jsholty4690 wrote:got tonkaed wrote:Despite any issues that could be brought up about the Gas itself, it does not retroactively justify very much if thats where your going with this.
Do you even know what mustard gas does? It sears the lungs so badly that you begin to cough up chunks of your lungs. It leaves horrible welts on your skin, it burns your eyes. In short, if you come into contact with mustard gas, you would wish you had died.
If that doesn't justify going to war I don't know what does. Look, Sadam is the only leader that has used any form of chemical warfare since WWI (there's no significant evidence to prove Japan used it proir and during WWII), he used it against his own people and the people of Iran. And if anyone doesn't believe he wouldn't have used it again, they need to wake up from their fantasy world
I am aware of what mustard gas is and its horrible impact on the body when one is attacked with it. Few people debate the starting premise "Saddam was an inhumane tyrant who did terrible things to his people." I was making a longer post about this that got eaten by the internet but why not just do it again.
There are a few clear grounds on which a regime change can be justified given what we may know about the mustard gas. Setting aside momentarily that this does not really equate to the WMD justification that was presented to the American public, despite the fact that mustard gas is terrible, none of the grounds on which it could be justifed end up standing up on balance, in my view at least.
The obvious extension of the intial premise, and one that is not universally agreed upon is that "Saddam was an inhumane tyrant who did terrible things to his people and was ready to do them to us or supply weapons to those who did as well". Given the relatively scant amount of evidence that the world has found regarding WMD's in general it is very difficult to say what Saddam was able or prepared to do. It is at this point that one enters one of the fundamental questions of the national security platform President Bush began, "What effect has your action or inaction had on national security?" Certainly the regime change has created potential national security positives for the US. It is far more difficult to ascertain if there were potential national security negatives out of the decision, but they should no be discounted. In a similar way, we should not discount what we may have gained by going in if we are to postulate the outcome of never having gone in, in the first place.
Given the difficulties in knowing what classified documents say (and the regrettably stance of both the current and previous administration about open access to information) we can at the very least look at the cost and attempt to justify the potential national security gains against them. The costs are of course staggering: incredible loss of life on both sides, a sizeable amount of resources dedicated (both now and going forward-even as we scale back) regional instability -highlighted by a rise to prominence of a potentially existential threat to our chief ally in the region, complications in an effective grand military strategy and an increase in fiscal irresponiblity, not to mention very difficult legal and moral challenges that are still unresolved.
While no one's analysis of the issue apologizes for what Saddam was, it seems clear that the potential national security gains are not justified retroactively from the costs we have incurred without disregarding what we have paid in costs or overstating the gains that are almost impossible to quanitfy. Further arguments along the lines that "Freedom is not free" not only do not advance the original argument, but should the costs truly outweigh the gains only diminsh the sacrifice of the Americans who either lost or had their lives greatly altered as a result.
There are of course other justifications that could be presented. The United States has at times and perhaps on a whole still does view itself as a beacon of values it espouses, perhaps to the level of a moral authority on some of the issues. Saddam as was mentioned previously is a terrible tyrant and did terrible things, as a result some would argue we should have done something about, despite the fact that the costs we incur may outweight personal gains to the United States.
This claim falls quite short as the United States ceded a fair amount (if not a substanial amount) of the moral authority it perhaps had established with its willingness to preemptively act in a way that bordered on unilateral action. You may argue, well if it wasnt wrong, what does it matter if international opinion was against the action? Although a fair question, it does not take into account all of the times in which the United States has failed to act against people who were just as bad if not worse. We do not have to look very long into recent history to see genocides that were regrettably worse where we did nothing. There are plenty of tyrants in the world and the US -upon realizing that transformational diplomacy by itself had not done quite what it set out to do, has not exactly taken up too many of those causes. Granted in the case of China there may be strategic reasons not to do so - but again if you are going to justify such an action based on moral necessity, costs should be considered as more important than gains.
Even when tied together these two basic justifications fall rather flat compared to their responses. I am discounting at the moment the terrible middle east policy outcome that arose out of it, though I can comment on that as well.
To make a short story long and then short again, mustard gas does not retroactively justify the choice of action, if that is where Gabon is going, at least not in my view.
