Just a bit of a hypothetical question...... 1. Assume no lies from Bushies 2. Assume no attempts to tie terrorism and Iraq 3. Screw the WMD talk 4. Forget about the UN for a second My question would be this..... Is removing a ruthless dictator who has a poor human rights record and gassed innocent Kurds enough of a justification for the US to go to war? Obviously, politically imho, it would be a near impossible sell. The risking of US troops for no threat to the US. I know we can get into the argument well what about country X....? We could do this until the cows come home. But my question is is the above enough, generally for one to start a war?
Good question. Does that means we also must invade Myanmar, China, Zimbabwe, North Korea or any number of nations that regularly appear on Amnesty International reports? Given the USA's record of supporting dictatorial regimes when it suits the interests of our leaders and their paymasters, will we have to invade ourselves? Also, does this mean we'd have to invade any country in which people work under conditions of near-slavery in sweatshops in order to artificially prop up our standard of living? Hmmmm...
He did say it was hypothetical. It's a thought exercise on the question of "What, if anything, is a 'just war'?". Run with it.
It might have been a good justification when he was being particularly bad to the Kurds and the southern groups, 10-15 years ago. But it is not a good justification now.
I think it's a bang-for-the-buck question. I could get behind air support for the Christians and animists in Southern Sudan fighting against the Muslims. As we saw in Afghanistan, the US Air Force is gonna be the decisive factor in a war between two backward armies. But I would, in general, be against starting a war. To make this applicable to Iraq, maybe (and I say maybe, because I don't know enough to be definitive) we could "encourage" the Shiites to set up their own nation, or at least be as autonomous as the Kurds, and use our Air Force (and probably arms shipments to Shiitistan) to ensure they can pull it off.