Bill's Big Stuff

Dr. Carrier has replied to my last post with two lengthy letters. My reading of them indicates that we have come full-circle in the discussion. He is saying what he has said either to me or to others in AnalPhilosopher's blog. I would start repeating myself to answer further. What I see is a case where, in general, neither of us accepts most of the facts or interpretations of fact that the other is using, and, in the cases where we do agree on a fact, our interpretation of it is totally different. If we were to look at this as an attempt to convince either of us as to the correctness of our position, the analogy I would draw is this: We are two people on opposite sides of a chasm, yelling to each other to come over, with no means by which to build any sort of bridge.

I appreciate Dr. Carrier's efforts and time to have engaged in this discussion. I have found it personally valuable in that it has helped me develop my ability to read and write critically. I think it is generally valuable because it has laid out clearly, the differences between the conservative and liberal positions on the issue of the Iraqi war. With all that said, like Bill O'Reilly (whom I no longer watch, because I rarely, if ever, watch TV), I will let Dr. Carrier have the last word.

Here is his first letter:

Thanks, Bill, for your response of 4/9 to my earlier criticisms. Rather than rebut your replies seriatim (although I am prepared to do that later, if you wish), I think it more germane to the discussion to concentrate on your attempt to give me the argument that I asked for, the one with the conclusion, "The invasion of Iraq was morally justified."
Let me reconstruct your premises for this conclusion:
(1) Saddam Hussein was a clear and present danger to us and the world. (I'm assuming here that this means that he was likely to attack us or other countries.)
(2) Saddam was an evil dictator.
(3) The removal of sources of support for terrorism is required for the world's safety.
As it stands, your argument is not valid. It needs an additional premise, which is:
(4) If (1), (2), and (3) are true, then the invasion of Iraq was morally justified.
The question now turns on the truth of (1), (2), (3), and (4). If any one of these is not true, or lacks credible evidence, then the argument is not sound.
Let me grant you the truth of (2) and (3). The success or failure of the argument now turns on the credibility of (1) and (4).
Let's take (4) first. It seems clear that (4) can be true only if (1) is true. That's because (2) and (3) alone are not strong enough to make an invasion morally justifiable. The fact that someone is an evil dictator plus the fact that we need to remove support for terrorism are too weak by themselves to justify a full-scale war, even if a connection could be made between the evil dictator and support for terrorism. There are plausible alternatives to war, including diplomatic pressure, monetary restrictions, restriction of trade, freezing of assets, refusal to allow sales of military equipment, and the marshalling of world opinion against that nation. War is generally considered to be a last resort.
The sole support for your argument thus comes down to (1). You have three grounds for asserting (1): (a) Saddam used WMDs in the past and may have hidden them; (b) Saddam was connected to al-Qaida and other terrorists; and (c) Saddam used oil to con Russia, France, and the U.N. to support his regime.
Take (c) first. Even if (c) were true, it provides no grounds for supporting (1). Take (a) next. Even if (a) were true, there is no connection between having WMDs (which included only those messy gas, biological, and nerve agents that might be just as dangerous to their users), and having the ability or the intention to use them on us or our allies. Since the first Gulf War, Saddam never threatened to use such weapons on us or on other nations.
This leaves us with (b). I dispute your claim that there was any operational connection between Saddam and al-Qaida. The most that can be said about any such connection is that Saddam and bin Laden had reached a practical understanding between thugs: if you don't operate on my territory, I won't operate on yours. I challenge you to produce that "increasingly visible paper trail" you refer to. I can't address what hasn't been presented. Who are these other terrorists Saddam supported? He might have given money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, but there is no evidence that he gave money to any suicide bomber before the fact.
So I can't see that you've given me a sound argument. Our disagreement turns on matters of fact. If you have any more evidence to support (1), please state it. Until then, I remain unconvinced that our invasion was morally justified.
You also alluded to a possible humanitarian argument for that conclusion, when you said it was "a justification in its own right." But you never did give the argument. Just what are the premises of that argument? I really would like to examine it.
By the way, my best students usually ended up with beliefs different from mine. I'd like to think that it was because I challenged them to think on their own. I discouraged views that parroted what I had said in class.
Len Carrier

And his second:

