I am not quite sure what you are arguing for – Blair should or should not stand trial?

Sorry to be picky, but if you want to know, say, the quantity of people who died as a result of Tony’s decision to participate in the invasion of Iraq (how many he murdered), the number you are looking for is: “number who died” minus “number who would have died if the Americans had gone it alone”. I have no idea what that number is, but we cannot rule out the possibility that British participation saved lives (I’m not making that argument here). Unless you want to argue that the Americans would not have invaded without British participation.

Which might just go to show that asking how many deaths Tony is responsible for could be the wrong way of framing the question of his moral culpability.

What the right way of thinking about this is, I don’t know. How would we do the moral algebra in a world where British participation did save lives – would we still say it was wrong even to participate in an atrocity, even if you make the atrocity slightly less atrocious? If Tony Blair was told by his advisers “fewer Iraqis will be killed if we are involved”, and let’s say for sake of argument that this advice is correct, what should he have done?

…justifying them before a panel of judges should not present any particular problem, should it?

Well said, Dave. Heck, if he gets to be President of the EU, he can organise it himself…surely?

Well said, Dave. Heck, if he gets to President of the EU he can organise it himself, surely?

@ Luis Enrique

Collaboration makes them just as guilty. Karadzic with Miloševi?. Pétain with Hitler, Blair with Bush.

That the collaborator may have ameliorated some of the excesses of a crime doesn’t absolve them of guilt.

Akhelios,

well, you make it sound very simple, but this means that when presented with an opportunity to “collaborate” in such a way as to reduce the loss of life, you would decline. Then perhaps you could go and explain to relatives of the extra people who died why rather than being guilty, you’re the good guy.

Do you think Karadzic can argue that fewer people died as a result of his actions than would have done otherwise? Perhaps Blair cannot make that claim either, I don’t know, but I do think that if one of them can and the other cannot, then their actions cannot be called morally equivalent.

with regards to Petain and Hitler … it’s quite possible that Petain’s collaboration resulted in fewer lives being lost, but it is generally thought that defeating Hitler was something worth expending lives to achieve, so “saving lives but helping Hitler” is thought to be worse than “costing lives but fighting Hitler”. It’s not obvious how that maps on to Blair and Bush, because bad as Bush was, few would argue Blair should have declared war on the USA.

I’ll be sure to remember that argument if I ever find myself charged with criminal conspiracy: “Your honour, it would have been worse if I hadn’t participated.”

Do you think it will wash?

Any argument based on a counter-factual scenario is inherently suspect. There is simply no way that we can know what would have happened if Blair had refused to participate – maybe the US wouldn’t have attacked, maybe they would have gone nuclear, maybe space aliens would have arrived to sort the whole mess out…

Maybe Ian Brady would’ve killed more kids if Myra hadn’t been there. Maybe not. Either way, we can’t start basing legal decisions on speculation about what might have happened if things had been different.

Unless and until some august body actually determines that this was an illegal invasion/war you have a slight problem here.

Dunc

oh, I quite agree it’s problematic. It is impossible to say what the counterfactual would be. In a normal murder, it’s rather easier to say that if I hadn’t killed him, he wouldn’t be dead. When it comes to participating in the invasion of a country, who can say? Well, George Monbiot and others who are sure Blair killed thousands, apparently.

And of course, these arguments aren’t interesting unless they are believable. If Myra had some credible case for arguing she caused Ian Brady to kill fewer kids, that would make a difference, but she’d have to explain why she didn’t just call the cops.

If you do ever find yourself charged with a criminal conspiracy, but the truth is that your actions saved lives, do you think that defense ought to be open to you, or not? I’m not saying that defense should be open to you or Tony, if it’s false your actions saved lives.

@ sli

So Kofi Annan as Secretary-General of the United Nations saying “from our point of view, from the charter point of view it was illegal.” doesn’t count then?

