Spring Break
History professor takes on Mulgrew's Iraq challenge, questions
By: Robert Zaller
Issue date: 6/2/06 Section: Ed-Op
Originally published: 6/2/06 at 10:23 AM EST
Last update: 6/7/06 at 12:10 AM EST
Originally published: 6/2/06 at 10:23 AM EST
Last update: 6/7/06 at 12:10 AM EST
My editor, William Mulgrew, who indulgently prints articles he strongly disagrees with, has asked me to reply to his eleven queries in last week's commentary ("Mulgrew asks Professor Zaller 11 questions on Iraq, throws gauntlet," May 26). The radical press I read, such as The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Wall Street Journal, doesn't seem to share his optimism about our "progress" in Iraq. But there is a more fundamental difference between us. If Bush's invasion had established a paradise on Earth in Iraq, it would still have been the result of a war of aggression and hence, in the terms established (by us) at the Nuremberg trials, a "crime against peace." The protocols of just war developed by the United Nations, to which we are a party, stipulate that a nation may defend itself against attack or the immediate threat of attack, but that otherwise all military action by member states must be collective, upon a due finding that the common peace is threatened or that action is required to stave off acts of genocide, even if confined within a nation's borders. The United Nations' own lapses in administering the Oil For Food program in Iraq (an effort to mitigate the consequences of our embargo, which by credible estimate resulted in the preventable deaths of more than 500,000 Iraqi children) does not invalidate its charter or abrogate its responsibility to international peace. Nor does it entitle us to wage war unilaterally in the absence of a legitimate casus belli.
Of course, our invasion of Iraq has not created a paradise, but something much closer to its opposite. Tens of thousands of Iraqis - the respected British medical journal The Lancet estimates the number at 100,000 - have been killed in the process of being "liberated" by our military forces. I invite those who hold others' blood so cheaply to consider how Americans might react if a foreign power, deciding that we were suffering intolerably under a tyrant (a conclusion that would not be far off the mark), decided to liberate us at proportional cost, i.e., upward of a million American dead. I doubt we'd appreciate the favor very much.
Of course, our invasion of Iraq has not created a paradise, but something much closer to its opposite. Tens of thousands of Iraqis - the respected British medical journal The Lancet estimates the number at 100,000 - have been killed in the process of being "liberated" by our military forces. I invite those who hold others' blood so cheaply to consider how Americans might react if a foreign power, deciding that we were suffering intolerably under a tyrant (a conclusion that would not be far off the mark), decided to liberate us at proportional cost, i.e., upward of a million American dead. I doubt we'd appreciate the favor very much.
