You still haven't explained why it was necessary to repel Iraqi aggression in 1990. And, really? You thought he had WMDs? I just find that so disturbing, not because you were wrong but because so many of us on the left told you all that you were wrong, that we were all ignored and that we have to pay for your blunders now.

Love that you showed up here pretending to be some sort of stalwart, reasonable anti-Iraq invasion thinker, then Gitlin calls you out and now you were "60/40 against" and oh your public statements don't matter because you were just doing your job. Sheesh. Great to know that our public servants routinely lie to us in order to make administration arguments. Way to go.

Richard Haass is practically a regular on Morning Joe anymore... that should tell you something right there. If he claimed the sun rises in the east I would check the compass.

Mr. Haass,

Just war theory has its limitations and deficiencies, and many thinkers have over the years attempted to overcome the limitations and repair those deficiencies. But so far, I don't really see how your thinking about "justifiable" wars advances the discussion of war, or provides any useful or compelling ideas with which to supplement or modify just war theory. Your complaint about just war theory is that it is too subjective and too confining. Perhaps. And you make a good point about the practical difficulty of deciding upon a "competent authority". The centrality of "authority" in just war thinking is perhaps an anachronistic holdover from the hierarchical and authoritarian style of ancient and medieval thinking. But your proposed alternative, as you've described it, seems even more subjective and virtually useless.

To say that a war of choice is justifiable if it is the best available policy option is to say something close to a tautology. That's because too say any action of any agent whatsoever is justifiable is to say that it is at least as good an option for that agent as any of the alternatives available to the agent.

All the real moral content and controversial fire in debates about war is packed into the disagreements on the many conflicting values and interests that are assessed and ranked so as to determine where options fall on the scale of goodness so as to make one of them best. And the central issue in thinking and dispute about war has always been how to determine the correct balance between the interests of the nation fighting the war and the interests of all of the other people affected by the war. Another issue is how the interests of the individual human beings who comprise the nation are or are not counted in the assessment of the more abstract interest of the nation considered as some enduring whole.

Just war theory at least attempts to address the first issue, although it does so traditionally in ways I personally think are inadequate. But the central intuition seems to be a recognition that the general taboo on killing is the most important prohibitory rule human beings have, and a foundation of human respect for others, and of all civilized life. Given that, the advancement of mere self-interest is not sufficient to justify the killing of others unless the "interests" involved are of a particularly high order: preserving one's own life, or the life of loved ones or the innocent.

You seem from your posts to be uncomfortable with this whole issue, and eager to avoid it, alluding only vaguely to how "tragic" are civilian deaths, and how they provide a "reason to think carefully about both whether to undertake a war and how to go about it." Do you have anything substantive to say here? The comment seems awfully bland and perfunctory.

I have a longstanding grip with the devaluation of the word "tragic". When a man attempting earnestly to defend his family kills them accidentally, that is tragic. When a human being's titanic or heroic endeavors are turned back upon that human being as the wages of hubris, that is tragic. But when a bomb falls out of the sky on an innocent family and blows them into tiny bits that is not tragic; it is just atrocious.

No one would ever go to see a "tragedy" in which a man in one place, with eyes wide open and pursuit of his interests, presses a button in the first scene and drops a bomb killing everyone on stage. The End.

There was a 30 year period between the end of WWI and the start of the hot phase of WWII when the designs of Germany could have been thwarted.

Having adopted a policy of punishing Germany for WWI (and a bunch of prior wars that France lost), the winning powers were not interested in rebuilding Germany and transforming its warlike culture.

So after all the reasonable options had been eliminated it then sounds like war was necessary. A similar case can be made for how the west treated Japan (and China) during the first half of the 20th Century.

As for Iraq, the US was involved in picking sides in the Iran/Iraq conflict, as well as pandering to Saudi Arabia and other oil states and then is surprised when the meddling didn't go as expected.

War mongers have two characteristics.
1. Contempt for diplomacy and accommodation to the other sides interests.
2. A willingness to send other people off to do the fighting.

Shameful.

There was no real choice.

That's what these choosing, war-cheering chicken-hawks always say as they promote the illegal, immoral death, injury, imprisonment, torture and rape of hundreds of thousands of others who don't threaten them one iota, and then write profitable books about their "difficult choices" that affect others but not themselves.

haass today:

There was also no compelling reason to believe that the threat from Saddam was imminent. As I recount in the book, I was against this war, believing that it would be much more difficult than its advocates predicted and that it would take a large toll on U.S. foreign policy at a moment in history when the United States had a tremendous opportunity to shape the international order. (6/8)

As for my views of the Iraq War launched in 2003, I write in the book that I was "60/40" against it. My opposition was not stronger because I assumed (based on the available intelligence) that Iraq possessed biological and chemical weapons, and I believed that any war would be fought as the Gulf War was, i.e., with ample domestic and international support, adequate forces, and sensible plans. Even given all this, however, I opposed the war for the reasons outlined in my first post. (6/11)

"60/40 against?" perhaps in blindsight, imagination, or from faulty, if not selective memory; but hardly according to word. or unfortunately, deed.

based on the following, it's clear to us if not to mr. haass that he overestimates his oppostion by a factor or "60" given: a) his then 100% conviction there was "considerable evidence," not just intelligence, Iraq possessed WMD b) a ci of 99% in haass' oft-repeated, admitted, undiluted inability to comprehend multilateral (unmovic, iaea, french, russian et al.) requests for more time, contra haass' revisionist epiphany "there was no compelling reason to believe that the threat from Saddam was imminent."

