is really unclear.

The lack of indexes merely shows the bias of those behind creating the indexes. They simply don't want military intervention to be seen as a success when it clearly is. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, multiple parties vie for power in competitive elections. It is a WORLD of difference to what was there before. As to whether democracy survives (which implies it is currently living anyway), that's just a reason for an organization like NATO to stay engaged.

2. Ease of US victory
How long until people put 1 and 1 together? The US has no had an easy time in occupying nations with hostile non-state actors and that's exactly what they're going to get in the African and Middle-eastern authoritarian states.

There was a reason to disband the old security forces in Iraq and do nation-building. This is no longer the case. The target country's security forces can take care of any hostile non-state actors, and anyhow, this is the same result you would get with a revolution. Are you saying revolutions are always wrong because there might be some hostile non-state actors?

Do you think Iran, the most notorious supporter of militant non-state actors, Iran, with its mountainous geography and both infamous and sizeable anti-US sentiment is going to be a cakewalk for the US?

Absolutely I do. It would look like a cross between Afghanistan and Libya. You just need to fly some planes over Tehran, let the people rise up, and bomb any security forces that show up to suppress their revolution.

But you're never going to believe it until we actually do it. Which is another reason to do it. We need to reorganize our standing armies so that they only ever have to do wars of liberation.

Despite US interventionism, the world is becoming less democratic and the US is a part of that trend. Military interventionism has such a terrible track record, I don't think you can back up your optimism.

It has had an excellent track record. What about Panama? What about Kosovo? What about the allegedly impossible Iraq? What about the allegedly impossible Afghanistan? MANY people said it was impossible to install democracy by force of arms, it needed to come from the people themselves via revolution. That claim was absolute bunk. In Libya there was an actual uprising, but they would have been mowed down by automatic weapons if we hadn't intervened. And yes, because we went for a cheap (0 allied casualties, air only) war in Libya (which is all the UN would allow), Libya has had problems (which they presumably would also have had if they had had a successful revolution country-wide), but I fully expect those problems to be sorted out, as all sides support democracy.

For the Iraq war, I think most of the complexity comes from how difficult it has been. Much like Vietnam, I don't oppose aiming to stop the spread of authoritarian regimes like communism but it didn't stop it and instead, it just killed millions.

If you have any complaints about millions of dead Vietnamese, take it up with Mr Marx.

So if someone wants to prevent a repeat of the Vietnam war, can you really say "oh, you like communism then?"? As if all the US has to do to stop communism is precisely what clearly didn't stop communism in Vietnam, military interventionism?

South Vietnam was secure (just like South Korea) at the time the US left. The US shouldn't have left. THAT is the lesson from Vietnam. Not that we shouldn't physically stand against communism. ISIS was only able to take over part of Iraq in 2014 because the US left too. When the US re-engaged it was a cakewalk, with close to 0 dead US soldiers.

You want to do exactly the same thing over and over again until it works?

It did work in South Vietnam. South Vietnam was a non-communist state like South Korea. It worked in South Korea. It worked in Panama. It worked in Grenada. It worked in Kosovo. It worked in Afghanistan. It worked in Iraq. It worked in Libya. It will work in Iran too if we can just get people to recognize reality. When Iraq has 300+ political parties instead of 1, you should be able to recognize that something changed. And if democracy indexes don't note that, don't trust them. Also, none of the 300+ parties wins 100% of the vote like Saddam did.

BTW, there wasn't just one reason for the 2003 Iraq war. You won't win just by defeating one of the three reasons. See here.

Have you ever heard of the principle of charity?

I looked it up, and that applies both ways.

Can you at least make an effort to engage what I say instead of making stuff up? It doesn't logically follow that because rape is bad every method of combatting it is proper.

I can agree with that. When a 911 call comes in from a Sydney resident, Washington shouldn't just drop a nuke on Sydney. They should use minimal force necessary to respond to the crime. But the objective word there is "respond" rather than "ignore". They shouldn't just ignore the screams of the woman calling 911. Nor should they use sophistry to insist that they have no obligation or even right to respond.