Bill,
I know that you're busy and probably haven't had time to look at my last post to you.
I did want to outline, however, some salient points of disagreement between us that you alluded to in your long post of 4/9. I don't expect you to post these further comments, but you are certainly welcome to do so, in whole or in part, as you please.
(1) I disagree that I was being immoderate in my estimate of Iraqi civilian casualties. I got the figures from MEDAC, the British medical team, as well as from the non-profit Iraqbodycount.org. The figure of 10,000 killed to 20,000 wounded is on the low side, if you figure that our own military holds to
a 1:3 ratio of killed to wounded for military personnel. MEDAC figures that as many as 55,000 casualties had resulted from the war at the end of last year (including Iraqi military, who were pretty much ground up into hamburger--according to one U.S. commander).
(2) I disagree with your claim that only a strong application of force will calm the "zealots." Violence begets violence. A friend's son is an army colonel who commanded a unit of the 82nd Airborne surrounding Fallujah. He argued strongly, to no avail, against the Marine tactic of breaking into civilian homes there. Apparently, some civilians were inadvertently killed during one of these raids. What followed was the killing and mutilating of the Blackwater security guards by Iraqi guerrillas; and what followed that was the Marine retaliation and the killing of more civilians. Arabs have their code of honor. They aren't afraid to die for what they consider affronts to their dignity.
(3) I don't think that I confused justification with motivation. I was talking about consequences, and one of the consequences was that Halliburton and Bechtel would get some business. They have got that business, although it's costing them more than they originally thought--just like this war has cost us more than our administration originally thought. (Remember Cheney's claims that we would be greeted as liberators?)
(4) I don't think you responded to my claim that we used (and are still using) the wrong means to achieve the proclaimed goal of Iraqi liberation and freedom. Mao claimed that justice came from the barrel of a gun. You seem to be claiming that freedom comes from the same source. Too bad we can't ask all those whom we've permanently "liberated" how they feel. You say rightly that Saddam was "a foul dictator." We knew this, and we also knew that his kind might hide behind human shields. Did that stop our bombing? No. It is a perverse logic that assumes that Saddam had to be replaced, regardless of the consequences, and then blames him for the innocent civilians that we foresaw would die. I'm reminded of Rumsfeld's complaint that Iraqi soldiers were being supplied with night-vision goggles from Syria to protect themselves. Not fair, said Rumsfeld, since it makes them harder to shoot.
(5) I disagree with your assessment of Findley and McCloskey. It comes close to committing the "no true Englishman" fallacy. Whichever name is mentioned of a conservative Republican who speaks out against the policies of our administration, the complaint always seems to be, "Well, he's no true conservative." Why is that? "It's because he doesn't support our policies." I think that sort of argument is disreputable.
(6) Your claim about "what the Arabs want" doesn't seem realistic to me. I've got friends who have worked in the Middle East, and their assessment is the one I gave you. Rumsfeld's view that we have to teach them democracy the way a parent teaches a child to ride a bike is arrogant. What we seem to want is a phony democracy--one in which a crook like Ahmed Chalabi runs things the way we want them run. But if we really wanted them to be liberated, we went about it in a strange way: not protecting their antiquities, not respecting their mosques, not imploring the U.N. to assume political control to allow a large peace-keeping force to be assembled, and continuing to arrest, detain, and humiliate suspected terrorists--even when they were not at fault.
(7) As to the Realpolitik reasons for war, these can be found, as I said earlier, in the Project for a New American Century, with supporters that included Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, and Feith--the architects for the Iraqi war. You claim that the Israelis don't say they want to subjugate the Palestinians. They don't have to say it; they're doing it. The Sharon government--with our acquiescence--is withdrawing from Gaza while protecting more settlements on the West Bank. This is a nasty situation in which Israel has all the cards: nuclear capability and a well-trained army. They also had their share of "terrorists" against the former British rule in Palestine. Now the Palestinians are resorting to the same tactics, and worse. President Bush could stop it by suspending aid to Israel until they withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza. This would make Bush a hero and probably win him the election. Will he do it? Not a chance. The Zionist lobby in Washington wouldn't permit it. Incidentally, Hamas was originally supported by Israel as a counterweight to Arafat's PLO. How times have changed.
