Splendid. I enjoyed that. Should have been on Comment is Free, though. Deserves a wider audience.

In fairness the guy is a professional theologian, so cobbling together arguments in support of whatever he’d previously decided to believe is pretty much his job.

“Nigel Biggar, professor of moral and pastoral theology at the University of Oxford, ”

Pretty much says it all.

That chair should have been abolished in…ooh I dunno, the 18th Century? Some time after it became abundantly obvious that there are no good reasons to believe in an all powerful god, especially an all powerful Christian God.

What Larry says. Theology is a nonsense subject. How can you expect a rational argument to spring from a fundamentally superstitious belief system?

You might as well say ‘Credit crunch – what can be done about it? Lets ask a Professor of Not-Standing on Cracks in the Pavement!’ or ‘Civil Liberties – lets go to Doctor Afraid of Peanut Butter Sticking to the Roof of His Mouth’.

End justifying the means arguments are always suspect, but particularly so when they come from people who believe that at the very end the dead will live again.

How can you guys say this? That article was recommended by no less than John Rentoul, Norman Geras, and Michael White. Particularly delicious is Norm’s comment: “Guardianistas be on your guard! It may contain more complexity than you can handle.” Michael White, surely a Guardianista (whatever that may be), thinks Biggar will attract attacks from the ‘Daily Beast’ (not the Guardian). Once you muddy the waters, no one knows what they’re talking about.

I wonder if the 100,000 or so Iraqi civilians killed in the ensuing conflict – and their surviving relatives, loved-ones and friends – would have agreed with the theology professor if they had been given the choice.

Saddam Hussein was a criminal despot able to keep the lid. by brutal means. on the deep religious and ethnic tensions in Iraq in order to preserve his domain. For that and other reasons of high international politics, he was initially supported by Republican administrations in America as this picture of his meeting in December 1983 with Rumsfeld, acting as President Reagan’s special envoy, shows:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

The Economist for 13 February has a review of a new book: The Rule of Law (Penguin Books) by Lord Bingham, who has held all three of Britain’s great judicial offices: Master of the Rolls, Lord Chief Justice and Senior Law Lord. The review includes this passage:

“However, it is when he gets to his final point, the requirement that states should regard their obligations under international law as no less forceful than those under national laws, that he really makes his mark. In a cool, but deadly dissection of the assault on the rule of law that was launched by the so-called ‘war on terror’, Lord Bingham deals first with the question of whether the allied invasion of Iraq was legal. He has no doubt that it was not. He argues persuasively that neither Security Council resolutions 678 nor 1441 could bear the weight that the British government was forced to place on them when confronted by the failure to obtain a further resolution explicitly authorising the use of force. One cannot help feeling that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith might have had a hotter time under examination by Lord Bingham than by the Chilcot panel.”
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15495776

So much for the theology professor.

Nazi Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 on the claim that the invasion was to protect the German-speaking residents of Danzig and, indeed, there was some evidence, reported by journalists, of popular abuse of German speakers living in Danzig, which was not altogether surprising in the light of the German occupation of Czecho-Slovakia in March 1939.

The invasion of Poland marked the beginning of what was to become WW2. By the end, 40 to 50 million people had been killed. It is widely believed that WW2 was a just war but the UNO was established after the war in an endeavour to prevent similar conflicts. As Tony Blair said in a keynote speech in Chicago in April 1999:

“If we want a world ruled by law and by international co-operation then we have to support the UN as its central pillar.”
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international/jan-june99/blair_doctrine4-23.html

Cheers for the plug, Don. If I can be forgiven for taking advantage, I’ll note that Biggar is also invoking “The Lessons of History”… http://bit.ly/d7scL7 http://bit.ly/aORXHt …Taking the Decent TARDIS for a spin through recent events… http://bit.ly/bBZsIh …And telling us that everything will turn out okay because (Cough, Cough, Mumble). http://bit.ly/aZ53YI

There’s no good excuse for linking to this, but I’d be doing readers a disservice if I didn’t point out that the present state of Iraq is down to the Surge… http://bit.ly/bRQcdj

And as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, Biggar’s opening argument is a beauty – that because everybody now says Iraq was a horrific bloodbath, a totally unnecessary clusterfuck and a slapstick, hideous failure, that must mean that everyone is smug, self-satisfied and probably wrong. If Biggar regards popularly-held beliefs as inherently suspect, I now invite him to test the popularly held belief that you shouldn’t stick metal objects into live plug sockets.

