Why is Iraq not allowed to have weapons of mass destruction?

I reckon those'd be tolerable.

Anyway, to Mary: no, there's no "just" moral fairness-based reason why some countries can have these weapons and others can't. If a few nations can have them it would probably be "fair" for them to let everyone else have them, too. But we're talking about a level on which there's no higher arbiter of "fair" to be turned to. And what this means is that if the countries with the weapons are suspicious about other countries getting them -- if, for what generally tend to be okay reasons, they just don't think it'd be a good idea for someone to have them -- well, they have the power to supervise and try and try to keep other nations from getting them. Do they have the "right" on some higher level? No. But in the instances where they really have good reasons for wanting someone else not to have these weapons -- and it's debatable in every instance but there are good reasons not to trust certain people with really powerful weapons -- well, there's surely a moral good in stopping them.

That's just the principle of it; I'm not arguing any particular instances in which it's true or not.

Brilliant answer.

The other thing they were suppoused to get was a food 4 oil deal wherein they got "food", which inc. medical supplies and stuff meant to keep the poor and unwashed healthy and rotund. Naturally, this didn't happen for various reasons, some of which was undoubtedly our not living up to our half of the deal.

Nabisco, I agree wholeheartedly. Where in my post did you infer that I felt Iraq had the right to invade Kuwait? I suppose I may have dashed it off it anger (brought about by reconsidering the whole thing), and hence been unclear, but my point had more to do w/ the fact that this whole current ugly business can all be attributed to a legacy of Western 'policing'. Or am I to assume from your spirited response that you were in favor of the Gulf War?

Yeah, well, Madeleine Albright etc. etc

[Someone will come along and say "but that's exactly what the U.S. does" and be right: but of course (a) Hussein's aims with Kuwait were a lot nicer than spending a little time setting up a shaky democracy, and (b) once again there's that whole "not technically 'fair' but can be argued to be 'moral' in the overarching sense" thing.]

Does Rhodesia still exist???

But this is just wrong! We have been following policies for years that restrict our access to Iraqi oil. Why can't the anti-war movement place itself on correct grounds?

Ask the question in the active voice and the answer may become clearer.

"Why do(es) _______ not allow Iraq to have weapons of mass destruction?"

Some of the answers here would fill in the blank as "the U.S.," "the U.N.," "our moral consciences," variously, so the answer depends.

Toraneko, you're being flip and it doesn't suit you: North Korea has no oil and we've long tried to keep them from developing nuclear weapons, and I don't doubt we'd apply the same pressures to 90% of African and Southeast Asian nations if they tried to go nuclear. But I think the true portion of what you're saying goes back to that "neighborhood with no cops" concept: if the untrustworthy person buying the gun happens to live right next to the only grocery store, it creates a lot more (perfectly reasonable) incentive to police him, much more so than if he lived on the outskirts of town and never talked to anyone.

(I like this old neighborhood-without-cops analogy because it maps pretty sensibly onto the current situation. The most powerful guy in town, who's brought his gun out before to help take down both certifiably evil neighbors and not-so-certifiably-evil ones, points at the shady guy hanging around the grocery store with the makeshift gun and says "we don't trust him, he's got a bad record and he beats his kids and we must do something." The rest of the neighborhood has a meeting and decides that they can keep him in line without getting in a big messy fight. And I think what Toraneko's bothered about isn't the issue of whether the guy's worth going after, but that the powerful guy is willing to do it over the rest of the neighborhood's objections.)

Nick: there seems to be good evidence as to that whole misunderstanding, but no matter how much I read about it the whole thing just seems unparseable to me. In the simplest terms it looks like an Iraqi minister told a U.S. State Department representative "we might take Kuwait" and the representative said "ummmm" and then went home.

And trying to pin the failures of the oil for food program on the U.S. is a huge stretch. Where the program was under U.N. control in the North, it did a lot of good. Where it was under Saddam, it did a lot less.

Sterling: yeah, undoubtedly, but I'm still wary of the idea that so long as nations aren't democratic it makes no difference if they invade one another at will. Not to mention which I think we can safely assume that any given Kuwaiti would prefer the Kuwaiti monarchy to being annexed by Iraq, if only because they get such a sweet deal out of the oil money (free education for citizens! free health care for citizens! no you can not become a citizen unless your family's been here for eons!) Unless your point is that we didn't actually "liberate" Kuwait, just pushed out one awful totalitarianism for a slightly less-awful one. Which is true, yeah.