Well look, the UN is made up of about 80% non democratic countries but even so it wasn’t the UN , it was Anan, who, even in his capacity as SG, has no authority to declare such things – it was an opinion.

If Blair is complicit in the deaths of a hundred thousand in Iraq, are those who supported the status quo of Saddam Hussein remaining in power, a person who killed many many more just as guilty of crimes against humanity?

Why no call for the authors of the sanctions on Iraq to be similarly indicted. When asked about it, Madeleine Albright said:

When asked on US television if she [Madeline Albright, US Secretary of State] thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children [from sanctions in Iraq] was a price worth paying, Albright replied: “This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.”

So to just re-organise my understanding of liberal logic:

500,000 children dead and no benefits accrued – That’s OK
100,000 dead and a tentative democracy for 50 million – bad, bad, bad.

Have I got that right?

Famously, (Tony) is on record as revealing that he is prepared to be held to account by God for ‘those who have died or have been horribly maimed as a result of my decisions’.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Tony presented Pope Benedict with a list of helpful hints on improving Catholicism when they met this year.

No doubt we all have thoughts on Pope Benny’s comedy cardinal mafia, but when it comes right down to it, it surely takes giant balls of steel to offer The Pope advice on his specialist subject.

Still, I’d love to be a cherub on the wall at Tony’s Divine sentencing. I can understand why you might judge me that way Lord, and I can apologise for some of the things I’ve done… What I can’t do is apologise for etc. etc. etc, jump-cut to Lake Of Fire, Demons with red hot pokers and so forth.

If Blair is complicit in the deaths of a hundred thousand in Iraq, are those who supported the status quo of Saddam Hussein remaining in power, a person who killed many many more just as guilty of crimes against humanity?

No. Glad we cleared that up.

If you do ever find yourself charged with a criminal conspiracy, but the truth is that your actions saved lives, do you think that defense ought to be open to you, or not? I’m not saying that defense should be open to you or Tony, if it’s false your actions saved lives.

My point is that it’s categorically impossible to know whether the action in question saved lives or not. For every counter-factual scenario that you can spin to say it did, you can spin another that says it didn’t. The only thing you can ever say for certain is that if things had been different, they would have worked out differently.

Of course, it’s also important to consider exactly what the charges are. Monbiot’s argument is that he should be charged with the crime of launching an illegal war of aggression, not the murder of x people. It’s entirely possible to argue that Blair’s involvement did reduce the death toll resulting from that action, but that the action itself is still illegal. If I were to be charged with conspiracy to commit fraud, it’s entirely irrelevant to that charge whether my participation prevented one of my co-conspirators from killing someone along the way.

Er, Conservative Cabbie, I must have missed the rampant Albright apologism. I certainly don’t think that the sanctions were “ok“, an’ I suspect that nobody else in this thread does.

[Sorry for the double post, by the way, all - t'comp's a bastard.]

Dunc,

I was thinking of Monbiot’s claim that Blair is “one of the two greatest living mass murderers”, not his claims about the legality of the war.

It doesn’t make sense to argue that counterfactuals are inherently unknowable and hence cannot be used to evaluate actions: the reason why we think the invasion of Iraq was a bad thing is because we think that all those hundreds of thousands of people wouldn’t be dead and maimed in the counterfactual. If you didn’t believe that, why would you object to the invasion?

Because I believe killing people is wrong, even if they’d all die by other means anyway. I think the technical term is “deontological ethics”.

@15

No. Glad we cleared that up.

Ah! The old mass murder is relative defence.

The oppressed of the world thank you for your inaction.

Bensix

Not a lot of comparitive condemnation though.

Under the UN sanctions, infant mortality went from 47 per 1000 to 108 in the year 2000. Following the Iraq war, infant mortality fell to 44 as it stands now. But it’s probably best to ignore the actualities of the war and just go on with the hating of Bush and Blair.