That’s before we get to the fantasy nuclear supervillain showdown between Saddam and Ahmadinejad at the end, which is all kinds of self-clowning comedy.

Fine use of the Decent TARDIS in the final paragraph, too.

You can caricature any argument though- it doesn’t prove its right. So all the anti-war arguments look the same as well. I think there are a couple of things here that I really dislike though;

1. You dont’ take on this guy’s arguments- can you not extend him the courtesy that you would expect him to extend to you?

2. You are certain you are right. I think you probably are. This post comes across as tremendously arrogant though- its I’m right and you are wrong and therefore I’m going to take the piss out of you no matter what you say. Isn’t that one of Blair’s major faults, so consumed by the politics that he actually forgot to think about what was at stake.

3. And this isn’t to the author but to the commentator who said that theology didn’t matter: it doesn’t providing you forget that a considerable percentage of the world believe in one of these gods. We need to understand how people who believe in god think.

I agree with you about lots of this- but calling people ‘decents’ and fulminating against the existance of whole academic subjects worries me. You may be happy to be intolerant of those that are wrong- but my problem I suppose is that I suspect on most political issues that I have a view on, I’m probably wrong. I suspect the same is true for you- just because we have imperfect knowledge and imperfect abilities.

(Oh, and while I’m sure a lot of academic theologians are mock-worthy, Biggar’s predecessor in the moral & pastoral theology chair at Oxford was Oliver O’Donovan, and his book on The Problem of Self-Love in Augustine (Yale, 1979) is just terrific. He’s written on the Iraq war, too, but – if memory serves – not in quite the same way as his successor.)

^^^^^

Fundamentally agrees, but has Concerns about the tone.

[2][3][4] Oh, theology exists all right. Much in the same way that sub-atomic physics exists. Both, so far as I know, are optional. Until you get into a sufficiently tight jam.

More generally, Biggar does not address one (in my view over-riding) objection to the war in Iraq – that it can never be morally right to start what you can’t finish. There is (and never was) the slightest evidence that Bush, Blair and the rest of them had the slightest notion of what they wanted to replace the Saddam régime with – Bush’s fairytale rhetoric notwithstanding – or even whether they thought the territorial integrity of Iraq was a Good Thing, and if so, for whom.

Also suggesting that World War II was more more morally complex than we often care to think has got zilch to do with the justification, if any, for invading Iraq.

Biggar’s point that the current world order provides an incoherent means of sorting just from unjust wars is fair enough, though. And I notice that no one here has yet said otherwise.

#That chair should have been abolished in…ooh I dunno, the 18th Century? Some time after it became abundantly obvious that there are no good reasons to believe in an all powerful god, especially an all powerful Christian God.#

Not sure what this means. Are you implying that there was ever a ‘good’ reason to believe in an all powerful god?…there still might be grounds for believing in a divinity with restricted powers?…or the state of scientific knowledge in the 18th century still made the existence of say Allah, Ganesh or Yaweh a feasible position but not the Christian god?

Or..are you just falling over yourself to impress on us that you combine your rationality and scientific outlook with an inclusive and altruistic attitude to other people’s cultures and beliefs together with a healthy scepticism about your own and an acceptance of its obvious failings. Gawd bless you Mr Sagar, sir…you’re a real progressive gent..and no mistake…if only the rest of the left-liberal blogosphere shared your ‘enlightened’ stance. Ooops…silly me, it does.

I assume the same arguments could be made for the Afghan war which, erm, Sunny supports?

Biggar’s point that the current world order provides an incoherent means of sorting just from unjust wars is fair enough, though. And I notice that no one here has yet said otherwise.

Well, wars of aggression are out (see Nuremberg trials) and humanitarian wars are okay in moments of dire need or with UN authorisation. I’m pretty happy with that as it stands and I don’t think it’s a problem.