How about a society that has surveillance everywhere, not just the streets but in your home too in order to combat rape? Perfectly fine because it will stop rape.

No, I believe consenting couples have the right to privacy.

Also, even though my Russian friend hasn't engaged yet, I now know how to answer your previous question. When a BAD ACT like killing an innocent person happens, it is necessary to determine the INTENT to find out whether to charge the killer with murder or manslaughter. But when a GOOD ACT is done, intent doesn't actually matter (as to whether you should try to prevent the action or not), although it would certainly be nice if there was a good intent.

The problem with this approach is what we see in this thread, the undermining of support for such projects. No US administration can just willy nilly do whatever it wants. It requires a good measure of public support to dethrone dictators by force.

Yes, that is what I am trying to do now. Retrospectively explain that the 2003 Iraq war was a good thing, shouldn't be treated as a disaster, and should be repeated.

Yes, sanctions have a negative effect on the Iranian people, that's true. But let us not forget they overthrew the Shah in 1979 with no help from anyone. So when they are ready they can do that again.

The Shah didn't mow the protesters down with automatic weapons. The Mullahs do. What you're asking for is a militarily impossible feat. In WW1 we had *armed* soldiers charging automatic weapons and being defeated. Unarmed civilians have no chance at all. Think Tiananmen Square.

If an invasion of Iran went FUBAR that's the end of deposing dictators by force for another century.

That's why the 2003 Iraq war is so important. We need to reset the count.

The best weapon we may have is public education. This thread would seem to illustrate we aren't currently doing such a great job of that.

Yes, that is what is required, and what I am doing now.

I don't have such data because I don't agree with that conclusion. It surely highlights what's going wrong. You assume the Iraq war was a good thing because of whatever nebulous moral feelings you have about the matter — Benkei

It's more I *define* the end of institutionalized rape and mutilation to be a good thing. I don't know how you don't. This is a philosophical question. If in your philosophy you don't think rape is a bad thing, then we will never come to an understanding. I treat it as an axiom.

So you can't claim knowing what the Just War Theory entails and therefore aren't qualified to decide one way or the other whether it's a good theory or not and what parts should be changed or not. You're just demonstrating your ignorance.

Perhaps. But perhaps you are demonstrating that you can't accept fresh thinking on the subject. When you have data such as the very obviously just liberation of Iraq conflicting with the theory, it's time to revisit the theory, rather than trying to manipulate the data to fit the theory.

There is no correct action without rightful intent. If I intend to murder you and you happen to be raping someone when I walk in on you with the intent to murder you at the time, it's still murder regardless of the happy outcome.

Even if you want to call that murder, you should not prevent the murderer from killing the rapist.

But yeah, never minder 2000+ years of thinking on criminal law.

Wars of liberation are a very recent and rare thing. We're still collecting data on how people actually react to that. We still don't even have enough data to be able to predict an Iranian liberation. People are still claiming 99% in opposite directions. The 2000 years is of totally irrelevant wars of conquest.

BTW, I am a programmer by trade, and I came up with a radical new idea (S/380) which the experts couldn't even imagine, and even went so far as to say it would never work. The good thing about computers is that they respond to logic, so MVS/380 became a reality. There are rare humans who are willing to switch worldview in response to cold hard logic, and my Russian friend was one of them. Please read his blog post and tell me where he went wrong.

Hippyhead, over to you for night-shift.

t's only if bad intent causes a bad action — Paul Edwards

Not that I'm even conceding that Bush had bad intent. He said he believed that God wanted everyone to be free, and he's damn right there, if we postulate a loving god. It's good intent - IF that was even needed.

I've alluded as to the largest gap in your thinking in that you don't take sovereignty (or right authority) into account.

No, that is the largest gap in your thinking. You think that a dictator like Saddam is a rightful authority and respect his "right" to oppress the Iraqi people, even to the point where you yawn at Iraqis having their tongues cut out.

