59,424,706 AMERICANS CAN BE WRONG
11/7/2004

RALPH G. LEWIS

November 2, 2004 is now a day of infamy in the history of the American people. November 2, is the day on which the American people (all of the people) assumed direct responsibility for the immoral war in Iraq. Prior to November 2 the American people could claim that they were lead into an immoral war by an ill informed if not malevolent President. This no longer is the case. We the people are now responsible. The blood of the leaders is now on our hands.

Is the war in Iraq immoral? The answer is yes. I said immoral not just wrong. The preemptive attack of Iraq was immoral by any of the accepted standards to which civilized nations are expected to conform.

Are there international standards for the behavior of nations including going to war. The answer is yes. International standards for the behavior of nations have existed for hundreds of years. In the Declaration of Independence our Founding Fathers (and Mothers) appealed to the nations of the world to support the revolution – of course they also supplied data to support their cause.

Did the war in Iraq meet the standards our Founding Fathers set for the war against King George? The answer is no – among other things we had no data.

Nor did the war in Iraq meet the standards for a preemptive attack: According to the President and other members of the administration the threats presented by Iraq created a situation of “unique urgency” and that this unique urgency justified a preemptive attack against Iraq. The classic definition of a preemptive attack/war is an attack initiated to repel an “imminent” offensive or to gain a strategic advantage in an impending (usually unavoidable) war. Where were the members of Congress and the press when questions should have been raised about the appropriateness of a preemptive attack? Where were the religious leaders? Where were the people? The questions that should have been asked certainly included:

• What is the justification of a preemptive attack – even with warning?
• What is the justification of a preemptive attack being initiated by the big guy against the little guy?
• What degree of certainty (probability) do we have about intended hostilities against us?
• What is the standard for “imminent” threat? What level of certainty (probability) do we need to justify our attack on another nation? Would we accept this same standard if used by other nations?
• What does the President mean when he says things such as, Saddam could have been developing weapons of mass destruction and he could have given them to terrorists? What were the probabilities associated with these “could haves?”
• Given the standards we used to launch a preemptive attack against Iraq, how many nations in the world would be justified in launching a preemptive attack against the United States?

Nor did the war in Iraq meet the criteria for a “just war?” Western civilization has a tradition of established criteria that must be met in order for a war to be considered “Just.” Where were Congress, the press, the American public, and our religious leaders when questions should have been raised about whether the proposed war on Iraq could meet the criteria of a “Just War?” The just war tradition generally includes five criteria that must be applied simultaneously. In other words the answer to all five questions must be yes. The criteria are:

1. Just Cause – the damage inflected by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave and certain. In this case the aggressor was assumed to be Iraq and the question that needed to be answered in the positive was,

• “Had Iraq inflected lasting, grave, and certain damage on the United States?”

Pushed one step further the question should have been,

• What is the probability that Iraq could (means) and would (intention) inflict lasting, grave, and certain damage on the United States?

2. Last Resort – all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective. The question that needed to be asked:

• “Had the United States exhausted all reasonable means for avoiding war?

3. Probability of Success – there must be serious prospects of success. The questions that needed to be answered were:

• “Is there a reasonable probability of success in winning the war? Answering this question would have included assurances about troop levels and the adequacy of needed supplies
• “Is there a reasonable probability of success in winning the peace? Answering this question would have included assurances about our ability to protect people and property and our ability to reestablish civil government.

4. Proportionality – the use of arms must not produce evils or disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern weapons (weapons of mass destruction) makes assessing this criterion an extremely technical and difficult activity. Questions related to this criterion should have included:

• What is the probability of harm to American civilians and military?
• What is the probability of harm to the Iraqi military?
• What is the probability of harm to Iraqi citizens and damage to Iraqi property – collateral damage?
• Could these risks justify a preemptive war?
• Could these risks justify a war?

5. Discrimination – the must be a distinction between combatants and noncombatants. The questions related to this criterion should have included:

• Will we be able to minimize the harm to people and damage to property during the conduct of the war?
• Will we be able to minimize the harm to people and damage to property during the establishment of the peace (occupation)?
• What are then acceptable level of harm to people and damage to property (collateral damage)?

Some may dismiss answering questions about the criteria for a “preemptive” and “just” wars as an intellectual exercise and not part of the “Real Politic” that must drive decision making in a time of crisis – at least a time of assumed crisis by some.

This may be true. Or it may be that in the long-run the moral-philosophical questions are the important questions of Real Politics. How we answered these questions before the war and during the occupation will have major impacts on our self-respect as a people. How others answer these questions will certainly impact the degree of respect and credibility we have as a country and how we are viewed in the lens of history.

Finally, the war in Iraq did not meet the standards of the “self-defense” clause in American criminal law – the rational man defense. The rational man defense is based on the requirement that a “rational man” would have seen himself in immanent danger. Is there a rational person who truly believed that that the United States was in “imminent” danger of an attack by Iraq?

