The Iraq War retrospective Thread

[Jester]

It would have been worth discussing if say you had any position in the middle ground. But, your post and its extreme view means that no, there is no middle ground worth discussing. It's beyond my capability to reason with you if that is your position.

It was clear you missed the concepts of "Just cause" because the author even discussed your misinterpretation of it. The author, refutes every point you make. Which leads me to believe you didn't read it at all before posting.

If you would care to point me to where you are getting this, it would be appreciated. A quick read of the article reveals no such refutation. Perhaps its in the footnotes somewhere. Most of the article appears to be dealing with ways in which otherwise just wars become unjust due to failure in dealing with the postwar situation, the necessity of Jus Post Bellum legitimacy. Fine and good, I agree, but not the point here, except that the failure to establish such a peace will simply be another failure of the Iraq war in terms of legitimacy.

And no, I didn't read it at all prior to now, except to find the immediate citation you gave, and its surrounding context. Since you presented the 6 principles "for discussion", and merely indicated where you got it from, I thought that was what you wanted to discuss. Apparently you were just setting a tiger trap, but nevermind that, if this is what you'd actually like, then fine.

I am willing to accept the idea that there exist just wars. I am not willing to accept that the criteria for them are very malleable, and if you're wanting to claim that Iraq was such a war, you'll have to do better than just yelling "gotcha" when I don't read every article you link to. This is not me being inflexible, it is me applying well-accepted notions of Just War to the Iraq conflict, rather than simply making excuses for the United States.

-Jester