I think we all agree killing people is wrong, we’re talking (hypothetically) about killing fewer people, generally believed to be better than killing more people.

conservative cabbie,

no, you asked whether “those who supported the status quo of Saddam Hussein remaining in power” are “guilty of crimes against humanity” – the answer to which is “no” because at the time of the invasion the status quo (“not invading”) would have involved fewer people dying. Being in favour of fewer people dying is not generally regarded as a crime against humanity. If you had asked whether Saddam Hussein having killed hundreds of thousands of people during his reign is as bad as the invasion to remove him having killed hundreds of thousands of people, you might have got the answer “yes – possibly worse”. Different question, different answer, see?

@ Conservative Cabbie

500,000 children dead and no benefits accrued – That’s OK
100,000 dead and a tentative democracy for 50 million – bad, bad, bad.

The logic, and best available figures say

1,000,000+ dead and no benefits accrued, in fact a rise in Wahabiism, and the loss of women’s rights, sectarian execution squads targetting each other, secularists and minorities like homosexuals., and strong links with Iran.

You do the maths. I disagreed with the Clinton strategy, but it was a damn sight better than what we have now.

@21:

No, we’re talking about killing some people on the assumption that this action will, in the end (which is a whole other can of worms), result in fewer dead overall than non-action would. While there are many ethical systems in which that’s the correct approach, there are others where it is not. I personally tend towards a deontological approach rather than a consequential one, as I believe the ultimate consequences are always unknowable.

#23 where are you getting your figures from

From Dave Osler about his support for the IRA

some of us now have no logical choice but to admit we were ultimately in the wrong

The heading on this post is facile and a disgrace, you’re so sure you don’t even add a question mark. You don’t learn from your mistakes do you.

Thank god the hard left was so soundly beaten in the last twenty years, enjoy the next twenty twittering away.

Luis

Your argument depends on the fact that Saddam wouldn’t have killed many more and that his chosen heirs wouldn’t have done so.

Whilst I was supportive of the war, I understand the reasoning of those against it, and I certainly know that the war was executed poorly at least initially. I’m being deliberately provocative because a) as the infant mortality numbers I posted earlier suggest, the “evil” perpetrated by Bush and Blair is not as cut and dried as their opponents suggest, and B) conflating Blair and a genocidal maniac as this post suggests is just silly in the extreme.

@25 sli

From the Lancet, stolid conservative old Lancet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casualties

Pardon me for the blatant immodesty…

http://decentpedia.blogspot.com/2008/03/alternative-iraq.html

Dunc,

fine. well, my response to that is same as comment #6

@25

Sli

The figures for infant mortality come from wikipedia quoting a BBC article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_sanctions

The post war infant mortality rates I got from this site.

http://www.indexmundi.com/iraq/infant_mortality_rate.html

Update: Oops sorry, I thought that was aimed at me. My mistake.

#28 Oh, wikipedia.

IBC reckons 93k, the Iraq government 85k (not including the actual invasion)

And by the way these are all deaths not deaths caused by British / US troops

@ Conservative Cabbie

500,000 children dead and no benefits accrued – That’s OK
100,000 dead and a tentative democracy for 50 million – bad, bad, bad.

The logic, and best available figures say

1,000,000+ dead and no benefits accrued,…
…
@25 sli

From the Lancet, stolid conservative old Lancet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casualties

But the Lancet didn’t say 1,000,000+ dead, did it?

“Not a lot of comparitive condemnation though.”

Unless you can show that this is important, I don’t, in all honesty, care.

“Under the UN sanctions, infant mortality went from 47 per 1000 to 108 in the year 2000. Following the Iraq war, infant mortality fell to 44 as it stands now.”

Following 2005, actually, if the figures are correct. Doubtless, some part[s] of the war factored – I’d guess that it was the ending of the sanctions regime, which could’ve gone, quite happily, without an invasion. Then let’s remember the thousands upon thousands who’ve died in the midst of violence; the millions who’ve been displaced by the carnage, and the infrastructure which has been shattered. Enough “actualities of war” for you, CC?

