Positive Liberty

Reader Teresa Wyeth writes,

I read your post on Bush’s most recent speech. You make this statement, “the President failed to mention what I think was another very important reason for attacking Hussein: keeping the war in Iraq, where it belongs, instead of the streets of New York City. By keeping terrorists there instead of encouraging them to come here, we were able to protect Americans from terrorist attacks.”

President Bush has acknowledged that some 30,000 Iraqis have died in I guess what you could describe as a combination of “collateral damage” and “terrorist attacks” since we invaded Iraq. Are you really OK with the idea of keeping the war in Iraq with the attendant death of thousands of Iraqi citizens? Are their lives less valuable than ours?

Of course, the last question is a rhetorical device intended to make it sound like endorsing the attack on Iraq is the same thing as embracing war or relishing death. That is not appropriate. Obviously no innocent life is any less valuable than any other innocent life, and neither I, nor the President, have claimed otherwise. (Note also the device of putting scare quotes around the words “terrorist attacks.”Of course, that is precisely the right term to use for such attacks.)

Nor have I or the President or anyone else used the term “collateral damage.” There have been many innocent civilians and Iraqi police officers killed in Iraq, both by terrorists and, I’m sure, by American forces. That is what happens in war, and that is why war is so deplorable. These deaths could be ended immediately by the enemy—who is on the wrong side in this war—ceasing hostilities and allowing for a free and democratic Iraq to take shape. That has not happened, and the consequence is that, although the American military takes extraordinary steps to protect civilians from harm, many have nevertheless perished. Many civilians died also in World War II and the Civil War—far more than 30,000, even though those wars were both about as long as the present one. This does not mean that those wars were unjust.

Civilian deaths are awful, and should not occur. This is why our military goes far, far out of its way to avoid such deaths—unlike the enemy, who seek them. But war is all hell, and the justice of war is not determined solely by the number of civilian casualties. The justice of the war is established by who is right and who is wrong in the events leading up to the conflict. In this case, America and the oppressed people of Iraq were in the right, and Saddam Hussein and Islamic terrorists were and are in the wrong. Just as the L.A.P.D. was not in justice responsible for the death of a toddler earlier this year who was used as a hostage by a gun-wielding criminal, so it does not speak to the justice of our cause to say that the terrorist enemy has responded to our invasion by murdering innocent natives.

In addition, any consideration of innocent deaths in the current war must also take into account the unknown number of civilians who would have been murdered by Saddam Hussein, had he stayed in power. I do not believe that the justice of this war can be established by comparing casualty numbers, but if we are going to use such a technique, then we must consider the fact that Hussein regularly killed about two or three thousand Iraqis per month during his reign, which is an average of, what, 80 times more than the death toll since the fall of Baghdad?

Here I’m reminded, as I often am, of Frederick Douglass’ great speech, “There Was A Right Side in The Late War,” delivered May 30, 1870, in response to those who argued that the conflict had all been a horrible imposition and misunderstanding and that American troops should be immediately withdrawn from the terrorist-occupied territories of the old Confederacy. “In the language of our greatest soldier,” he said,

twice honored with the Presidency of the nation, “Let us have peace.” Yes, let us have peace, but let us have liberty, law, and justice first…. [W]e must not be asked to say that the South was right in the rebellion, or to say the North was wrong. We must not be asked to put no difference between those who fought for the Union and those who fought against it, or between loyalty and treason. We must not be asked to be ashamed of our part in the war…. [T]his war will not consent to be viewed simply as a physical contest…. It was not a fight between rapacious birds and ferocious beasts, a mere display of brute courage and endurance, but it was a war between men, men of thought as well as action, and in dead earnest for something beyond the battlefield…a battle of principles and ideas…between the old and new, slavery and freedom, barbarism and civilization; between government based upon the broadest and grandest declaration of human rights the world ever heard or read, and another pretended government, based upon an open, bold, and shocking denial of all rights, except the right of the strongest….. There was a right side and a wrong side in the late war, which no sentiment ought to cause us to forget, and while today we should have malice toward none, and charity toward all, it is no part of our duty to confound right with wrong, or loyalty with treason.

Philip Foner and Yuval Taylor, eds., Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches And Writings 629-32 (1999). Civilian casualties are unfortunate and ought to be avoided, but they alone do not make a just war unjust, or constitute a good reason for leaving a murderous dictator in power and the free people of the world at risk.

As to whether it is proper to keep the war in Iraq rather than the United States, knowing that this will result in civilian casualties, I think the answer to that also can only be yes. The President of the United States has a responsibility to protect Americans first and foremost, and that means keeping the front lines of a war as far from the United States as possible. Could it be otherwise? Was Franklin Roosevelt wrong to fight the European war in Europe rather than in Dubuque, and the Japanese war in the Pacific, rather than in Grand Rapids?

Moreover, since the mission is the creation of a relatively stable and peaceful democratically elected government in Iraq, it is obviously impossible to pursue the mission in the United States. Whether or not one thinks fostering a democratic Iraq is a laudable or attainable goal, it is obviously one that can only be achieved by being in Iraq.

Look: it’s very, very awful that people die in war. Obviously so. But that does not mean that war is never justified, or that it is right to avoid war at any cost. As Churchill said, “Peace is not secured by praising its virtues.” War is not the worst of all things. We could have had peace easily with the Confederacy, by simply allowing it to overthrow the Constitution and continue its enslavement. We could have had peace with Hitler and Hirohito by simply surrendering and promising not to fight. We could have had peace with the Soviet Union and any number of other tyrannies, if we had simply decided that we would not confront it. War is a terrible, but sometimes a necessary thing, and when civilians are killed in the confrontation of evil, such an awful circumstance does not make justice unjust, or a victory for freedom unworthy.

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