If you read the Russian's blog post here you could see a different way of looking at the exact same world. Perhaps it would be good if you tried to understand your enemy if you wish to defeat him. Tell me what the Russian did wrong when he flipped position. It's a short read.

I have explained why intent is important by analogy

And I have answered that, although I'll come back to you again later after my Russian friend has had a chance to vet it. I already agreed with you that intent is important when it comes to an individual being charged for murder vs manslaughter. But when the correct action is being taken, intent doesn't matter a damn. It's only if bad intent causes a bad action that we should seek to prevent the action being taken. You shouldn't be so super-confident that it isn't you that has a mental block on this.

You need to accept your interlocutors are as rational as you are (if not more so) and engage their arguments instead of raising straw men every time you're challenged.

As far as I know, I have answered all your arguments. It is you who insists that "Just War Theory" as it currently stands is perfect and doesn't need to be updated for the case of the clearly just 2003 Iraq war.

It's not just me who is explaining this very simple concept to you. Hippyhead has given you a perfectly good analogy too. But you have a dogmatic belief that Just War Theory as it currently stands trumps the clear analogy of responding to a 911 call. Even to the point where you can watch video of a man having his tongue cut out and simply just yawn and quote Just War Theory to him.

So what this answer once again demonstrates is an unwillingness to try to understand someone else's position.

I'm not sure that is an accurate statement. I spend a hell of a lot of effort trying to understand why people don't come to the same conclusions as me, and have documented that here. That represents DECADES of investigation.

As just one example, you could be laboring under the "Just World Hypothesis" where you assume that there must be a good reason why an Iraqi man was having his tongue cut out, even though you can't quite put your finger on it.

In this case (correct me if I'm wrong), I assume the mental block is that you see the United Nations as some sort of moral authority (despite the large number of dictators it includes) and you have outsourced your own sense of right and wrong to them, instead of having confidence that you can do a better job than a bunch of dictators and other immoral has-beens.

If you pare this back to a pure philosophical discussion, where the whole world is full of humans, some of whom are being raped, what is your philosophical course of action? There's no such thing as the UN unless you create it. Would you create a body of immoral dictators? Sure, there may be a strategic reason to do so. But you are free to ignore it when you have a suitable dictator-free set of morals to choose instead.

We can argue strategy though. What is the strategic thing to do in a world with nuclear-armed dictators?

To counter, the dictators will be easier to knock off once they're bankrupt.

This may be technically true, but I don't think it is right to make life miserable for those unlucky enough to have been born into dictatorships. If I was in that position, I wouldn't want my life to be made miserable for years, I'd want an immediate liberation. So long as the US is able to fight totally lopsided wars, with allies no less, it seems the best course of action is to do so immediately. There is no need (anymore) to hang around to do nation-building, so you can be in and out in 3.5 weeks for the loss of 100 allied lives. The alternative is a potential nuclear 9/11.

Russia, the Mid East, Iran, Venezuela, all heavily dependent on oil income.

Well I don't consider Russia to be a dictatorship. It's just a low-quality democracy. We need to win them over diplomatically. America is at fault for recognizing Kosovo there. It was totally unnecessary. The Kosovars were perfectly safe with NATO troops on their territory. There was no need to poke Russia in the eye. And betray it for that matter. No NATO lives were lost thanks to Russia.

Communist China is the biggest dictatorship in human history. A competition between them and democratic countries may be the defining political issue of the 21st century. Point being, Iraq might be seen as small potatoes, Afghanistan even smaller. Should we perhaps stand back from a past we can do nothing about and focus on the future big picture? — Hippyhead

Every time we knock over a country like Afghanistan, Iraq or Iran, we get an allied democracy. I can't think of a better way of isolating China than having the entire rest of the world as liberal democracies, ready to turn the screws on China when the time is right. We can't directly attack China, the cost is too high, so let's focus on turning everyone else.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq cost trillions of dollars. What if we had taken every penny of that expense and invested it in say, solar energy? The goal would be to make MidEast oil irrelevant, thus pulling the rug out from under the power of all MidEast dictators. — Hippyhead

Bringing freedom to millions of people is the best foreign aid you can give. The alternative goal of leaving millions in slavery, and adding insult to injury by trying to reduce their standard of living, is a very sad direction to take.