@30: If you can accurately identify “the relatives of the extra people who died”, I’ll try and explain it to them.

While I’m at it, you might like to have a similar go at explaining your moral calculus to the relatives of the people who definitely died as a direct result of British involvement. I suspect they’ll be a little easier to track down.

Akhelios

Lancet has been somewhat discredited. This passage seems proof enough:

Lancet 2006 attributed an amazing 166 deaths on average per day to car bombings alone from June 2005-June 2006. These bombings are fastidiously reported in the U.S. media and Wikipedia keeps a list of the major ones. Yet the highest single-day car bomb total Wikipedia records (114) is 42 short of Lancet’s alleged average. Lancet’s daily car bomb victim average is also 111 more than Iraq Body Count figure for war-related deaths from all causes. How could IraqBodyCount miss all those bodies?

Dunc:

‘No, we’re talking about killing some people on the assumption that this action will, in the end (which is a whole other can of worms), result in fewer dead overall than non-action would. While there are many ethical systems in which that’s the correct approach, there are others where it is not. I personally tend towards a deontological approach rather than a consequential one, as I believe the ultimate consequences are always unknowable.’

We’ve had the deontology vs. utilitarian (consequentialist) argument here a while back and I agree with you here.

This was an illegal war from the outset: if it had been prosecuted efficiently it might have produced less carnage but it would still have been an illegal war and it damaged prospects for genuine humanitarian intervention in the future.

@33 ukliberty

The lancet estimated up to 942,636 deaths by 2006, it’s now 2009.

@21

If you saw someone about to mug an old lady, is it morally more justified to stand against it, possibly being mugged yourself. Or to join the mugger and hope to convince him not to steal too much?

Bensix

I’m not arguing that war is a wonderful experience, much of what you say is true. The question that I think is relevant, is whether Iraq is better positioned today both because of and despite the war, or whether it would have been better off if the status quo was kept in place. I say it is, the Iraqi people are in much more control over their own destiny than they were under Saddam. There’s a lot to still be determined (or at least thanks to Bush self-determined) in Iraq but the Kurds are no longer being gassed, the Marsh Arabs are no longer being dispossessed and every few years Iraqis get to put purple paint on their fingers. I’d say that’s a plus, you may not think the sacrifice worth it – the joys of living in a free society, something you obviously don’t think the Iraqi’s deserve a shot at.

FR, the Alternative Iraq scenario is currently being played out (yet again) at (where else) Harry’s Place.

And I’ll repeat what I said there about the sanctions – surely one option would have been to at least try to fix them so that Saddam was still contained while minimising the adverse consequences for the rest of the Iraqi people.

Dunc,

Yes, it would be difficult to tell relatives of people who definitely died that they were killed in an attempt to save lives, when we cannot know if those lives actually were saved. It would be also be difficult to tell the relatives of people who definitely died that we think we could have saved them, but decided not to. Some people think that taking one life to save others is not justified, but my moral calculus is that taking lives to save lives can sometimes be justified.

As I understand your position, if faced with a choice between “participate in a war, take some lives but save lives on net relative to the alternative” and “do no participate, do not take any lives, but neither save any” you would choose the latter and think yourself a good guy for doing it (I was trying to get at this, at #6). This is where we agree to disagree – at least, you are sure it’d be wrong to take lives to save lives for your deontological reasoning, whereas I’d call that a genuine dilemma and be reluctant to call somebody a “mass murder” if they chose the former.

Please remember, all I have argued so far is that if Blair’s decision to participate saved lives on net, then he would not be a mass murderer, if by that we mean he was responsible for thousands of deaths relative to the counterfactual, and that if his decision saved lives, I can’t see how he’d be morally equivalent to Karadzic. I am making no claims to know the counterfactual. If you don’t think that “relative to the counterfactual” in the relevant consideration, then I am baffled. I don’t see how you can evaluate choices without reference to what would happen under the alternatives.