Clarke: yeah, that's my point, although I think you're stretching the rhetoric a bit and I'm confused by the "U.S. beats its kids, too" line -- surely you're not implying that the U.S. abuses its citizens in anything like the way Iraq or lots of other countries in the world do? Critiques of U.S. domestic policy are totally in order but it's a huge stretch to it's crueler to it's citizens than, like, 90% of non-Scandinavian nations in the world. And I think there's a big difference between the way the world fears the U.S. and the way they'd fear someone like Saddam; nations can fear economic and diplomatic bullying from the U.S., yeah, times 10, but I don't think too many nations fear U.S. spontaneously embarking on militaristic projects in quite the way Saddam would. (Before you say "oh but that's what Bush is doing right now with Afghanistan and Iraq" think about the difference between "metaphorically" and "literally" -- the difference between trying to make a case, however feeble, that there are all these justifiable reasons for doing something, and just up and annexing another nation without even much of a pretense, or launching missiles into civilian areas with no even pretend objective, just out of spite.)

What I'm arguing has to be taken into account here -- the principle that pro-war people are arguing, which is a valid principle even if they're wrong in this instance -- is that sometimes you have to act on what you believe is a moral good, even apart from any sort of rule-based "fairness." Nation A says "we've decided Regime B is awful and needs to go." Regime B can turn around and say "well I've decided Nation A is awful and needs to go, so would that make it fair for me to invade them?" And the answer is yes, in a relativist rule-based way. But it's not inherently immoral for Nation A to say "well but we honestly believe that we and our principles are right and you and your principles are not, and its our duty to act on that." Similarly if I lived in a world with just a vegan version of me and a reincarnated version of Jeffrey Dahmer and a puppy and no God, and Dahmer made a very elegant and persuasive argument that he should be allowed to eat the puppy if he wanted so, it would still be morally sound for me to declare that my principles were in completely opposition to this and I would do whatever I could to stop him if he tries. And yes, it'd be nice if there were other nations strong enough to do that to the U.S. when it's wrong, such as on the Kyoto treaty.

Again, the point is not that this principle is being applied well in this instance, or that it's not been used to justify lots of stupid and self-serving things by the U.S. government and others all through history -- the point is just that the principle itself is a morally sound one. It's the principle being trotted out by the U.S. government right now; I think it's a far better thing to argue that the principle is being misapplied than to argue that it's a bad principle in the first place (because it's not).

After Iraq took Kuwait, a report asked the US diplomat what went wrong, and he said "I didn't think Iraq would take the whole country!"

Do a google search for "April Glaspie." She was the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq who has been blamed for the diplomatic screw-up. Essentially, Hussein asked her what the U.S. opinion was regarding Iraq's claim on the northern provinces of Kuwait, and her answer was that the U.S. took no position on the matter. Four days later, Iraq invaded Kuwait.

So if you disagree with them you actually have to talk about those on-the-ground circumstances and talk about the many reasons to believe the decisions they're making aren't justified.

And the U.S. govt would argue now that for nations X, Y, and Z to have weapons of mass destruction would only wind up making the world a worse place in absolute moral terms. To attack that it's best to argue that it actually wouldn't.

So then you view all uses of weapons of mass destruction (and I'd guess, weapons of any kind) as equal?

>>Or, as Tammy Faye Starlite said, and I paraphase, "We're going to invade them, not because they have weapons, not because we want their oil, but because they're BROWN." <<

So why then all the stockpiling of nuclear weapons from the mid 50s until '92? Perhaps you're not aware, but a good deal of the Soviet Union are caucasian.

The answer has been given to you. Iraq may not have weapons of mass destruction because its one of the requirements of the cease fire they signed after they lost the skirimish between their forces and that of the UN. Does that need to be reiterated again?

-
Alan

yes

"Perhaps you're not aware, but a good deal of the Soviet Union are caucasian."

i believe you are attempting humor but i am missing your point, i included the USSR in my original post under etc.