9/11 was an act by non-state actors. Making Middle Eastern countries poorer will not do anything to address the mindset that would kill American civilians instead of protecting them. You need to move the entire world over to being protectors of America, or at the very least neutral. Thanks to 9/11, having hostile individuals is no longer acceptable. I do agree that the hostile governments should be taken down first, as they have the potential to do much more damage than individuals. But don't underestimate your enemy. Individuals proved on 9/11 that they can do major damage too. Just be grateful the helpful Mr Khan didn't give them nukes.

America has been warned just in the nick of time. Now is the time to take off the gloves.

Note that it was necessary to do nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq to prove that it is possible to deliver democracy by force of arms, even to Arabs. But now that we know there is no genetic barrier to worldwide democracy, it is time to liberate the rest of the world.

If you're worried about the cost of war, then stop all other forms of foreign aid and direct it all into wars of liberation which is a gift that keeps on giving. If you're worried about the American lives lost freeing others, then hire Gurkhas. Just get the job done. Or face a nuclear 9/11.

No, I'm saying that you cannot justify your evil with the evil of others.

It is not evil to liberate people. Losing your own blood and treasure for the freedom of others is the highest ideal we can strive for.

Do you always call them brown people? Is that especially relevant?

I have no idea. I don't know what motivates you to not just ignore the screams of brown people but actively try to stop them from being helped.

One of the two people who pushed the Bush administration into the war at every opportunity was quite clear about why he did it.

What did he actually say? Did he say "we need to lose blood and treasure so that we can control Iraq's oil"? If he did, he's an idiot, and he failed in his goal.

This is the most insane conversation I've ever been in. For all you know I was 10 years old during GWII (I wasn't, but...)

I'm talking about in hindsight. It's the position you need to adopt by opposing the action, even belatedly.

The police you keep referring to (the US military) were the criminals in this case. Is that better?

If you believe there is a law that prevents the US from liberating millions of Iraqis from state-slavery, you have a responsibility to:

1. Ignore that law for now.
2. Do your best to get that law changed.

How far have you progressed so far?

Yet to see anyone responsible for the illegal invasion of Iraq to be tried and jailed.

See above.

And does freedom for brown people have no value to you? — Paul Edwards

I want to further note that when it comes to your OWN human rights, you demand them to be protected to the nth degree. But when it comes to an Iraqi's human rights, there is nothing that can't be ignored. If Saddam had been raping babies and chopping off their feet, would THAT have been enough to goad you into action? Sadly, we both know the answer to that.

Ok Paul, I carried this ball for awhile. Handing the baton back to you. — Hippyhead

Thanks. You did a good job with your simple analogy. The same analogy you can find from a US soldier here.

What a damn silly comment. Surely you can see that it s silly. . — FrancisRay

I have no idea why you think it is a silly comment. It's a very accurate analogy. If you want the cops called to protect YOUR human rights, you should also call the cops to protect the human rights of OTHERS. It's a very simple philosophical question. It is amazing how people can come up with sophistry to explain why Saddam should have been left in charge to brutalize the Iraqi people.

Your argument here is absurd and not worth engaging with.

There is nothing absurd about it. It is the right position to start arguing from. Do you agree with the concept of calling the cops on an abusive neighbor or not? Then we can work our way up to Iraq. It's philosophy. This is a philosophy forum. It's not that complicated, it's something that you can answer yourself. Do you call the cops or not? As Hippyhead said, it's a yes/no question. No sophistry required.

