C. Hitchens & Justifications for Iraq

A few thoughts, in no particular order. I should note that I usually post only when I have something to say that hasn't already been said somewhere else. Or so I'd like to believe.

1. C. Hitchens. I can't say that I understand the man, or that I agree with him all that much. Still, I think he at least has the courage of his convictions, which is more than can be said for many of us. But, I find I have difficulties with some of his recent pronouncements, such as the Weekly Standard piece, or his performance last month on The Daily Show (Jon Stewart's show). Here's my first problem with his arguments about Iraq. He may well be right that dethroning Hussein was the right thing to do. But the problem with his approach is that while it may be morally superior, in that it is really a humanitarian argument, it ignores the unpleasant fact that the Bush people did not use that argument as a justification for invading the country. And this, I think, is the reason that so many people would like to leave the affair. Since we were sold a bill of goods, why should we continue to put up with being there? It's all well and good to point out how bad the Baathists were—and I am willing to accept everything Hitchens says on that point. But that's not the reason the US government gave as the reason for the invasion, probably for the simple reason that we wouldn't have gone there, any more than we would have invaded Bosnia or Rwanda. A war started under a false pretext that bogs down will necessarily run into problems, just as this one has done, because it would not have started but for the enabling lies (use inaccuracies if you think that word is too strong—the result is the same). This is another way of saying words do matter.

So at the end, then, we are left with an awkward variation of the ends justifies the means: it's ok that we fibbed our way into this war because it was for a good cause. There may be some scenarios where it's ok, even necessary to lie to achieve a policy. I don't think war should be one of them, as there is something troubling about killing people, ours or theirs, in the service of a rationale that we know is incorrect. And, as we see, once the original, unsustainable rationale is exposed as hollow, the will to see the fight through, which was inextricably linked to that rationale, evaporates, leaving the promoters of the war in an untenable position. Put more rhetorically, we can convince people to fight, kill, and die for certain ideas, but it's dangerous to ask them to fight for something that is demonstrably false.

A related problem with Hitchens' argument is his specific justification for the Iraq war. So far as I can tell, he seems to be suggesting that we saved lives by going in when we did. The problem with that idea is that it too is a switch, though a different kind of switch than the rationale switch. Here, he's adopted a utilitarian justification for an action that is a moral action. There are countries that pose demonstrably greater risks to the US than Iraq did: North Korea, for example. So Iraq was a moral imperative rather than a utilitarian imperative. That's fine, but he's adopted, at least implicitly, a utilitarian argument—means justifies ends—in the service of a moral good. This seems to be a deeply incoherent form of thinking. Since invading Iraq is a moral rather than a utilitarian exercise, the justification should be of the same kind. It is deeply incoherent to justify a moral act (invading Iraq) through a utilitarian strategy (it's ok to mislead people if that gets us into the war). It may well be that there are times when the ends justify the means, or it is either morally acceptable or otherwise useful to mislead the citizenry. War does not appear to fit into those categories as a general proposition (that is not to say that it doesn't happen), and this particular conflict seems an excellent example of the danger of employing mix and match rationales.

My second quarrel involves his "test" of when it's ok to invade a country. The problem with his four conditions is that most countries would probably flunk them. The US certainly would. So should we invade ourselves?