"Iraq may not have weapons of mass destruction because its one of the requirements of the cease fire they signed after they lost the skirimish between their forces and that of the UN.

weren't there inspections before we got involved the first time?

alan, this is a discussion not a search for a perfect answer but i think 'bc the us says they can't' is a more accurate answer than what you just proffered

it's not like the u.s. follows the dictates of the u.n. (ie 'international law') which may soon be apparent

Of course international treaties are totally invalid. The people in charge of the world's nations, with the exception of the brilliant messrs. Schroeder and Chirac, are stupider than all of us, because they think that we cannot see through their simple ploy. They simply want to wipe out Islam all over the world and steal the oil from its rightful owners, the Arabs. Bush is a fucking scumbag who is cunning and stupid at the same time. Cheney is a fucking scumbag who is cunning and stupid at the same time. Rumsfeld is a demon sent from hell to kill all humans, we have photographs.

Iraq SHOULD be allowed to have WMDs because it is every expansionist madman's right to gas his own people and threaten his neighbors with annhilation. The USA/UK and other Western Capitalist scumbag nations have been doing this for years, threatening Soviet Russia with complete and total destruction for nearly five decades and forcing socialists all over the world to adopt their own weapons programs. The USA feels no remorse for its actions in Japan in WW2, and the entire citizenry minus the people who post here are all Bible-thumping imbeciles.

Before they invaded Kuwait? No.

>>alan, this is a discussion not a search for a perfect answer but i think 'bc the us says they can't' is a more accurate answer than what you just proffered<<

No. That answer is the answer you would like to hear. Unfortunately, it isn't the real answer.

>>it's not like the u.s. follows the dictates of the u.n. (ie 'international law') which may soon be apparent <<

Indeed that's true. Iraq is a bit of an easy mark for this, however. All the non-classified stuff, unfortunately for anti-war protestors, happens to favor the US when it comes to the fact that Iraq is still, at the very least, in possession of WMD. Of course, the fact that they have such weapons is not the "reason" (and I use this lightly because I myself am not an adherent to the US' policy) for unilateral action, but rather the "reason" for such action is that they may give them to terrorists (to whom the US already claims they have ties). So, if you were reading carefully, what I have just explained to you details all of the US' bluster in the UN Security Council in both trying to prove that they have WMD (a breach of several UN rulings that followed the cease fire in 1991) and in their (desperate) attempts to connect it to Al Qaeda (which is needed to force military action rather than continued inspections). Following, or did I lose you?

-
Alan

Not really. It is the answer that makes more sense to me, but I am happy to hear from other perspectives, and from people like Aimless, who are willing to expain in terms of 'international law' while not expressing the opinion that 'international law' itself = REAL ANSWER, whatever that is.

I'm sure I have a lot to learn about these issues, not doubt we all do, but expressing yourself the way you have been is not going to be the trick toward enlightening me.

And by the way, I've decided to reject the way you phrased the question: we don't "get to decide" who's allowed to have such weapons. We get to decide who we would prefer not to, and to do what we can to stop them. In the case of Iraq this may involve invasion -- but only because at a previous point we were able to get Saddam to agree not to develop these weapons. Compare with North Korea: when their nuclear program began to worry the U.S., we didn't take some sort of rule-based "not allowed" stance toward it -- we tried to pay them off to stop working on it, giving them the nuclear power material they were ostensibly working on in return for their stopping the parts of the program that could lead to making weapons. This isn't "we get to decide" or "we have a right to decide" -- it's just offering people incentives to do what you want.

Okay M, you do realize that you've gone and equated "The U.S. and the U.K. and Italy" with "The world's nations" there.

I was just pointing out that there are lots of other people, like you, unclear on the answer to the question as originally asked and that many of them were at the protests yesterday. It has nothing to do with writing.

Heather Chandler: You wanted to be a member of the most powerful clique in school. If I wasn't already the head of it, I'd want the same thing.

Veronica Sawyer: Heather, why can't you just be a friend? Why do you have to be such a mega-bitch?
Heather Duke: Because I can be.

Spot the difference. Depressing, isn't it?

It seems like a trivial analogy but I am trying to see if it's really a different moral problem. The school sucks because it is society. Will the high school that is the international community get blown up like Westerberg High? Who will be our Veronica Sawyer and who our Jason Dean?

VS Which button do I press to turn it off?