The UK is in danger of having to do a trade deal with the US, and everybody I know is terrified of the possible consequences. We want nothing to do with your constant warmongering, military and political interference or approach to life. — FrancisRay

The British people don't speak with one voice. There are plenty of decent British people who supported liberating Iraq. Now the challenge is to deal with the immoral Brits who instead supported institutionalized rape and tongue-cutting.

Responding to 9/11 also involves fixing Britain.

I'm surprised to find we disagree on this. I suspect it's very difficult for you guys over there to see the wood for the trees, so powerful is the 24/7 political propaganda. — FrancisRay

Wow, what condescending tripe. The US has a very vibrant democracy, no different from yours.

At least you might ask yourself why Britain was about the only country to support Bush's war. Why not more?

There were plenty of countries that joined the coalition, including Australia. It is true that the UK was better than Australia though, providing 7 times as many troops on a per capita basis, and being on par with the US. Impressive indeed.

But more important than the number of countries (I counted 40 here, which is a significant chunk of the world), is the fact that there were decent people in every country who supported freedom for Iraqis. And what is important is whether this IDEOLOGY of freedom is right or wrong. Even if 0 countries supported liberating Iraq, the ideology stands on its own merits. So you need to address the actual ideology.

Also note that 50% of Iraqis themselves supported the liberation. That makes millions of Iraqis more moral than you.

We must be careful here. I do not want to be rude to an entire nation, but I wonder if you realise the vast extent of the disgust for US foreign policy.

Assuming that is true, it just shows that the US is far more moral than the rest of the world. It's certainly more moral than my country, Australia, because the immoral Australians withdrew our troops from Iraq before the job was complete, leaving our long-standing ally America to fend for herself. Totally disgusting and I hope a future Australian government eventually apologizes for that. Specifically I expect the right-wing party that supported troops in Iraq to apologize for the left-wing party that pulled them out.

The idea that the USA is a democracy is a game of words. It looks like a dictatorship to me. — FrancisRay

Have you not seen the media bashing Trump, the opposition party bashing Trump and ahead in polls? You're calling that a dictatorship? The same as Saddam?

How do you actually manage to cross a road safely? "That's not a car, it's a squirrel".

Then just to waltz in, take control of a country through a military occupation and demand a highly function democracy where there hasn't been any, when the various population groups have suffered genocide done by the others and want their own country and independence, is simply condescending Western hubris that basically is totally indifferent to the reality in the country. It is simply just smug self posturing likely to hide other objectives. — ssu

Expecting Iraqis to be as intelligent and sensible as Americans is the opposite of condescending.

And the fact that they are not is exactly why the West needs to get in there and fix the problem.

Note that x% of Iraqis are just like us, so that's a bloody good start. There's no genetic or religious barrier to being just like us. Now over the course of decades or centuries we need to bump x up to 99. As part of responding to 9/11. We need sensible individuals worldwide. Or at least enough sensible people that an individual nutcase finds it hard to find organize a terror group to attack the US.

Iran would not be different, there would be a near-endless post-war guerilla offensive by non-state actors and the end result would almost certainly be worse for Iranians than what they have right now. — Judaka

This is why we need 20 liberations under our belt. We STILL don't have enough data to understand war, and in the long term, we need that. In my opinion Iran will be quick and painless. All you need to do is reuse the old security forces and you can be in and out in 3.5 weeks flat.

Or even less than 3.5 weeks, as the Iranian people may rise up in revolution as soon as they have planes overhead to protect them from automatic weapons.

We really need to find out.

By the way, what the hell do you people think fascism is? The debate between you and Kenosha Kid has been incredibly dumb.

I agree. He's the one calling anyone who disagrees with his sick ideology a fascist.

Like Abu Ghraib? — Kenosha Kid

The US soldiers did that (hazing terrorists) ILLEGALLY and they were TRIED and JAILED. Where was your mock concern when Saddam was LEGALLY chopping out people's tongues and committing REAL torture against innocents?

I happen to think we should invade the USA to impose regime change, and you seem to think it would be fine to do this. So my army has support on the ground.