Biggar’s point seems to be that a) as it stands, it’s illegal to start aggressive wars for no sane reason and that b) this is somehow a problem for international law rather than for the type of belligerent twat that likes starting aggressive wars.

I assume the same arguments could be made for the Afghan war which, erm, Sunny supports?

They could indeed. I notice Sunny isn’t here.

‘Fine use of the Decent TARDIS in the final paragraph, too.’

I was going to say the ‘Subtle Knife’ but I wasn’t sure that people would get the Pullman reference.

Without the costs to Britain of invading Iraq, our public finances would be in better shape and the Treasury would have been better placed to afford more equipment for our troops in Afghanistan.

@12 I’m not so sure they had no idea what they were going to do with Iraq post Invasion.

I do think that Bush and some of his cohorts thought that some sort of spontaneous capitalist order would emerge once the Baathist state was dismantled. I genuinely think they didn’t know the first thing about political economy or the culture of Iraq.

I wouldn’t say that the Iraq war was ever going to end well, but the people in charge more or less ensured that it couldn’t.

Also, Devil’s Kitchen called me of the “Decent Left” a few days ago and didn’t realise what awful connotations the term had. Exactly how niche is this term because I assumed it was in fairly common usage among people who care about politics.

“after a while gets kind of tedious. ”

I’d quibble with the phrase “after a while”. I was no fan of the invasion but this piece is an incoherent rant which fails to address a single point raised in the piece it pretends to be fisking.

Paul Sagar (3)

I detect a whiff of hypocrisy about your stated position here:

“professor of moral and pastoral theology at the University of Oxford … That chair should have been abolished in…ooh I dunno, the 18th Century? Some time after it became abundantly obvious that there are no good reasons to believe in an all powerful god, especially an all powerful Christian God.”

Whereas you kicked off an earlier thread on LC by quoting as your sole evidence, research from another religious University department: Exeter University’s “Europan Muslim Research Centre”.

You seem to apply different rules to Muslim and non-muslim university departments it seems…. and seem to have been willing to criticise one but not the other, using grounds that apply to both (both believe in an all powerful god).

Why the bias Paul ?

Nazi Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 on the claim that the invasion was to protect the German-speaking residents of Danzig

I don’t know where that myth comes from – it does seem to be awfully convenient for those arguing a certain point of view: that humanitarian concerns have no place in international law or politics.

In reality, being pretty much unconstrained by any need for plausibility in their propaganda, the Nazis claimed they were attacked by the Poles, and were only acting in self defence.

In any case, neither the UN charter, nor the doctrines of humanitarian or liberal intervention that are supposed to be proposed modifications or reinterpretations of that charter existed in 1939.

In Iraq, there were real liberal concerns, contested humanitarian issues, and almost entirely bogus security and economic ones, with the latter being both the formal and actual reasons almost everyone who supported the war did so.

The war was a bad idea because it was unaffordable, because it worsened the security situation in the middle east and increased the threat from terrorism, and because (almost certainly) more people got killed or maimed than would have otherwise.

t was not a bad idea because, as #6 comes very close to saying, tyranny is a better political system than democracy, or massacre is a legal way of dealing with ethnic minorities.

[20] Exactly my thoughts.

[15] Go back and read what Biggar says is the problem with relying on the UN to sanction warfare.

Go back and read what Biggar says is the problem with relying on the UN to sanction warfare.

He says that international law allows military action but that it can be vetoed by other security council members. I repeat, I’m fine with this – the UNSC was correct about Iraq, and we were horribly, hideously wrong. I am A-OK with the situation as it stands because we should have listened to them rather than launching into entirely fraudulent, intentionally misleading tirades about non-existent model planes that were about to drop a gajillion litres of Anthrax on Dogdick, Alabama.

Biggar, on the other hand, seems to think that there’s another legal test along the lines of Does the situation seem sufficiently bad to the United States of America? He cites horrible massacres that took place in the 80’s and Iraq’s phantom weapons in support.

Given that the world’s only superpower and most mighty military force purportedly invaded the castrated, two-soldiers-trying-to find-reverse-on-a-Russian-tank nation of Iraq in self-defence because they were honestly so very terrified that Iraq was a major threat to American security, I suggest that this test is a lunatic idea. It’s a green light to aggressive and loopy states the world over.