JD Try the red one, alright? Seriously, people are gonna look at the ashes of Westerburg, and say: There is a school the self destructed not because society didn't care, but because the school WAS society. Pretty deep, eh?

(a) Under a current set of rules, why isn't Iraq allowed to have these weapons? Because Saddam Hussein behaved in ways that led other nations not to trust him at all, so they made him agree not to have any super deadly weapons.

(b) What gives them the right to do something like that? Nothing: there's no fairness-based higher power to decide this. They do it because they're able to, and because they claim that it's better in the end for everyone involved. They argue what Millar usually argues, that in terms of the grandest moral principles it makes the world a better, safer place, and that upholding those principles is the most important thing.

(c) What gives the U.S. and its few allies here the right to decide to invade to keep Iraq from getting these weapons, when loads of other nations disagree and think sanctions and inspections are a better idea? Again, nothing. They make the same argument as in (b), which is that damn it all they just think it's the right thing to do, the principled course of action that makes the world a better place. But here they're on much shakier ground, because lots of other nations who agree with them that Iraq shouldn't have these weapons still don't think invading is the right course of action. They have lots of concrete arguments for why they think this, and to take a personal stance yes, I think they're correct.

So I wasn't trying to tell you what to do, above, I was only trying to cast this all as a conversation:

MARY: "Why is Iraq not allowed to have weapons of mass destruction?"

VARIOUS POWERFUL NATIONS AFTER GULF WAR: "Because Saddam Hussein has done X, Y, and Z, all of which lead us to believe that he's dangerous and horrible and that if he has these weapons it will be a bad thing for just about everyone apart from Saddam Hussein."

MARY'S PROBABLY BEST RESPONSES?: (there are three, depending on your stance) 1. "Actually for reasons A, B, and C I don't think there's any harm to his having these weapons and we should just let him." 2. "Actually for reasons A, B, and C I believe that our trying to prevent him from having those weapons will cause more harm than otherwise (but I do still think it'd be good if he didn't have them)." Or 3. "Actually for reasons A, B, and C I belive that trying to militarily prevent him from having those weapons will cause more harm than otherwise (but I do still think we should work in other ways, such as inspections or sanctions, to try and stop him)." This last one is the one most anti-war people take, and closest to where I fall, though I'm skeptical about how greater-good sanctions have been as well.

Sterling raises the question of whether having organized international law is a good thing. I find this hard to answer because in the end we don't really have "organized international law" with any super-national body to back it up: we have an organization, the UN, that's basically just a forum for nations to hash out consensus on different issues. But in the end it's still a question of which nations are powerful enough to pull consensus their way -- and as DV would point out, whatever the consensus is, certain nations are still powerful enough to ignore it and make sure it's not enforced or whatever else. So Diamond's response is spot-on: it's good to have some semblance of a peacably organized system, yes. It would be better to have one that actually functioned "fairly," and not just as a body of consensus suggestions that certain nations were able to ignore. Unlike the black-helicopter crowd I would personally feel better knowing that there were nations militarily and economically powerful enough to make the U.S. abide by its own agreements.

Millar, is your argument really what you nabisco says it is in (b)? I'm not sure I understood your pragmatic explanations as such.

I really do think Humpty Dumpty had a point in that the world's consumers want their MTV but don't seem to see how it relates to globalization economics.

I finally get it. You're seeming to take the side of a post moralist who's stating that the US has no more moral right to have WMD than Iraq. In that case, I simply forward discussion back to the last post from Nabisco, which says whatever I would have said but far better.

-
Alan

If it were conceivable to me that Saddam could be removed and the Iraqi WMD threat controlled without billions of dollars in pow smash kaboom, I would support that. But that is not the case. The idea that Saddam should be left alone has been basically invalid since 9/11 because we KNOW he has WMDs and we KNOW that terrorists live, train and trade on his soil, with his permission (a direct link may not be indicated but it is not necessary to have the dictator's phone # when all yr doing is buying or even stealing some of his arsenal).

In the long run I don't see how a nation-building exercise in the region wd be any more destructive, unfair or imperialistic than any other course of action, people as they are being capable of truly evil acts by themselves and good/bad aftereffects of such actions being really arbitrary at best regardless of intent.