The US is already a secular capitalist liberal democracy which is the best system we know of. I don't like Trump personally, and he will be gone in 0 or 4 years. If he is not gone after 4 years, in principle I support liberating the US from a Trump dictatorship. The rest of the world really needs to maneuver into a position where we can in fact liberate the US. That means the nuclear weapons need to go.

But that's a really long-term plan. In the short term I'm just trying to eliminate enemy dictators.

Because, as I've explained, I'm not a psychopath. You might get off in hundreds of thousands of innocent people dying

Almost all of the death toll was due to sectarian violence, not war. Are you saying we should let religious bigots decide whether they can enslave a population or not? And does freedom for brown people have no value to you? Brown people shouldn't be fight and die in any fight for freedom? They should just accept eternal slavery? Is that what you would want for yourself, if you were enslaved? Better to be enslaved than have a risk of being killed?

to enable America to control Iraqi oil, but I cannot.

Have you ever met even ONE person who supported the 2003 Iraq war so that America could control oil? If you have met such a person, they are both an idiot, and they failed in their mission, because the Iraqi people are the ones who control Iraqi oil now (instead of Saddam, your preference), and they sell it on world markets for world prices (just like your hero Saddam did).

Are you seriously equating criticising a country for war crimes with invading a country illegally, bombing seven shades of shit out of it, bombing hospitals, weddings, funerals and schools, and torturing prisoners? There are very few intelligent right-wingers, I suppose.

The problem here is that there are very few non-racist left-wingers. Iraq was suffering a holocaust and you just yawned, as it was only brown people being tortured, mutilated, raped and murdered, and brown people are little more than savages in your eyes, and they certainly can't handle democracy. Not only didn't you care about the welfare of the Iraqi people, you actively tried to stop the cops when they tried to end the holocaust.

You mentioned that US soldiers also committed crimes, which is true. But do you understand the difference between LEGAL and ILLEGAL crimes? When Saddam was committing his crimes, it was LEGAL for him to do so. The police were on the side of the criminal. An Iraqi woman could be LEGALLY raped. Which means the entire population of Iraq didn't even have the right to not be raped. Or have the right to keep their tongue in their mouth.

When the US commits crimes, they are TRIED and JAILED, because it is ILLEGAL.

All this is, plus the war, is done to the best of our ability. We're not perfect. The US police are not perfect when they respond to a 911 call either. That doesn't mean you don't call 911 when you hear screams from your neighbor's house. Only someone truly sick would listen to the screams from their neighbors, or Iraqi women, and then not just not call the police, but complain about the police when they are responding.

Why does Australian law or Dutch law or UK law prohibit you from travelling across the country and attacking a person you believe is a murderer and rapist? You'd be convicted of murder is you did. Why is that? What are the specific exemptions to that and why?

The operative word there is "believe". People have all sorts of faulty beliefs, so if you only have a belief, and a police force as exists in a modern liberal democracy exists, you should report your "belief" to the competent authorities to deal with.

If you see an actual crime *in progress* you are allowed to act rather than wait for the authorities to arrive.

Now back to Iraq. You probably subscribe to the theory that the UN regulates the use of force. But I don't see a collection of thugs as some sort of moral authority to decide when force is used. I see them as a collection of immoral thugs.

So I will pay lip service to the UN, as I don't want dictators to start wars the same way we do, but I will ignore the UN whenever it is strategic to do so. And my argument is that you should be doing the exact same thing. Don't let dictators or other immoral actors decide US policy. Do the right thing instead! And we can debate what the "right thing" is in an open forum. We have more scope for debate than our government does. Our government has to swear blind that they want "just one more war". We can instead talk about how we're planning to liberate the whole damn world.

Sorry, but there simply is no fucking 911 to call for a police in this World when it comes to sovereign states. It's anarchy out their. — ssu

But this is exactly the heart of the problem. We're dealing with a world that has traditionally been rife with dictators. The dictators are never going to agree that democratic nations are the ones who should be judge, jury and executioner of other dictators, but that's exactly the sort of thing needed for justice. It is the democratic countries that have just governance.

