“She thinks that WMD was the sole cases belli.”
– Dermot O’Sullivan

That’s what we were told:

The other excuses were mentioned – Saddam’s prior use of chemical weapons, for instance – though without the annoying detail that the US had supplied him with materials to make those weapons – but they weren’t the “single question”.

“There are 4 points by which Iraq broke international law.”

The US “broke international law” many times over the past several decades. And still does.

No Problem. Go to Archive dot org and type in Christopher Hitchens in the search bar. You’ll get all kinds of audio and video files

Interesting read Ashley, haven’t seen that before. Thank you.

Daddylove subscribes to the Robert Wright school of whitewashing and whataboutism

A excerpt from Christopher Hitchens discussing with Robert Wright, his rationale for justifying the Iraq invasion

“There are 4 conditions, it is generally thought, under which a state, a government can lose its sovereignty. One is if it invades and occupies the territories of neighboring states. The other is if it commits genocide. That’s if you are a signatory to the genocide convention, which we are. The third is violations of at least the spirit of the non-proliferation treaty. In other words, fooling around with weapons of mass destruction. And Forth is giving aid and comfort and hospitality to nihilistic, international gangster groups. Iraq was guilty of all four of those things on more than one occasion. It was a serial offender under all four. It hadn’t been punished for it at the time it was doing those things. It put itself way outside the law. And after the attempt to annex Kuwait, to destroy a neighboring country, not just to occupy and invade it but to abolish its existence – a member state of the UN and the Arab League, it signed a ceasefire with the United States on condition of which its regime was allowed to remain in power. Many of us thought at the time that was a mistake. It continued to violate ALL of the terms of that ceasefire. It seems to me that it would have been much better to put an end to the Saddam Hussein regime in 1991. It would have spared the Iraqi people some terrible years of suffering and misery and it would have shown that the UN was serious about disciplining members that don’t have any respect for international law. But if you believe that the only violations of international law, or the only important ones, are committed by those who considered Saddam Hussein to be an outlaw, I certainly know where you’re coming from. I’m familiar with that viewpoint.”

“YOU DON’T GET TO INVADE OTHER COUNTRIES AND KILL OR JAIL THEIR LEADERS BECAUSE YOU DON’T LIKE THEM.”

Ok, tou have no idea who Saddam Hussein is. But why shout about it?

Daddylove, can you cite those international laws?

Have you considered the weighting of contradictory laws within the UN, the ICC and other international bodies?

What international legal expertise do you have?

Which lies did the US spread?

In what way were there no consequences for the US in spreading these alleged lies?

How much time have you spent discovering the crimes of the Saddam regime?

Have you wondered ‘what if I am wrong?’

Have you attempted to construct the contrary argument to your anti-war thesis?

What set of conditions might persuade you that the war (by the west) was justified?

Does such a possibility exist in your head?

What, if any, set of criteria would you establish which determines that your mistrust of the west’s motives overrides the egregiousness of a non-western regime?

It’s not inexcusable to intervene to save the lives of millions of people. Its inexcusable NOT to do so.

It was easy to make a moral case for the intervention, but the problem faced by Blair and Bush was in making the legal case. They could have made that case by persuading the UNSC to resolve for an intervention based on Saddam’s treatment of his population. Then, they would have had both the legal and moral authority to go into Iraq and stay there as long as necessary to properly rebuild the country. Unfortunately they chose not to do that, and I still don’t understand why… perhaps they cynically believed that voters in the UK and US did not care enough about the lives of ordinary people in far-off Iraq.

So they chose to make a case based on Saddam’s imminent threat to the west via WMDs — a threat that turned out to be illusory. Because of this — and the immediate collapse of the legal case when Saddam was toppled and the WMDs failed to materialise — the coalition lost its reason for being there. With the threat non-existent, the public just wanted our troops out of Iraq as soon as possible, and there was no time to clean up the mess.

A kind of absolutist pacifism is very popular and completely deluded. It’s something that Hitch fought against continuously, as did George Orwell. Writing during WW2: “Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist… The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security … both the Germans and the Japanese do all they can to encourage the spread of pacifism in British and American territories … In so far as it takes effect at all, pacifist propaganda can only be effective against those countries where a certain amount of freedom of speech is still permitted; in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.”