War! What is it good for!?

Amy responds to the Just War posting with the following comments:

We were the aggressor, not Iraq.
Diplomatic avenues were not exhausted.

Regarding the first issue. Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991. We went to war and booted them out. There was no end to the war. Only a cease-fire. A cease-fire based on easy to understand conditions. But it was still a state of war. We enforced a no-fly zone and sanctions were “enforced.” I use quotes there because the Oil for Food program was so corrupt it is a joke. But you won’t hear about it in the main-stream media because the UN is a pure and good organization(tongue planted firmly in cheek). Funny, all the blame America first folks who blamed the sanctions for the suffering of the people in that country never seemed to want to look at the UN allowing Saddam to take the $ from the Oil for Food program and bribe the UN, other countries(Russia, France and Germany, thank you very much) and spend it on his own palaces. That was the America’s fault. But I digress.

Saddam was continually locking onto our aircraft enforcing the no-fly zone and firing missiles at them. This is an act of war. This is a violation of the cease-fire. This is grounds enough to end the cease-fire.

And by Amy’s logic, we never should have gone to war with Germany in WWII. We had no plans to declare war on Germany. Germany declared war on us. So we declared war in return when we declared war on Japan. Germany hadn’t attacked us at the time.

That aside, Iraq was still the aggressor by attacking our aircraft enforcing the no-fly zone.

I’m not sure what other Diplomatic avenues there were to try. As I described above, many French, Russian and German businesses had been bribed using oil vouchers, and this includes many diplomats and bureaucrats. There was no way those 3 countries were ever going to support us. There were 12+ resolutions from the wonderful UN. And nothing happened. Nothing. Saddam kicked the inspectors out in the late 90’s. He allowed them back in when it looked like war was imminent but still wouldn’t let them go where they needed to go.

I constantly hear this “we should have tried more diplomacy!” Like what? I hate to sound like the President since he isn’t my favorite President by any means. But , should we have gone for 13 resolutions? 14? 25? At what point do you actually go to war?

But judging from her response, and I kindly thank her for it, Amy says a war is just if we were attacked and all diplomatic options were exhausted. But #1 can be waived if it is for humanitarian reasons. Is this right? What is the justification for humanitarian reasons? What has to exist for it?

Amy said that this current war could be justified for humanitarian reasons. Well, if you support it for those reasons, then why not support it? Arguing about what the justification is certainly grounds for discussion. But it doesn’t make it an unjust war. I don’t think anyone can really say that country was better off with Saddam in control.

Amy goes on to say that the war was justified by the administration for the following 2 reasons:

There are weapons of mass destruction that are an imminent danger to the US.
Saddam Hussein was directly implicated in 9-11. (And thus, had indirectly attacked us)

Regarding #1, the President never said there was an imminent danger. In his state of the union address before the war he asked, do we wait until it is imminent?(I’m paraphrasing but that’s close to what he said)
Go back and find me a single quote from the President where he says the threat from Iraq was imminent. It’s not there. And I would prefer we not wait until it is imminent. In this day and age, imminent does not exist, mainly because if it is imminent, it won’t be for long. It takes about a second to go from imminent to “It just happened.”

And for all the carping on WMD, many people in the know seem to think that he didn’t destroy them. They are just in Syria and were transported there before the war. But aside from that, we HAVE found canisters of nerve agent. Certainly not the stockpiles we expected. But see above for that.

And for #2. Nowhere was Saddam directly implicated in 9-11. If you can find it, or that quote from the president on #1, I’ll buy you and Heather a steak dinner next time I visit. My word. They said there were ties to Al Qaeda and that has been documented (check the 9-11 report) but the President never said there was a direct connection between Iraq and 9-11.