So we need a "plan" to deal with the world as it is. YOU should come up with that plan yourself. Then you can compare the plan with what the US government is doing, and maybe email them any suggestions for improvements. If we were all planning on liberating the rest of the world, to end the screams coming from next door, then when the US (et al) executed their plan to liberate Iraq, it would likely have dove-tailed into your own plan.

The US shouldn't need to sell this war to you. You should be selling your liberation plan to them *in advance*.

And note that your plan will necessarily call for deception. You can't let the dictators know you're coming for all of them, as we need the help of allied dictators against non-allied dictators, and we don't want a hostile "dictator alliance". We don't have the luxury of only rubbing shoulders with fellow democracies. The world hasn't yet reached that stage of development. One day it will be a requirement for entering the UN that you are a democracy, and that any country that has a military coup is immediately subjected to a UN liberation. But we're not there yet.

The threat seems too distant to many folks for them to take it seriously. — Hippyhead

Even without the threat that Saddam posed, there was the fact that he was raping and mutilating Iraqis. I don't know how anyone can look at video of Saddam's goons chopping out someone's tongue and not be spurred into action. At the very least the anti-war should be saying "Well I disapprove of the war, but I am ELATED that Saddam is no longer able to rape and mutilate and torture and murder the Iraqi people - I jumped for joy when Saddam's statue fell and the Iraqi people were free".

It may just be simple racism. They may think that Arabs are just a bunch of animals who do cruel things to each other and that's just the nature of the beast. That's why there were no shortage of people who said that the Arabs couldn't handle democracy and it was a fool's errand to bring them democracy.

Can you also answer Benkei's message? He wants me to wait until tomorrow before I explain that if he is raping someone I will kill him regardless of any rules preventing me from doing so. If I can get away with it, anyway. If I can't get away with it because his name is Uday and I'm an Iraqi citizen I will instead wait for a US liberation and support that.

Just like I think the police should adhere to rules regardless of the victim, so is it here

As I said before in this thread, if you believe there is a "rule" that protects Saddam's "right" to rape women and mutilate men, then you should:

1. Ignore that rule for now.
2. Do your best to get that rule changed.

I believe this to be a sound philosophical position. But I'm here to open myself up to the free marketplace of ideas.

This is the third straw man you've raised and the first one I'm reacting to. You should respond to what I say not to things you make up. — Benkei

Sorry, I don't see any straw man. If you opposed the liberation of Iraq, it meant that you wanted to see a criminal like Saddam remain in power to continue his crimes against humanity. That is the consequences of your action. Look up "consequentialism".

No, that is not my position.
— Paul Edwards

That's the consequence of ignoring intent. Jesus are you daft or something? — Benkei

I have admitted that I am unsure what terminology underpins my position here.

On the one hand I couldn't care less if Bush ordered the liberation of Iraq because he hates presidents whose name begins with "S", or any other daft reason.

Perhaps there is a "secondary intent" or something. Basically he issued an order of "liberate Iraq and confiscate any WMD you find". It wasn't pure liberation, as there was intent to "steal" someone else's WMD. But the initial thing to do, prior to confiscating WMD, was simply to liberate the country. Bush intended for his generals to follow his orders and liberate Iraq. I wanted the same thing. It is something I believe everyone should get behind.

I'm not sure that a stupid "initial intent" is relevant unless/until it morphs into some other action, like invading Australia because Scott Morrison's name starts with an "S" too.

I can also get behind the idea of encouraging people to have a sensible "initial intent" on top of any "secondary intent".

I suppose it's good to know you think murderers should be excused as long as you don't like the victims.

It is you who excused Saddam's murders and tried to prevent the police from arresting the murderer. Maybe it's you who doesn't like Iraqis.

There can be multiple fascists and, indeed, multiple fascists at any one time.