Partial transcript from Ambassador Richard N. Haass: Interview on CBC Television, Richard N. Haass, Director of Policy Planning, January 29, 2003:

Question: And the President said last night it's not a scavenger hunt, the Iraqis should be forthcoming with what they have. But, supposing on the 14th, Mr. Blix gives a more positive report than the Secretary of State has given on February the 5th; where do we go from there? Is there a contretemps at that point?

Haass: Well, a more positive -- I don't think so. A more positive report itself is not enough. Sometimes in life, situations are black or white, [i.e., not "60/40", cf. 100/0, "with us or against us"] and Iraq either has to comply with its international obligations or not.

If they, for example, squeeze out a little bit of information, that still doesn't make it possible for the inspectors to do their job.

So I think what you're going to see from the United States, and you're going to see, I believe, from quite a few other governments, is a demand that Iraq comply in full. Absent such compliance, then I think the President made clear last night that, unfortunately, we are moving closer to where we'll have no choice but to resort to force to bring about Iraqi compliance.

Question: Is there any opportunity beyond February 14th for Mr. Blix and his team to continue inspecting and report back again, or is that, in a sense, as far as the United States is concerned, the final report, and then the decision would have to be made?

Haass: I can't give you the timetable for the simple reason that no such timetable like that exists. I would simply draw your attention to the fact that the President and the Secretary of State have increasingly said that the time is running out, and quite honestly, if Saddam Hussein isn't prepared by then to give a full rendition of what it is he has, it's hard to make the argument that more time alone is going to help.

This is a guy who's had more than a dozen years now to meet his international obligations. He hasn't. Why anyone thinks, then, several more months or years would do the trick is impossible for me to understand.

I would also add, we simply don't have the luxury to wait. Why should we want to live months or years under the threat of Saddam Hussein using or worse yet, even, giving to some terrorist group like al-Qaida, handing off to them chemical or biological weapons?

Partial transcript from Charley Rose: A discussion with Richard Haass, Current Affairs, March 7, 2003:

Richard Haass, [then] director of policy planning at the State Department, discusses amendments to the [March 7, 2003 US-ESP-UK joint] UN resolution sanctioning the use of force against Iraq and his outlook for the vote in the Security Council.

Rose: Tell me how the administration sees the British resolution, [the] amendment to the joint American-British resolution (sanctioning the use of force against iraq) and what it thinks the outcome might be next week, what the consequence of the outcome are?

Haass: What this is is [a proposed] amendment as you know to the joint American-Spanish-British resolution (to authorize force against Iraq) and what we thought this would do was focus the minds and create a situation where this wouldn't simply go on and on and on ... and obviously we thought this was something that would be more rather than less appealiing to the members of the security council.

Rose: And members of the security council including the French and Russians are saying 'We just don't need until March 17, we need to give the inspectors months.' And in fact, that's what Blix said he needed: months.

Haass: Well again, people disagree on this. It's unclear to us why months would do the trick when previous months and indeed years have not. If the Iraqis want inspections to be carried out as intended, this could all be taken care of in 10 days or even less. It doesn't take months Charlie, to produce an honest declaration of what you've got. It doesn't take months to make available scientists or other people in the know. It doesn't take months to make available all the weapons that you're hiding so why, Mr. Blix, or the French or anyone else thinks "time is the answer" escapes me.

Excerpted from What Does America Want? by Richard Haass, May 2003:

What happened in Iraq should not be over-interpreted as a rigid template for US policy toward countries that pursue weapons of mass destruction, support terrorism, or deny people liberty.

In Iraq, the US used force as a last resort, against a country with a clear record of aggression, and after a large degree of international consensus had developed about what Iraq needed to do.

Partial transcript from U.S. Foreign Policy Objectives and Priorities in the Middle East and the Rest of the Globe, Richard Haass, Director, Policy Planning Staff, Department of State Foreign Press Center Briefing, June 13, 2003:

Question: Mr. Haass, my name is Abderrahim Foqara from Al Jazeera. I have a couple of questions about U.S. foreign policy and the next election here in the United States, and another question on Iran.

About the election, do you envisage a scenario at all where, given the current situation in the Middle East, Prime Minister Sharon could become an election liability for President Bush?

And, again, about the next election, to what extent do you think that the issue of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which they haven't been found yet, to what extent do you think that may linger on to mar the political fortunes of President Bush next year?

As far as Iran is concerned, do you think the United States will be pushing the Board of Governors of the IAEA in Vienna to refer to the matter of the issue of Iran's weapons of mass destruction to the Security Council, and when that may happen?

Mr. Haass: A follow-up to your follow-up.

On the first, I don't see Prime Minister Sharon being an electoral liability, to use your phrase, and I am hopeful that over the next -- what is it before the election? -- roughly 16, 17, 18 months, that we will be able to see meaningful progress in the Middle East, as suggested or laid out by the roadmap.

I would just say more generally, since you raised the issue, I know in lots of parts of the world people think that American Middle East policy is dictated or dominated or influenced by our political calendar and political calculations. And you can sit there and think me naïve and then some, but based on my experience in this administration it's simply not the case. People bring strong views to this issue, but Middle East policy is simply not determined by people looking at how voters might react.

The question of WMD in Iraq, it's a little bit of a hard hypothetical for me to answer because of my own view based upon all the intelligence that I'm familiar with from before the war. It's my view that we are still highly likely to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There was considerable intelligence, considerable evidence, strongly suggesting the existence, in particular, of chemical and biological weapons.

And so, my own view, it's more a question of when, rather than if, that material is found, and, if it's not, that a reasonable explanation would be found to account for it; for example, that weapons have been destroyed or something else. So I would be very surprised, indeed if, again, 15, 18 months from now, the situation as regard to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were the same as it is today.