Lots of cyber-ink has been spent on the topic of Iraq and whether or not a full court press by the U.S. would be considered a just war. I have two things to say.
1. The war on Iraq didn’t end in 1991, it only should have. I mean G.H.W. Bush should have removed Saddam from power when he had the chance. Saddam was laughing then, laughed when Bush had polyps removed after he left office, and was laughing all the way up to the time we began to get serious about another full-scale invasion. We’ve been at war with Iraq for more than a decade, covertly and overtly. Surely the covert actions have escalated in recent months. We’ve been enforcing the no-fly zone since I was in college – more than a decade. I mention the length of time here to give the debate a relevant historical perspective rather than making references to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We’re not talking about a new war, we’re talking about ending a war that has been going on for quite a while. Then comes the occupation, the new government with our government’s seal of approval, and some thing else for former super powers (like Russia) and future super powers (like China) to be bitter about.
2. The campaign against Iraq is part of a larger war. We’re fighting a war against terrorism, which I equate with violent and destablizing political and religious elements in the Middle East. A campaign against Iraq is not separate from this war, it is part of it. How do we judge the whole war? Should Iraq be a target? Is Iraq the most obvious target? I personally think there are other enemies we can easily indentify as a more dangerous threat – those countries funding terrorism directly.