Even if you wish to incorrectly label America as fascist, why didn't you play off one fascist against another to get the end result, which is the non-fascist Iraqi people electing a non-fascist Iraqi government?

The fact that you recognise America as the police of the sovereign nation of Iraq is an implicit acknowledgement of its kind of fascism.

And you seem to be policing America, despite America being a sovereign nation. I don't have a problem with you policing America when it does something wrong (which it does sometimes do, such as recognizing Kosovo independence). But I expect you to sing America's praises when it does something beautiful like replace a cruel fascist dictator with a non-cruel non-fascist democracy.

I politely decline on grounds of nauseating distaste for fascism.

It is Saddam who was the fascist. He was brought to justice by anti-fascists. If you claim to be an anti-fascist you should have joined the campaign. Instead, you did your best to leave a fascist in charge of an entire country.

I am curious at what mental blocks exist that prevent people from understanding that criminals need to be brought to justice, and whether there is a combination of words that can persuade them of this. Or whether it really does require goons knocking on their door before they return to reality. — Paul Edwards

Note that as previously mentioned, I did manage to get a Russian to flip position, and he explained his mental process here. Basically if you cease to be a nationalist, then new, ideological dividing lines open up. It is truly fascinating. But so far I haven't been able to repeat it.

Right, my options are: become an Iraqi citizen, train as a police officer, and single-handedly arrest the dictator of my new country, or support war crimes against said country.

No, all anyone is asking you to do is be a citizen who supports the police (or a posse) who is in the process of arresting a criminal. You don't personally need to go to Iraq, there are sufficient volunteers willing to do that already. All anyone is asking you to do is say "thanks America", like I did here.

I suppose the question all debaters of any flavor need to ask themselves this Hallow's Eve is: "how can one be certain the utopia one seeks isn't actually a dystopia of the worst kind?" — Outlander

This is actually a formula for doing nothing, because you can never be certain of anything. If you see a woman being raped in your neighborhood, maybe it is just an optical illusion, so there's no need to call the police. And anyhow, the police will come by car, polluting the air with CO2 which will cause global warming which will lead to the destruction of the earth. Nah, just ignore her screams.

I have a belief that our secular capitalist liberal democracies are better than cruel dictatorships, so seek to spread the "best technology" we know of. x% of any target country agrees, and they are our allies. x = 87 in Afghanistan, 50 in Iraq, and who knows in Iran. We need to get about 20 liberations under our belt before we can get a decent average and standard deviation. And even then, it's only my allies I really care about, whatever percentage that is.

Few people mourn Saddam; we can all agree the world is better off without him.

Surely this is the basis for a meeting of the minds?

Instead of sitting back and expecting Bush to articulate a perfect reason for liberating Iraq, why weren't you actively stating the case for liberating Iraq yourself? Then, when Bush came along, you could have said "well that's nuts, but it fits into my objective anyway, so go right ahead".

The war crime in my opinion is to stand in the way of the police as they try to bring the criminal Saddam to justice. And as I said, you should have been part of the police yourself.

Are you just here to bitch about Muslims?

No. There are Muslims on both sides of the war. 87% of Afghans supported non-Muslim US over their local Muslim dictator. These people are staunch allies.

On 9/11 America was attacked by:
1. Religious bigots
2. Racists

And those exist in every country and every religion. Responding to 9/11 ultimately involves cleaning up America itself. But first things first. Let's get the enemy governments defeated.

↪Benkei

By analogy, you're now proposing that murdering someone and killing someone accidently are the same thing, because intent doesn't matter.

No, that is not my position. — Paul Edwards

I've been trying to reconcile this with the intent of the Iraq war. If Bush's intent was to see lots of dead Arab Muslims, that would have been wrong. But since the *actual order* given to his troops was "liberate Iraq", then it was the right thing to do.

And certainly no-one should have been standing in the way of the order "liberate Iraq".

I'm not sure if this correctly addresses the analogy. Maybe someone else can help isolate and resolve the philosophical argument here.