I’ll say this again – Biggar is contending that there’s a problem with the law because it forbids idiotic, obviously-doomed military clusterfucks like the Iraq invasion. I’m saying that no, forbidding these insane wheezes is why the current law is 100% correct. There is no problem with the current set-up unless you are the type of person who likes starting wars of choice, which Biggar most certainly is.

[24] Biggar says – quite rightly – that the problem with the UN (GA or Security Council, it makes no oddes) is that the members vote in accordance with their national interests (as perceived by the government in office). Thus France vetoed the Iraqi war not because Jacques Chirac was a moral paragon but because he – very reasonably – saw this as an opportunity to improve French standing in the Arab world, which the French have licensed themselves to interfere in ever since Napoleon.

I don’t recognise your caricature of Biggar’s position.

@22: “In reality, being pretty much unconstrained by any need for plausibility in their propaganda, the Nazis claimed they were attacked by the Poles, and were only acting in self defence.”

Quite so:

“Following negotiations with Hitler on the Munich Agreement, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain reported that, ‘He told me privately, and last night he repeated publicly, that after this Sudeten German question is settled, that is the end of Germany’s territorial claims in Europe’. Almost immediately following the agreement, however, Hitler reneged on it. The Nazis increased their requests for the incorporation of the Free City of Danzig into the Reich, citing the ‘protection’ of the German majority as a motive. In November 1938, Danzig’s district administrator, Albert Forster, reported to the League of Nations that Hitler had told him Polish frontiers would be guaranteed if the Poles were ‘reasonable like the Czechs.’ German State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker reaffirmed this alleged guarantee in December 1938. . . German newspapers in Danzig and Nazi Germany played an important role in inciting nationalist sentiment: headlines buzzed about how Poland was misusing its economic rights in Danzig and German Danzigers were increasingly subjugated to the will of the Polish state.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Corridor#Nazi_Era

There’s a detailed account of the (often acrimonious) diplomatic exchanges regarding Danzig during the summer of 1939 in William Shirer: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960). One leading official complaint from (Nazi) Germany concerned the “oppressive” actions of Polish officials – who were trying to prevent the smugglining of arms to German-speaking residents in Danzig. As Shirer makes clear, however the rest of the world interpreted the situation, in the German press in Germany, Poland was regularly presented as the aggressor.

@22: “@6 comes very close to saying, tyranny is a better political system than democracy, or massacre is a legal way of dealing with ethnic minorities.”

I’m certainly not claiming any of that. What I’m saying that it was foreseeable there would likely be extensive civil conflict in Iraq if Saddam were toppled because he had successfully contained the religious rivalries and ethnic tensions there in order to maintain his own self-serving despotic rule. The likelihood of the civil conflict was the greater because there was no post-invasion plan by America and Britain.

Removing Saddam might be highly desirable – though illegal in international law – but it was predictable that his removal absent any post-invasion plan would lead to the killing of thousands. And that is what happened. We also have this factor:

“WASHINGTON – At least $8.8 billion in Iraqi funds that was given to Iraqi ministries by the former US -led authority there cannot be accounted for, according to a draft U.S. audit set for release soon.

“The audit by the Coalition Provisional Authority’s own inspector general blasts the CPA for ‘not providing adequate stewardship’ of at least $8.8 billion from the Development Fund for Iraq that was given to Iraqi ministries.

“The audit was first reported on a Web site earlier this month by David Hackworth, a journalist and retired colonel. A U.S. official confirmed that the contents of the leaked audit cited by Hackworth were accurate. . .

“One of the main benefactors of the Iraq funds was the Texas-based firm Halliburton, which was paid more than $1 billion out of those funds to bring in fuel for Iraqi civilians.

“The monitoring board said despite repeated requests it had not been given access to US audits of contracts held by Halliburton, which was once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, and other firms that used the development funds.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5763483/

ntentionally misleading tirades about non-existent model planes that were about to drop a gajillion litres of Anthrax on Dogdick, Alabama

I would understand if people were to conclude from this that the international law on the right of armed self defence should be modified or removed, replaced by the kind of UN military command envisioned in Article 47 of the UN charter.

