tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7608702.post4768575927598897936..comments2023-10-25T08:46:20.242-05:00Comments on The Distributist Review: The 100 Years WarJohn Médaillehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16463267750952578888noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7608702.post-16500866160349143672008-03-06T12:05:00.000-06:002008-03-06T12:05:00.000-06:00To be fair to McCain, his "hundred years of war" c...To be fair to McCain, his "hundred years of war" comment was qualified: he said that 100 years of war would be fine with him "as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed". He references occupations like those in Korea and Japan as examples. Of course Pat Buchanan points out that this hypothetical is very unlikely to obtain in Iraq: “If we're in Iraq 100 years”, he says, “we'll be fighting 100 years of war, just as the British, if they stayed in our country 100 years.”<BR/><BR/>I find it interesting that the war debate has been framed around questions of effectiveness. “Will the surge succeed in suppressing the Iraqi insurgency?”. “Will the cost of our continued presence outweigh the rewards?” The activist anti-war left, now as in Vietnam, has been pushed into taking a side on these sorts of question. While these are indeed important questions, framing the debate around them suppresses certain other more questions that are both more fundamental and more difficult. We do not hear arguments against the war from serious commentators with respect to the war's moral legitimacy, except from the “lunatic fringe”. <BR/><BR/>It’s important to ask about when it is Just to wage war with another country, and in particular, when it is Just to invade another country. There were (and still are) charges that the justifications for this war were spurious; but there was never a serious debate about what actions these purported justification, if assumed true, actually justify. However the time for that debate has, for the moment, passed – at least as a matter of practical politics. The debate that this country needs to have now is this: At what point does a legitimate government gain the statue of sovereign nation-state? – and that isn’t a trivial question. <BR/><BR/>If there is good reason to accept that the Iraqi government is not yet the sovereign agency of a full fledged nation-state, then McCain may be quiet right to look at the war policy in terms of effectiveness in securing stability and peace because the relevant moral commitments are to the troops and the Iraqi people. But if at this moment Iraq is a sovereign nation-state then that changes things significantly. In such case a new constraint is places on any discussion about the war policy; the policy cannot merely be about effectiveness, for it is limited by those moral imposition incumbent on the policy from sovereign state that is dealing with the internal affairs of another such state.<BR/><BR/>Consider it this way. Whenever the new Iraqi government reaches the point where it represents a nation-state, the question about the war authorization’s moral legitimacy returns to a state of primary importance, because the legislation would be authorizing the violation of a second sovereign entity. Even without being asked to leave by Iraq at that point, in fact even if asked to stay, the president, congress and American people would have to decide under what authority we could presume to interfere with the internal affairs of another country, and in particular, another country with whom we have no formal treaties of alliance.<BR/><BR/>My point here is that there are some challenging and philosophically complex moral debates that this country needs to be having right now. Instead, the presidential candidates (and the political community at large) are distracted -- and distracting others – by arguments that assume far more than is obvious.Jessehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04264603792697714070noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7608702.post-76044447441916206132008-03-02T07:53:00.000-06:002008-03-02T07:53:00.000-06:00Have you seen this anti-McCain parody of that pro-...Have you seen <A HREF="http://themoderatevoice.com/politics/john-mccain/17713/new-anti-mccain-video-parodies-pro-obama-video/" REL="nofollow">this</A> anti-McCain parody of that pro-Obama video that's been sweeping the web?John Kindleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13897832130417651667noreply@blogger.com