Posted on 25-7-2003
Was
War Necessary?
By James Carroll, The Boston Globe (see photo)
Why does the apparent suicide of David Kelly strike such
a chord? The British weapons expert found himself in the middle
of the controversy over the Bush-Blair hyping of the Saddam
Hussein threat. Unsourced BBC reports, an aggressive parliamentary
interrogation, the stresses of weapons inspection, a government's
credibility in jeopardy, a rat's nest of deceptions - all of
this together could weigh too much on one man.
Though the private demons of any suicide remain mysterious
forever, it seems that being snagged into this dispute sparked
an anguish in Dr. Kelly that he could not bear. "He told
his wife he was taking a walk," an AP report said. "A
local farmer said Kelly smiled as he passed." Some hours
later, early Friday, he was found near a woods, his left wrist
slashed.
Kelly gives a name and a face to the fact that the dispute
over intelligence manipulated to justify a "preventive
war" is a matter of life and death. This is not a mere
question of politics anymore, another argument between liberals
and conservatives. When told of Kelly's death, Prime Minister
Tony Blair called it "an absolutely terrible tragedy."
But the burden that broke this man was, at bottom, weight of
the absolutely terrible question, Was the British-American war
against Iraq necessary?
Every person killed in that war - certainly including
the young American soldiers still dying by the day - represents
"an absolutely terrible tragedy." On the News Hour
with Jim Lehrer, a daily honor roll is kept, with photographs
of dead Americans shown in silence. It has become a poignant
and depressing ritual, but in that silence, one also asks: And
what of the Iraqi dead?
The coalition air war commander, Lieutenant General T.
Michael Moseley, revealed this weekend that Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld had to personally sign off on any airstrike
"thought likely to result in deaths of more than 30 civilians,"
as The New York Times reported. "More than 50 such strikes
were proposed, and all of them were approved." Moseley
also revealed that the much celebrated stealth attack on Hussein's
bunker early in the war was a double miss. Not only was there
no Hussein; there was no bunker. Sorry about that.
One sees the traditional just war ethic at work: A necessary
war can involve the "collateral damage" of civilian
deaths - tragic, but acceptable. But was the war necessary?
That question defines the stakes in the dispute over the ways
George Bush and Tony Blair misrepresented the prospect of Saddam
Hussein with nuclear, biological, and chemical arms. When allied
warplanes knowingly and repeatedly attacked targets that would
kill significant numbers of civilians, only the urgent effort
to prevent Hussein's mass-destructive and imminent aggression
could have justified such carnage. But now the proffered rationale
of necessity is being shown to have been false. The "preventive
war," as it turns out, prevented nothing.
At a press conference in Japan the day after David Kelly's
body was found, Tony Blair was asked, "Have you got blood
on your hands, prime minister?" Alas, there is an ocean
of blood on the hands of Tony Blair and George Bush. Whether
shown to be "lying" or not, they shunted aside the
ambiguities and uncertainties that characterized the prewar
intelligence assessments of Hussein's threat. And though, as
I argued last week, there is a long tradition of leaders manipulating
intelligence estimates for their own preset purposes, the act
of war is in a special category. When disputed intelligence
is the basis of war, then the leader's reading of that intelligence
had better be proven true. Otherwise the just war argument from
necessity fails.
No wonder the dispute won't die. The questions matter
too much. No wonder polls are shifting away from Bush. Citizens
of the United States do not like to think of themselves as wanton
killers. No wonder American soldiers in Iraq are openly expressing
doubts. A democracy's first requirement of military discipline
is the army's belief in the moral necessity of its mission.
No wonder, even, pressures of the dispute may have driven one
man to kill himself. The issue is mortal: Was George Bush's
new style "preventive" war just another war of aggression,
after all?
Tony Blair was asked if he would resign, and at least
one prominent Democrat hurled the word impeachment at the president.
But the political consequences of this controversy begin to
take second place to the moral, and even legal. The traditional
ethic declares that a war of aggression is inherently unjust
and that every civilian death caused by such a war is murder.
More than 50 air raids, each with more than 30 Iraqi civilian
fatalities, each expressly approved by Rumsfeld. Absolutely
terrible tragedies, every one. And also - more evident by the
day - every one a war crime
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