I don’t get how it is supposed to support the claims you are making.

Biggar is contending that there’s a problem with the law because it forbids idiotic, obviously-doomed military clusterfucks like the Iraq invasion

That might be a stronger point if the existing law had, in reality, actually forbid or prevented the war.

Is your line of argument is really just based mainly on the in-principle, ideal results of your ideas, supplemented with hindsight? Obviously, compare that with the actual, real-world results of the other sides flowery rhetoric, and you are not setting up a game you could lose.

If you want to strengthen international law, whether textually, institutionally or culturally, so that it does actually stop the things you want it to prevent, then you really do need to think through the consequence of that decision, not just say ‘I’m one of the good guys, therefore it will work out’.

France vetoed the Iraqi war not because Jacques Chirac was a moral paragon but because he – very reasonably – saw this as an opportunity to improve French standing in the Arab world.

Perhaps so – Chirac is a slippery customer. Yet I suggest that perhaps the French oppose the war because it had OMG Vietnam 2 – Now With Extra Horror, Horror written all over it in twenty-foot tall flaming letters.

After all, what were the Germans getting out of opposing the war? What about the Russians, the Chinese, the Cameroonians, the Angolans?

And I don’t understand this suggestion that states acting in their own interests is some kind of affront. It’s what states always do, even when they’re bigging themselves up as humanitarians. The US invasion of Iraq was hardly a selfless act, nor was our decision to support them. States act in their own interests not because they’re a force for good or evil, but because they’re amoral political and economic systems.

That might be a stronger point if the existing law had, in reality, actually forbid or prevented the war.

It failed to prevent the war because we ignored the law. If I want to burn down my neighbour’s house, the fact that it’s illegal isn’t going to stop me. Short of airlifting the Russian army into Baghdad, there’s nothing that could’ve stopped the Americans doing what they wanted and it’s a bit of a bloody cheek to pretend that the failure to prevent the invasion was a matter of law. It’s like the burglar castigating the Theft Act for being insufficiently punitive to dissuade him.

Is your line of argument is really just based mainly on the in-principle, ideal results of your ideas, supplemented with hindsight?

Remind me here – which political factions were talking about the in-principle, ideal results of their ideas? Because I for one don’t remember proposing that invading Iraq would lead to an “Arc of democracy” in the Middle East. I remember saying “this is going to be a new Vietnam” and, well, we’re onto the hindsight stuff now, aren’t we?

[28] That post is my nomination for Self-Contradictory posting of the Year 2010.

FR claims that, although states are amoral on the international stage, nevertheless a large number of them acted on the basis of moral outrage in opposing the invasion of Iraq.

Actually, Germany opposed it because Germany believes in a common European foreign policy and it never minds being in a position to say to France “oy, you owe us one”; the other assorted large and small states did so because giving America the finger plays well with domestic public opinion. Well, either that or else everyone else just is morally superior to the English-speaking world. I leave you to figure out which is more likely.

FR claims that, although states are amoral on the international stage, nevertheless a large number of them acted on the basis of moral outrage in opposing the invasion of Iraq.

Nobody said anything about moral outrage – that was you. I suggest to you that even short, decisive wars are always horribly violent and destabilising; that there are always unforeseen results, and that other nations might not regard a bloodbath on the Tigris as being in anyone’s interest. This stuff is, you know, common sense.

Mike Killingworth @25 “I don’t recognise your caricature of Biggar’s position.” Would you care to restate Biggar’s position for those us who clearly don’t understand it then?

Would I be wrong for paraphrasing Biggar thus? “Among other things, Iraq came within 2 years of working nuclear weapons, but no closer than that [ie it didn’t have any nuclear weapons; and it stopped or was prevented for reasons Biggar chooses not to discuss], because of this, it was necessary to invade in 2003.” That *really* makes sense. “Hans Blix thought Iraq had WMD.” Not really, as he said recently. “There were 17 UN resolutions calling on Iraq to disarm.” Gordon Brown, who ought to have been well briefed before Chilcot, thought there had been only 14, although he doesn’t say what they called for. (I find it admirable that after the first resolution calling upon Saddam to disarm, the UN decided just to go on passing 16 more resolutions calling for the same thing. If they indeed did, which I consider rather unlikely. I’m accusing Biggar of making stuff up here, BTW, if it’s not obvious.) Here is a complete list of Security Council Resolutions (SCRs) involving Iraq [1991-2004]. “Saddam was looking for fissionable uranium.” No, he wasn’t.

