LENIN'S TOMB: Iraqnophobia and the Moral High Ground.

Monday, July 19, 2004

Iraqnophobia and the Moral High Ground. posted by Richard Seymour

The war on Iraq was "illegal". It was "a crime". The hegemony of the law is complete when it comes to be conflated with moral judgments - because what is actually implied by such statements is that it was morally wrong, and not merely that it failed to conform to the letter of the law.

Hence, Norman Geras today asks "How Could it Have Been Wrong?" . The use of legalistic language in opposing the war, Norm says, indicates the "moral failure" of the antiwar Left. This language is not unfamiliar - Hitchens and Cohen are apt to discuss opposition to the war in precisely that tone. He cites a quotation from a commentator at "Iraq the Model" :

You cannot tell a man that saving him and his family from torture, humiliation and death was a mistake and it should’ve not been done because it’s illegal. This is almost an insult to Iraqis to hear someone saying that this war was illegal. It means that our suffering for decades meant nothing and that formalities and the stupid rules of the UN (that rarely function) are more important than the lives of 25 million people.

This merits serious consideration. Who on earth would waste their time arguing over such issues as legality when there are people being tortured and murdered? If this was happening in your neighbour's house, wouldn't you break and enter to stop it, regardless of the consequences? To oppose the war on such a basis does strike one as a moral failure, and also an intellectual one.

However, the purely legalistic arguments against the war were roundly rejected by the bulk of antiwar activists, and certainly by the Stop the War Coalition. That does not mean they have not availed themselves of legal arguments where it was advantageous to do so. But, as Lindsey German told demonstrators before the war, "we should say no to the war, whatever the UN decides". That certainly suggests that the case against war reached far beyond the boundaries of international law.

Indeed, without bothering to look too far afield, I can come up with a few objections myself:

1) The agents proposing to dispose of the dictatorship have an appalling human rights record themselves, and can therefore not be entrusted with the vital task of emancipating oppressed people.

2) There would be a very real, palpable human cost of the war that would be incurred by the people supposedly being liberated. The cost that was involved was less than it could have been, and yet almost intolerably high. The utilitarian point that Saddam would probably have killed more won't do, for reasons I now come to.

3) The evidence that Iraqis would have preferred an invasion over other options is slight. Iraqis are pleased that Saddam has gone, and that is not to be dismissed. The possibility of alternatives, however, was rarely discussed by those proposing war in any serious way. The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, Iraqi Democrats Against the War, the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq and others have argued that the overthrow of Saddam could have been achieved in a much less bloody and unfortunate way through international solidarity with the Iraqi resistance. This doesn't seem unreasonable in the wake of 1989 and all that. Chomsky's suggestion that lifting sanctions on food and medical supplies would have helped dovetails nicely with this perspective. Such alternative strategies for a humanitarian Left are not to be dismissed either.

4) The Iraq war was not just about Iraq. Neoconservatives who proselytised on behalf of the war have been very clear on that, and if anyone had any doubts, PNAC documents and the US National Security Strategy have made it clear. This war was primarily about US geopolitical strategy in the post-Cold War era. It seeks to prevent the emergence of a rival hegemon, and the doctrine of "preemptive strike" is part of that. The war on Iraq was a test run of the "preemptive strike" and it fundamentally changed the rules of the international game, making it permissible for the US to launch strikes on nation-states it disapproves of, whether the regime merits overthrow or not. It has, in short, made the world potentially much more dangerous, encouraging nuclear proliferation on the part of weak states (none of them are going to accept a sanctions and inspections regime in the near future) and allowing the strongest state near carte blanche on the international scene.

5) One entirely predictable consequence of this war has been the continuing bloodbath in Iraq. This bears on all previous points. Since intention and agency can not be separated from consequence without doing some violence to the facts, we are entitled to consider whether the motives behind the attack have caused the occupation to degenerate in the way that it so obviously has. In the first month or so after the Hussein regime fell, it could have been argued that such instability as did persist was composed of dying remnants of the old regime. That can no longer be credibly argued. The escalation in anti-occupation violence and opinion has been coterminous with the growing political failure of the occupiers. Had the motives been as benign as those often imputed to the Bush administration, it is unlikely that this mess would have ensued.

One can add others, even legal arguments, provided they are taken together as part of the same context of dissent. But those, for me, are the crucial points. I'd like to make a few other comments on the suggestions which have appeared at Normblog and Iraq the Model. Although it is sensible to react against any argument which doesn't quite cut the mustard, which smacks of glibness and moral indifference, it behooves those who react in this way to make sure their own case is as rigorous and open to countervailing evidence as it could be. There are certain discursive practises which persist in the pro-War camp, and which I think we can reasonably hope to despatch. The most egregious of these is the tendency, exemplified by Norm and Omar, to abstract a situation from the mesh of geopolitical considerations in which it is embedded and reduce it to a stark moral question. The tone of such commentators certainly suggests that they feel they are entitled to construct the argument in this way, and thus dismiss the antiwar Left tout court as a "moral failure". Others include the tendency, which also persists in certain antiwar circles, to speak as if one does so on behalf of Iraq (or Kosovo, or Sierra Leone etc). Hence, Omar can tell us what is "an insult to Iraqis", while adducing carefully selected testimony from BBC Arabic Forum (which he has translated) in order to connote again that he is only saying what "Iraqis" say . There are more, but ultimately they revolve around the attempt by supporters of the war to claim the moral high ground. If I were to speculate on the reasons for this determination - and, okay, I will - I would suggest that it is because they have failed to win the popular argument on the matter.

Noone has a monopoly on the moral highground, although some forfeit any claim to it. Those who supported the war on humanitarian grounds are not morally superior or inferior to those who opposed the war on humanitarian grounds. Indeed, it is not that I think Norm or any of the others supporting the war from that purview are guilty of a "moral failure" - it's just that I think they got it wrong.