#39 – I pick: try to stop the mugger. I’m not sure what I’d have done if I was Tony Blair and I believed that participating in the invasion would save lives relative to not participating.

CC…

I’m not arguing that war is a wonderful experience, much of what you say is true. The question that I think is relevant, is whether Iraq is better positioned today both because of and despite the war…

Fair.

…or whether it would have been better off if the status quo was kept in place.

I wouldn’t have wanted the status quo in place; I’d have wanted the sanctions significantly loosened. That’s what I said in comment 35, but, heck, if repetition enriches your experience…

…the Kurds are no longer being gassed…

Come to that, they weren’t being gassed in 2002. Halabja was, of course, a horrifying atrocity, but it wasn’t a continuous process.

…the Marsh Arabs are no longer being dispossessed…

Well, perhaps that’ll be some consolation for their marshes being, well – buggered…

Experts say the rivers that flood the marshes today are too brackish and polluted to support life.

Battat sees the “undrinkable” water as a symptom of the official failure to rehabilitate the Marsh Arabs. As a father to 13 children, he says he wants better road and electricity links and improved access to education, healthcare and clean water.

“Water is the source of all our suffering,” he shouted angrily. “The water tankers do not get to us, we have no electricity. Our young men are crushed by destitution and our children grow up like savages, without schooling.”

…every few years Iraqis get to put purple paint on their fingers.

True.

I’d say that’s a plus, you may not think the sacrifice worth it – the joys of living in a free society…

A free society? That’s not quite how I’d describe it: not while bombings are still regular, thousands are executed, ethnic violence keeps cities segregated, torture still takes place in the prisons, horrifying suffering is inflicted upon gays, journalists find themselves jailed without trial, honour killings still remain rife…

…something you obviously don’t think the Iraqi’s deserve a shot at…

Tall horse ya got there; this dialogue might improve if you clamber down.

Iraqis deserve the best lives possible; this war has made them unnecessarily worse, or, in many cases, simply ended them. This ain’t a “shot” that they can shrug their shoulders and easily move on from.

Bensix

Tall horse ya got there; this dialogue might improve if you clamber down.

OK that’s fair. I apologise.

To your points

1. The status quo. Unless you are suggesting the removal of Saddam Hussein in some way, you are advocating the status quo regardless of a loosening of sanctions. The dispossession of the Marsh Arabs and the gassing of the Kurds may have been history, but with Saddam still in place, it’s far from impossible that those things might have happened again.

2. I never said Iraqi democracy is a perfect thing. What emerging democracies are? But it’s a better place to start from than under the brutal fist of a dictator. And car-bombs, the killing of gays and the other horrors you point out are being perpetrated on them by themselves. The point is, they now have the opportunity to take on those issues themselves, something they didn’t have before.

Iraqis deserve the best lives possible; this war has made them unnecessarily worse, or, in many cases, simply ended them. This ain’t a “shot” that they can shrug their shoulders and easily move on from.

Really? It is worse to live in a potential democracy even with the horrors still present than living under a vicious totalitarian regime? That’s not me on a high-horse, I just don’t see that reasoning. Sorry.

On the subject of moral responsibility, I opposed the invasion of Iraq. I also oppose invading Zimbabwe and Burma so does that mean I have moral responsibility for the suffering of people in all of those places?

As for Blair, well I think it’s shabby how some people who supported the invasion of Iraq have tried to absolve those who ordered it of any responsibility for the carnage that followed – they at least should take a share of it, even if they might argue that it was a price worth paying for the removal of Saddam. I don’t think that makes Blair a mass-murderer in the same league as Karadzic though.

CC…

OK that’s fair. I apologise.

No worries.