Chris Brooke @10 “The Problem of Self-Love in Augustine” Is there more to it than “makes you go blind, mentally feeble, gay, etc?” I’m only asking.

@28: “Perhaps so – Chirac is a slippery customer”

A consideration that must have surely weighed with the French government at the time of the UN Security Council debates on Iraq, prior to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, is its Muslim population of some 5 to 6 million.

We tend to forget or overlook the history of French experience of terrorist outrages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Paris_Metro_bombing

To resolve any doubts, note this press report from February 2004:

“A prominent Israeli MP said yesterday that his country’s intelligence services knew claims that Saddam Hussein was capable of swiftly launching weapons of mass destruction were wrong but withheld the information from Washington.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/feb/04/iraq.israel

In other words, the British government’s dossier on Iraq’s WMD, published on 24 September 2002 for a special session of Parliament, didn’t just “sex-up” intelligence about Iraq’s WMD.

What’s worse is the report in this review in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz of the book by Ron Suskind: “The Way of the World – A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism (Harper Books, 2008)

“The most sensational and disturbing lie of all is Suskind’s revelation, solidly sourced, that, even though they knew Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, Bush and his men convinced the American public and the entire world that their country had no other choice but to embark on an armed invasion to keep the tyrant from Baghdad from using those weapons on his enemies.”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1037233.html

And Blair knew that before the invasion in March 2003 from this leaked Secret minute of 23 July 2002 concerning the visit of the then head of MI6 to Washington:

“C [the traditional title for the head of MI6, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service – at the time: Sir Richard Dearlove] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

The final sentence is absolutely damning: “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article387374.ece

The theology professor must weigh in his moral balance not only the illegality of the Iraq war and the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians but the lies told by the governments of America and Britain to their respective electorates in order to justify the invasion.

It failed to prevent the war because we ignored the law.

Which doesn’t remotely begin to address the question of whether changing policy to strictly follow one interpretation of that law would be a good thing.

Laws and regulations get ignored all the time, from the one about it being legal to kill a Welshmen in Nottingham to the one about no bailouts for Euro states to the one about establishing a standing UN military command.

I am unaware of any pre-1990 historical precedent for the idea that military action suggested by a member of the UNSC with veto power should not take place because it could be illegal .Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin pretty explicitly wrote the UN charter to allow them to invade any and all states they felt necessary, and the text hasn’t changed since. In all of the US, European and worldwide movements of opposition to the Vietnam war, there were, as far as I know, no voices that held the war to actually be currently illegal under the existing UN charter.

Arguing that committing to strictly following a new interpretation of a pre-existing law is somehow not a change in policy is pure sophistry.

Laws and regulations get ignored all the time, from the one about it being legal to kill a Welshmen in Nottingham to the one about no bailouts for Euro states to the one about establishing a standing UN military command.

Hang on, I was in Nottingham in December. (Nice place, I like it.) I didn’t kill anybody – or given my celebrated ineptness, even try to. Are you saying that I ignored the law? I really don’t think that’s right.

Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin pretty explicitly wrote the UN charter to allow them to invade any and all states they felt necessary, and the text hasn’t changed since.

I am not a lawyer, but there is more to the understanding and interpretation of laws than the original text. For one thing (again I’m not familiar enough with UN law to provide examples), laws don’t change so much as amendments are made. (See the US constitution for example: which originally neither allowed nor forbade gun possession, etc.)

Arguing that committing to strictly following a new interpretation of a pre-existing law is somehow not a change in policy is pure sophistry.

Maybe so. (I could spend a lot of time arguing about this; I’d rather not).

From Robin Cook’s resignation letter:

In principle I believe it is wrong to embark on military action without broad international support.

In practice I believe it is against Britain’s interests to create a precedent for unilateral military action.