I am 'pro-war' because all the other solutions fail to make any sense and because the ouster of Saddam must take place before the war on terrorism can continue with any effectiveness. 'The greater moral good' etc. may be imagined as the simplest and most certain means to something that must be done - the 'end' of this means is arguably better/worse than the current situation but such speculation is completely silly at this point.

Generally when you lose a war, you don't "get" much for signing a treaty aside from your continued existence.

Sometimes you get a toaster.

(Thank you.)

-- felicity (felicityredwel...), February 17th, 2003.
First world leisure time is due, in large part, through the wreckless exploitation of the poor. We can drive our cars because we can afford oil that has made many stinking rich except the masses that populate those countries where it comes from. We can harvest our agricultural products at consumer friendly prices through the exploitation of third world "immigrants" (aka wetbacks, mojados, illegals....) who are paid little, have no benefits but are still making more than their brothers and sisters back home. We can import the rest of our agricultural and meat products; minerals; and other industrial items because of the same military/industrial/social complex...If we had to this all by ourselves when would we have time to watch our MTV? We've got time on our hands because we've forced the labor onto other countries while we settled into a service oriented work climate.

-- felicity (felicityredwel...), February 17th, 2003.

Who's complaining? I'm just answering a question posed by Ms Felicity. I, for one, like my MTV, strawberry cheesecake and large automobile. You think I want to give that up because some kid is starving in Baghdad? Get fucking real.

Yes, Chowder Head reads my point correctly, and that is why it is germane to the discussion of who won't allow Iraq to have weapons of mass destruction.

This is utter crap. We know that he has a few chem weapons. He hasn't used them in 12 years. We have, at best, an indication that he is working back towards nuclear weapons but is far away. Is this enough to go to war for, ensuring that he *will* use what he has?

If terrorists being in Iraq is justification for war, then you better be prepared to go to war agains the US, UK, Spain, etc. And this is not "with his permission" - it's in a part of the country controlled by the Kurds, not him. Remember that "Iraq" is a construct. He isn't the dictator of the entire perimeter.

Also, it's a group that has different goals from Al Qaeda. I wouldn't be that surprised if Iraq lent a bomb to Bin Laden (if it had one), but if the CIA doesn't think that's going to happen any time soon, I don't either.

In the long run I don't see how a nation-building exercise in the region wd be any more destructive, unfair or imperialistic than any other course of action, people as they are being capable of truly evil acts by themselves and good/bad aftereffects of such actions being really arbitrary at best regardless of intent.

Not the nation-building part, the war part - you could kill lots of people. Iraqis probably would ask us to take out Saddam. They probably wouldn't ask us to kill lots of people.

Aftereffects are not 'arbitrary' - actions have consequences, c.f. Bin Laden and U.S. use of Saudi bases. However, aftereffects are not necessarily predictable. They could be terrible. They could be wonderful. It's probably in the middle somewhere and I don't know enough to know and I don't think you do either.

I am 'pro-war' because all the other solutions fail to make any sense and because the ouster of Saddam must take place before the war on terrorism can continue with any effectiveness.

Part 1 of that statement sounds like an unwillingness to think about things like containment that enfolds within it a casual disregard for the lives of Iraqis (and Americans). Part 2 is just shite.

I say all this as someone who might theoretically favor a war (but I lean against it based upon my reading of risk assessments and Arab/world opinion).

But you're prepared to support an invasion of the country when the UN inspectors haven't located them?? That really makes sense - yeah let them get taken off to God knows where by the bad guys on the way out? Better still, bomb one of the stockpiles by mistake.

Yr interpretation of part one of my statement is way off. Containment prevents Saddam fm engaging his neighbors. It does not prevent him from contributing or engaging in an asymmetrical form of warfare, which is the threat of the hour, or fm utilizing prohibited missiles with prohibited munitions to wipe out millions wherever he can point.

Yr interpretation of part two does not consider the fact that as it currently stands Iraq is a perfect hiding place for any and all terrorists who might want to not be seen for a while. 'utter shite' implies an unwillingness to see the terrorist threat as a valid reason for any military action, in which case I'm sure you'd prefer we close our borders to entry and pursue a global campaign of shady assassinations.

(I had a crush on Christian Slater in high school. He was my teenage Jack Nicholson.)