Unless you are suggesting the removal of Saddam Hussein in some way, you are advocating the status quo regardless of a loosening of sanctions. The dispossession of the Marsh Arabs and the gassing of the Kurds may have been history, but with Saddam still in place, it’s far from impossible that those things might have happened again.

The status quo was the state of affairs and, so, in opposing the sanctions – which, as you detailed rather forcefully above, had many grave consequences – I wouldn’t be advocating it. Yes, indirectly, I’d be accepting that a bloodstained tyrant would stay in power, but, then, so would you be if you opposed an invasion of, say, Saudi Arabia, North Korea or Iran. In such decisions, there’s very rarely a pleasing option to choose.

…The point is, they now have the opportunity to take on those issues themselves, something they didn’t have before.

Through what mechanisms?

Really? It is worse to live in a potential democracy even with the horrors still present than living under a vicious totalitarian regime? That’s not me on a high-horse, I just don’t see that reasoning. Sorry.

It was, actually, a sloppy generalisation: there are probably quite a lot of lives which have been improved. However, yes, generally I’d say that that’s true. They have to deal with those horrors; hundreds of thousands have been bereaved; millions are displaced, or lacking resources; thousands upon thousands, of course, have died. I don’t believe that the benefits of this “potential democracy” – which still, we should remember, has a poor human rights record – yet counteracts that extraordinary physical and mental suffering.

Dunc – well fine, but what should be the sentence for being a consequentialist who made a bad judgement, rather than a deontologist who made a good one?

Bensix

I don’t believe that the benefits of this “potential democracy” – which still, we should remember, has a poor human rights record – yet counteracts that extraordinary physical and mental suffering.

Forgive the hypothetical, but under your reasoning, wouldn’t you have opposed the American Civil War for example (ignoring the legitimacy of secession).

An evil status quo was disrupted by a violent and tumultuous intercession that in the immediate aftermath did little for the people that were ‘freed’ by it.

So the initial freedom won for black America may have been not have been worth “that extraordinary physical and mental suffering” but has resulted in Barack Obama. You are taking a short term view of the aftermath of the war, I think it more reasoned to think about the longer-term potential.

“while most of those who would throw the book at him regard the ouster of Saddam as justifiable humanitarian intervention.”

I’m sorry Dave, I like your writing most of the time, but I think you’ve utterly lost the plot here. I’m very much in favour of throwing the book at Karadzic, but I most certainly DO NOT regard the invasion of Iraq as a “justifiable humanitarian intervention”. Is this not the position of the majority of centre-left aligned people? I’d be very surprised indeed if it turned out not to be. There are more people in the world than the people who shout loudest on the internet.

Further to 49, how would you feel, Bensix, if all this pain had resulted from a revolution mounted by the Kurds and Shia alone, to overthrow the Tikriti monster running the country ?

I presume you wouldn’t have condemned that on Dunc’s deontological grounds? So, are you saying that those revolutionaries would be exempt from having to calculate all the eventualities of how badly an uprising might go wrong, but Blair should have known better?

Akheloios,

1,000,000+ dead and no benefits accrued,…
…
@25 sli

From the Lancet, stolid conservative old Lancet….
…
@33 ukliberty

The lancet estimated up to 942,636 deaths by 2006, it’s now 2009.

I guess what you’re trying to tell us is that 1,000,000 is your ‘estimate’, not the Lancet’s.

@ukliberty

even using the IBC’s figure from 2007-2009 on top of the Lancet 2001-2006 that’s a million.

A problem with the UN is that it is basically designed to stop war between sovereign nations; it is not designed to stop dictators murdering their own people. The USSR and China have murdered 10s of millions of their own people. The UN ignored the slaughter of Ugandans by Amin and Cambodians by the Khymer Rouge. Tanzania invaded Uganda to stop Amin’s slaughter and Vietnam invaded Cambodia to stop the Khymer Rouge. Dictatorships are reluctant to support invasion of sovereign nations to stop slaughter in case the same argument is used to overthrow them – China supported the Khymer Rouge, Russia supported Serbia.

