Fraters Libertas

Parse My Arse

Saint Paul has brought to my attention a rather strange lefty blog called Sully Watch, dedicated to nothing but analysis of Andrew Sullivan. It's kind of a stalker meets critic concept. The proprietor of the blog seems to have a love/hate relationship with Sullivan. The hate is obvious while the love is a bit more latent.

Sully Watch has been focused of late on the controversy surrounding whether the administration said that there was an imminent threat from Iraq before the war. Since it's been exhaustively shown that the President never if fact made that claim, Sully Watch has joined the chorus of those now claiming that the imminent threat was implied.

In the course of his daily undressing of Sullivan, Sully Watch happened upon a post that I had written on the imminent threat matter and took issue with it:

Actually, to take Mr. Libertas' claim on, implication is not about feelings.

That's Mr. Elder to you pal. And quit looking at me like that.

Perhaps feelings wasn't really the best word for me to use with implication. Perceptions might be more appropriate. For when you say that you imply, you are perceiving the intentions of another. But that still doesn't take away from the main thrust of my argument for perceptions are not objective either.

SW tries to claim that implications are not subjective and offers and example from the legal world:

If implication were such an intangible, so truly subjective and immeasurable, there would be a lot less people in jail for their presumed assent to drug deals.

And it's true that legally it is possible to imply assent and imply consent:

n. consent when surrounding circumstances exist which would lead a reasonable person to believe that this consent had been given, although no direct, express or explicit words of agreement had been uttered. Examples: a) a "contract" based on the fact that one person has been doing a particular thing and the other person expects him/her to continue; b) the defense in a "date rape" case in which there is a claim of assumed consent due to absence of protest or a belief that "no" really meant "yes," "maybe" or "later."

There's a legal matter taking place right now involving Kobe Bryant that you might have heard about. You think there's no subjectivity there? He said/she said?

Implication is not always an intangible but it is very rarely not at least somewhat subjective. When a person is convicted and sent to jail for presumed assent to drug deals it is not an objective process. If they plead not guilty and go to trial a jury will have to be convinced that their actions implied assent to complete the deal. Jurors will have to decide whether a reasonable person would conclude that implied assent occurred. It is not an open and shut case. That's why police officers work to get evidence of express assent by drug dealers if possible.

SW continues:

Historically, in military terms, launching a pre-emptive strike means you hit the enemy right before you think he's about to do the same to you. Pre-emption implies imminence, and indeed no less a personage than Christopher Hitchens understands at least that the term invites moral murkiness.

SW is now focusing on the differences between a pre-emptive war and preventive war. He is arguing that because the Bush administration used the terms pre-emptive before the war that imminence implied. But if you actually read the Hitchens piece that he mentions, you'll find that while Hitchens does acknowledge that pre-emptive and preventative wars are morally sticky issues, there may not really be a difference between them:

Surveying the bloody past, one can only wish for the opportunity to rerun the tape so that enough judicious force could have been employed, in good enough time, to forestall greater bloodshed. Everyone will have their favorite example. If only, for instance, the U.N. troops in Rwanda had been beefed up and authorized to employ deadly force as a deterrent. But tautology lurks at every corner, and the distinction between "pre-emptive" and "preventive" becomes a distinction without a difference, and only hindsight really works (and not always even then). The lesson is that all potential combatants, at all times, will invariably decide that violence and first use are justified in their own case.

Now I don't believe that Hitchens' words alone either validate or invalidate the justification of the war with Iraq. But they do demonstrate the difficulties that emerge once you get tangled up in splitting hairs over the definition of words and what they really imply. The real world is too messy for such niceties and, as Hitchens says, even in hindsight it is difficult if not impossible to precisely define the conditions that must exist to meet the requirements for either pre-emptive or preventive wars. And his last line, which essential says the winners make the rules, isn't likely to assuage fears that the US may not have acted (and may not act in the future) within the established guidelines for a "moral war". But the stark reality is that the world now is a very dangerous place, and we should realize that in order to succeed in this struggle, we're going to have to learn to live with these moral ambiguities.

The problem that I have with so much of the post-war criticism of the administration's pre-war justification for war is that it appears to be such nit picking. From the infamous "sixteen words" in the State of the Union speech to the "implication of imminence" it's all about the interpretation and nuance of words.

It's not about the numerous UN resolutions that Iraq brazenly flaunted.

It's not about desires and plans of Iraq to develop WMDs.

It's not about the Iraqi support of terrorism.

It's not about the wars of aggression launched by Iraq against its neighbors.

It's not about the mass graves, the torture chambers, the rapes, the tyranny of Saddam's regime.

It's not about his two murderous sons, in line to continue his reign of terror into the future.

It's not about the how 9/11 altered the context in which we view rogue states, WMDs, and terrorism.

No. To the left it's all about words.

You want to engage in a constructive debate about the lead up to war in Iraq and whether it was justified? Answer these questions:

Is the United States safer now than it was while Saddam Hussein was in power?

Are the prospects for long term peace and stability in the Middle East better now than they were when the Baath ruled Iraq?

Is the world overall better or worse off for having Saddam removed from power and the Coalition trying to help establish a democratic and free Iraq?

I don't think that any these questions are necessarily easy to answer and plenty of room exists for reasonable disagreement. But these are the macro issues that really matter. Let's discuss them instead of parsing every freakin' word that the President uttered before the war.