Note the word ‘precedent’ which is important in law. Tony Blair (a lawyer) wrote back and did not gainsay his arguments. Both letters here

Which doesn’t remotely begin to address the question of whether changing policy to strictly follow one interpretation of that law would be a good thing.

I really don’t care whether the war was legal or not, because it was so obviously going to be a hideous disaster and that fact alone should’ve stopped us. As for the stuff about “strictly following a new interpretation of the law”, I’m at a loss. “Not invading countries without SC consent” doesn’t strike me as being particularly new, nor very alarming.

My point is that international law re: elective warmaking is fine as it is. It’s currently very hard to launch wars of choice with international backing and without provoking outrage, and that is just Fine By Me. So when Biggar announces to the world that there are lots of constraints on western powers’ abilities to make war, my response is Good.

33 Bob b. Good point . France was also chasing £40B of oil deals and the Russians were chasing £100B of oil deals in Iraq.

Sorry, I know I’m thick, and I hate to interrupt the mutual back-slapping, but how does ‘being able to make a blog site parodying or anticipating an argument’ equate to ‘proving the argument wrong?’

Would you like this method applied to the proof for global warming? (“Oooh, I know what they’re going to say! They’re going to say the ice is melting! OOhh, I told you so!”)

Friend’s comment seemed most apt for me. I’m glad this blogsite is found so entertaining by those already convinced of its thesis. That is most impressive. I still find the article useful. SHows how thick I must be.

Would you like this method applied to the proof for global warming?

The difference being that that relies on evidence which needs to be re-evaluated whenever something new comes to light. Here we’re just arguing about arguments, and very old ones at that. I’m sure people here would be very happy to consider Biggar’s arguments, if they hadn’t heard and debunked them a thousand times already.

When the same weak-ass arguments keep resurfacing, and being hailed as “brave” and “complex” every time they do, the appropriate response is parody rather than engagement.

Look at this:

the insurgents were obliged not to send suicide bombers into crowded market places, and they have failed persistently

Is this a good or useful argument? Is it novel or complex? Is it brave to be saying such things? No, it’s just a pile of very, very old bullshit.

I still keep hearing some very strong (and clearly strongly felt) assertion, and lots of references to past, brilliant destructions of hopeless arguments – and yet still none here.

They must have been very brilliant. THe sheer reference to them is quite awesome.

It’s the hopelessness which is the thing to focus on, rather than the brilliance. See, I think invading a country with no understanding of the likely aftermath, and no sensible plan of how to cope with it is a serious error. Here’s what Biggar has to say about that:

“Yes, the occupying powers were obliged to maintain law and order, and failed initially. But the insurgents were obliged not to send suicide bombers into crowded market places, and they have failed persistently.”

The argument here really is: ‘yes we messed up big time, but terrorists are bad’. That’s not a parody, it’s a fair summary.

Some arguments are so hopeless they demolish themselves.

He blows what a prick he is (!) quite easily by using the lowest Iraq casualties as caused by his favoured forces and the highest for those caused by forces he dislikes, fucking theologians, typical.

[43] He’d make a good politician, then…

@3 Paul Sagar: “That chair should have been abolished in…ooh I dunno, the 18th Century? Some time after it became abundantly obvious that there are no good reasons to believe in an all powerful god, especially an all powerful Christian God.”

I appreciate many of your arguments, Paul, but that comment is too snide. Biggar does not use the “god was on my side” argument so his political arguments deserve to be deconstructed solely in political terms.

As a long term atheist, I have mellowed my antipathy to theists and made friends. I have not changed my atheism, I merely recognise that most faith believers conduct themselves rationally outside their ceremonies. Jesuits (pretty close to the bonkers wing of the Catholic faith?) fund rational science. Isn’t it a good thing that theists engage with the rational world?

Isn’t it a good thing that theists engage with the rational world?

And, come to that, I hear guys like Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas weren’t complete idiots.

Hi Giles,

Are there any of Biggar’s arguments in particular that you found compelling and want a more serious response to? I read his article as a rehash of arguments which have already been debated to death between 2002 and 2009.