The fear by the Sunni nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council of Shia Iran meant they were prepared to see Kurds and Shia arabs be slaughtered by S Hussein .
Saudi Arabia prevented the toppling of S Hussein in 1991 because they were terrified of a Shia entity being created in S Iraq, Kuwait, on the Saudi / Kuwait border( 15% of Saudi is Shia , largely living on the oilfields on the Kuwait border) and Bahrain. It is higly unlikely the UN will ever support a war to prevent slaughter of a country’s people by their rulers – S Africa will not even condemn Mugabe!
If we are to say a war is only ever legal if supported by the UN, then in reality, a dictator/tyranny is free to slaughter it’s citizens, as it is unlikely ever to have to worry about armed intervention.

CC…

Beyond the bare bones, I don’t know a lot about the American Civil War. I suppose I might have opposed it, yeah. If the end of slavery was a result of the conflict, though, there’d have to have been more peaceful routes towards abolition, because the benefits, evidently, have been large indeed.

Re: Iraq, you’re assuming that there is long-term potential. As I asked earlier, what mechanisms exist, or are forming, that Iraqis can use to counteract the ethnic violence, state authoritarianism, gay-bashing, women-killing, car-bombing and the rest? I don’t see them, but I do see the voluminous horror the US/UK invasion unleashed. That’s all I’ve got to go on.

Violet Elizabeth…

Further to 49, how would you feel, Bensix, if all this pain had resulted from a revolution mounted by the Kurds and Shia alone, to overthrow the Tikriti monster running the country ?

Pissed.

“I presume you wouldn’t have condemned that on Dunc’s deontological grounds?”

What, you mean Dunc’s grounds – “killing is wrong” – or a deontological stance in general? On the former, no – I might become pacifist, but I can’t claim to be one at the moment – and on the latter, well – quite possibly.

So, are you saying that those revolutionaries would be exempt from having to calculate all the eventualities of how badly an uprising might go wrong, but Blair should have known better?

Er, no – I haven’t said anything about “revolutionaries“.

Still, hypothetically they should calculate all eventualities, yes. One has a responsibility, I believe, to consider the possible consequence of one’s actions. When one’s initiating large-scale conflict, that’s a lot of consequence. That doesn’t vary according to the instigator.

Did we go to war on a lie thats the real facts involved, did Blair lie to take us to war, why did he send the documents (dossiers) back and fourth three times what changes did they make, if it was a lie he is guilty of a crime. I think Blair went to war with the knowledge he be well paid for it, and he was.

I was against the war and against the sanctions regime. It always worries me that I seem to be in a very small minority of people who will say it.

@51: There is a significant ethical distinction between overthrowing your own government and overthrowing somebody else’s. All of my previous comments should be interpreted in light of the fact that we’re talking about a war of aggression here (IMO). Legitimate self-defence (which such a revolution could well be argued to be) changes the calculus somewhat.

@ BenSix

What varies according to the instigator is the type of justification that can be found after the event. Certainly the “coalition” should have taken more note of expert advice as to the likely consequences of their actions, especially in the management of the occupation.

But let’s say it had been revolution; the fact that afterwards an activist (Sunni) minority of Iraq’s population might choose to wage a horrible war on the majority civilian population, in order to demand a share of power disproportionate to their number, would not be something that we would primarily blame their victims for. Could we really argue that those victims’ leaders should not have tried to secure a fairer distribution of power and less military brutality exercised against them because of the possibility of a Sunni campaign against Iraq’s civilians? History doesn’t work like that. And by analogy, I don’t think the western intervention itself can be condemned without reference to the desire of the people of Iraq to be free of a really hideous regime.

Blair’s decision was, I think, culpable in terms of motive and lack of intelligence, but a war crime? The end was eminently desirable, and the disastrous occupation was not his fault. Bush’s advisers ran the show.