(8) You ask who would control Iraqi oil. We would, by setting up a government in Iraq that would not go against our wishes about where the oil would go. I wasn't referring to more "gas at the pump" for Americans; I was referring to oil as a strategic weapon. As you probably know, China will be needing an enormous supply of oil in the next decade. With a compliant government in Iraq, we could dictate terms to the Chinese. So it's not financial gain that's the issue, it's military and strategic gain. The problem with this is that Iraqis might not go along with our grand plan--just like they eventually didn't go along with the British plan in the 1920s. You might remember that Eisenhower warned against the plans of the military-industrial complex, but maybe he wasn't a "true conservative," either.
(9) You refer to documents substantiating al-Qaida links with Saddam's regime. Where are these documents? The only ones I know of have since been repudiated. You also say that Arabs have secretly hated us all the time. I see no evidence for this. I have spoken to Arabs while in Egypt before the war, and they expressed a great admiration for the United States. I don't think that's true anymore. You say that the uprising in Fallujah is being suppressed. Don't hold your breath. I don't doubt that people disperse when they see one of our gunships approaching. You're darned right they're afraid. I think that creating fear in a population might keep them at bay for awhile, but it's a strange way to show that we're liberating them.
(10) On the question of Saddam's paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, I think that you show disrespect for Palestinians as human beings. Would you as a father urge a child of yours to commit suicide to get rich? Why think that Palestinians are any different? You've got to remember that the families of the bombers probably had their houses destroyed--a regular tactic of the Israeli army.
(11) I disagree with your assessment on WMDs. Almost everyone now agrees that there weren't any. I don't know why you think that Iraqi scientists now under U.S. military protection would be afraid to talk. Your saying that it is "very likely" that Saddam hid WMDs and killed those that hid them is simply bizarre. Where do you get these probabilities?
(12) As to your challenge concerning what else, besides war, was left to us, I think it commits "the only game in town" fallacy. This inductive fallacy is committed whenever someone can't think of another alternative, and so latches on to the one which is readily available, viz initiating a war. But there was another alternative. The U.N. inspectors were doing their job and would have issued a final report of no WMDs. But President Bush then warned them that he was about to attack, and they had to leave. Bush was determined to have "regime change," no matter what the cost. I agree that twelve years of sanctions did not help the plight of Iraqi citizens, but neither did "shock and awe." Surely, if we really had the best interests of Iraqis at heart, with all the smart people in our government, we could have thought of a less ham-fisted approach.
(13) You say that my belief in the efficacy of the U.N. is idealistic. Well, tit for tat. The efficacy of using our soldiers and marines as peacekeepers is even more idealistic. These men and women were trained to fight, not to keep peace. The same goes for the civilian "security guards," who have been recruited from the ranks of ex-military personnel. You say that Bush worked to get teeth put in its resolutions, then went to war. Does that mean that, since Israel has flouted all the resolutions against its policies, it's then all right to initiate war against Israel? If we really were sincere in bringing democracy to Iraq, we wouldn't continue to go it alone with our threadbare coalition--some of whom are not liking being put in combat areas. A returning Iraqi vet told me last week that he never saw any "coalition" forces, since they were all in safe areas. Now things might change.
(14) You spoke of cheering crowds when Saddam's statue was pulled down. Closer examination of that event shows that it was probably a created "photo-op." The ones doing the cheering were the exiles who came in with our troops. Doubtless, many are glad Saddam is gone. But that doesn't mean that they're happy with us. A man who is head of Pepsi-Cola operations now in Iraq was interviewed recently, and he said that Paul Bremer was ruining his country. This was a man whose father had been killed by Saddam, and so he was predisposed to like Americans. The main thing he held against Bremer was that he disbanded the Iraqi army but let them keep their weapons; and then he cut off their pay! That sounds to me like the height of stupidity. But Bremer has done more dumb things since then, like shutting down the Shiite newspaper that led to more riots. It seems to me that press censorship is inconsistent with the liberty that we're supposed to be providing.
(15) Your definition of "mass killings" must be different from mine. You seem to prefer the euphemism "collateral damage." That's such an antiseptic phrase. I call the deaths of 600 people in Fallujah a "mass killing," especially since the guerrillas who mutilated the Blackwater civilians had reportedly left town.
(16) By the way, if you think I'm talking through my hat about war and killing, I should let you know that I was an Air Force officer before I became a philosophy professor.
Cheers, Len Carrier

I welcome any correspondence on this though time and accessibility constraints may preclude long answers or timely answers. As the title implies, I am closing this thread. There are many other things I want to comment on, and I thank all of you who have continued to come and read this blog, whether for this or any other postings. There will be much more.