In the final analysis, Saddam may have had a more legitimate rationale for his invasion of Kuwait then we had for our invasion of Iraq.

Did the United States have a legitimate right to ignore these standards? The answer is no. The answer is no because:

• The Bush administration itself says that it never claimed that there was an “imminent” threat. This apparently is true. The phrase they actually used before the war was “unique urgency.” Of course they did insist that immediate military action was necessary and the world could not afford to wait for additional inspections by United Nation officials. The attempt to disassociate with the phrase “imminent” came after it was absolutely clear to the world that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Despite the administration’s linguistic footwork (talk about nuance) the administration (and the American people) can not have it both ways. There either was or thee was not an immanent threat/unique urgency and there is data to prove it. The truth is that there was not and many people knew it.

• The war did not meet the “Rational Man” criteria – in this case an international standard. The intelligence services of many countries believed that Iraq had WMD’s. But the existing intelligence did not convince them that preemptive action and war should be the immediate action. They wanted additional inspections through the United Nations to verify the accuracy and timeliness of their existing intelligence reports. They raised even more serious questions about the accuracy of our contention that Iraq was allied with Osama bin Lauden in designing terrorist attacks on America. In other words our plea of “self defense” would not have carried the day in an American court of law- unless the jury was rigged.

And, the jury was rigged. The United States has the pure military and economic power to intimidate most nations into silence. And, the American people have become the most fearful people on the planet.

How do you speak truth to power?

How do you speak truth to fear?

But the American people have spoken and the blood is now on our hands.

Is there blood? The answer is definitely yes!

We have over 1,000 dead and 25,000 wounded American military. Given the actual casualties, what multiplier should we use to estimate the total damage to the lives of their families caused by the war? Or, should we dismiss all this as collateral damage?

Then, there is the blood of Iraqi civilians. The lowest estimate of death for Iraqi civilians is about 15,000. This is approximately five times the number of deaths that Americans suffered on September 11, 2004. I repeat the 15,000 deaths represent a death factor of 5/1 inflicted on the citizens of a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

The 15,000 is recognized as the absolute lowest possible number of Iraqi civilians killed by Americas after that the estimated figure ranges to as high as 300,000 Iraqi civilians killed by Americans. There are no meaningful estimates of the number of Iraqi civilians wound by Americans. Perhaps we should use the 1,000 to 25,000 ratio of American casualties to estimate the number of wounded Iraqi civilians. If we used that metric the minimum figure would be 375,000 Iraqi civilians wounded by Americans. What multiplier should we use to estimate the total damage to Iraqi families caused by the war? But perhaps we don’t have to do the math because the Iraqi civilians are only collateral damage.

Perhaps we do not have to do any math because we are America, the land of the free and the brave. We are the chosen people. We are not accountable to anyone for anything - unless, there is God.

The blood of the leaders is now on the hands of people. 59,424,706 Americans can be wrong. Perhaps some day the American people will hear the words of the prophet Amos, For three transgressions and for four …….!!

Ralph G. Lewis

Retired
Florida International University

-I did not assume direct responsibility for the war on November 2, or any other day. And I am not planning to.

-If we are to speak literally, what November 2 allows us to say is that we now have solid evidence that at least 20% or so of Americans (plus or minus any voting irregularities) are either still in favor of the war, or at least not so vehemently opposed to the war as to be unwilling to vote for the man most directly responsible for it. No surprises there.

-It is still the case that the American people were led into an immoral war by an ill-informed if not malevolent President. No part of that sentence has stopped being true. It would be stunning if any part of it DID stop being true, seeing how it's in the past tense.

-If, unknown to history, women helped to draft the Declaration of Independence, they should have insisted on "all men and women are created equal". Would have saved a lot of trouble. Incidentally, the Declaration of Independence does not contain a list of criteria for when one nation should invade another, and does not constitute international law in any case.

-When questions should have been raised about the appropriateness of a preemptive attack, some members of Congress and the press went ahead and raised questions about the appropriateness of a preemptive attack. Oregon's entire Democratic congressional delegation voted against giving Bush the war powers, for instance, and some explained why. Some religious leaders spoke loudly against the war too. As for "Where were the people?", some of them were demonstrating in the streets, and huge numbers were sitting at home glumly convinced of their inability to influence the course of events--which proved accurate, though to some extent it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. American politics is plagued with those.

-So far as I know, no country looks at the definition of "self-defense" found in American criminal law for a criterion for when to invade another country. That definition was formulated for interpersonal relations in any case.

-I'm curious which countries had intelligence services that thought Iraq had WMDs.

-The American people have not spoken. The children and teenagers were not given a chance; millions of adults had their votes junked; and those who actually got their votes counted got a chance to "say" one of three things about the war:
A. I want the guy who got us into the war to remain President.
B. I'd prefer a guy who gave war powers to the first guy, but disagreed on matters of detail.
C. I don't care which guy becomes President.
About a fifth of Americans said thing A, plus or minus any distortions due to fraud. The American people have not spoken.