Questioning the "Humanitarian Iraq War" Assumption

[Packratt]

I often see the argument appearing lately, especially since 2 of the 3 primary reasons that the US administration gave as justification for preemptive war against Iraq have not been substantiated. Those three reasons being that 1. Iraq was an immediate threat to it's neighbors and the US due to WMD. (still unsubstantiated) 2. That Iraq was housing and supporting the enemies of the USA. (still unsubstantiated) and 3. That this was a humanitarian war.

In order to justify the third condition, that the Iraq war was a humanitarian action, one must prove certain things. That 1. Iraqis were in imminent danger of being the victims of human rights violations of genocidal proportions. 2. That the act of invasion and the subsequent power vacuum caused by invasion would do less harm than any other possible action. 3. That the ultimate resulting government, after withdrawl of US forces, would result in a better standard of living for Iraqis than had currently existed immediately prior to invasion.

The first condition is arguable, while we could suggest that based on past actions Saddam was capable of commiting crimes against humanity since he had done so in the past, there was no indication that he was currently committing or preparing to commit more acts of that nature at the time of invasion and there was no real debate on other possible actions that could have prevented such violations.

The second condition is still under much debate, currently the results are that Iraqis are still suffering more than they did under Saddam in terms of standards of living. Unemployment is exceptionally high and there are still food distribution problems. Iraqis are no longer self sufficient at this time, though, so the ultimate determination of whether Iraqis are better off or not is still in question.

The third condition is still undetermined and depends on whether it is possible for one nation to force another nation to choose democracy and if that is possible, is it possible for Iraq to accept democracy and not use democracy to elect another repressive regeime after the US leaves Iraq? Given the rather haphazard nature of the US nationbuilding effort to date, Iraq's future is still very much up in the air.

All of these taken into consideration, it is not possible at this point in time to say with any certainty that the Iraq war could be termed a justified preemptive humanitarian war. That is an assumption that will take quite some time to truly determine. Thus, it's an assumption that should not be granted instant validity without a good measure of skepticism.