I know in fact, though, that you are jealous because you would like a version of the Decentpedia which covers the output of the New Economics Foundation

The bit I like best is simply this sentiment:

“Judging by the dominant reaction of the British press, its sole function is to prove what we all know to be true: that the invasion was immoral and Tony Blair is to blame. The surfeit of moral certainty among the commentators is suspect; the zealous clarity of their moral waters needs muddying.”

I hate certainty on difficult issues – it really offends my liberal spirit. You don’t have to prove the opposite to prove that uncertainty is justified. Zealous certainty, whether about the direction of the stock market or about what an obviously wicked thing a prime minister did, is hardly justified about anything. It tends to be a way of closing down discussions.

So, for example, let’s not debate the pros and cons of changing union legislation or no longer supporting unprofitable mines; let us instead just equate the word “Thatcher” with “evil” and move on.

Similarly, instead of trying to imagine what it must be like dealing with an aggrieved administration determined to engage in a war, a known dictator, the twenty year future of transAtlantic relations, all the possible permutations of wmd outcomes, all the uncertainty and politics, let us just characterise the invasion as gangsterism, oil-chasing (yeah, let’s do something that puts the price of oil up, real smart), imperialism, whatever – it is so much easier being Manichean.

I do not major in Iraq war ethics, but all I know is that I have never found it easy to decide when considering the vast number of possibilities and uncertainties (and misfounded certainties about wmd existing), what I would have done as Prime Minister. Perhaps I am thick; perhaps I am more indecisive than the typical slogan-writer. But the certainty is what offends me, not any particular argument. Iraqis died – this must be murder. We were involved – so we are the murderers. Hey, ethics is easy!

I did not link to that article because I agreed with all its logic or conclusions, but because it went against the occasionally arrogant certainty that seeems to me to characterize the war.

lso, because as a recent graduate in global history I am deeply impressed with the way that standards and outcomes for wars have shifted over time. The outcomes and decisions taken by our forebears, who now stand proudly on plinths all around Westminster, would end them all up in the Hague. This is one of the most profound changes in history, but one that I seldom see inform the debate.

Anyway, let’s let it rest. I appreciate there is not going to be much movement here.

Does the zealotry and arrogance of Tony Blair and his remaining groupies also offend your liberal sensibilities? Is he similarly guilty of a surfeit of moral certainty?

Or is it just the anti-war lobby who are expected to couch their arguments in caveats and nuance, while the pro-war lobby get a free pass?

See I can understand the point your making, and it’s fair enough as far as it goes. But you’re missing the rather glaring fact that the arguments deployed before, during, and after the war, to justify it and win over the public were egregious propaganda. What’s more they have clear echoes in the article under discussion.

“the anti-war lobby who are expected to couch their arguments in caveats and nuance, while the pro-war lobby get a free pass?”

I think it also says a great deal that in the MSM it was always the anti-war lobby who faced the burden of proof and scrutiny, and never subjected the pro-war claims to anything like that scrutiny (lack of appearence of Scott Ritter for example). In a sane political system it should be the other way around, with “not going to war” being a default position that would require mountains of evidence to shift.

Bensix / Charlieman 45 + 46

Regards Paul Sagar’s anti-theist stance.

It’s actually an anti-Christian, pro-Muslim bias.

As I point out earlier, he is happy on one side to quote Muslim university sources as the evidence basis for starting new threads on LC – without any snide comments about (Muslim) theists at all.

But then in this thread, he can’t resist a snide comment about Christian theists: when the root of his criticism (concept of an all powerful god ) – applies equally to other religions like Islam.

You’ve been caught out Paul!

More to the point (possibly), is what could we, or should we have done about the Iraq situations, and what should we do about them in future? I think we can assume that there will be further occasions, sadly.

We can probably agree that the invasion was very poorly planned, at least the aftermath was. Furthermore, the insurgents (thoroughly unpleasant people in the main) have to take a share of the blame.

Let’s assume for a moment that the invasion of Iraq was just, supported by the UN and that the dodgy dossier was un-dodgy, indeed accurate and fair. It would still have ended in tears.

It may simply be the case that any solution that involves killing people is wrong or will back-fire. So, what should we have done, or rather what should we do in future? Iran for example …..