The Moral Case Against the Iraq War

by Paul Savoy

Let's look this thing in the eye once and for all.
--Arundhati Roy



As the Iraq war continues into its second year, the Bush Administration's reasons for being there are more indefensible than ever. Prewar claims regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have all proved to be wrong; the number of terrorists in Iraq has increased rather than decreased; more American troops were killed in April than were lost during the entire invasion phase of the war; the systemic and barbarous abuse of Iraqi detainees contradicts the most basic values the Administration claimed it would bring to Iraq; and the uprisings in Falluja and at least half a dozen other cities portend a nationwide insurgency by both Sunnis and Shiites against the US presence. Yet the latest polls--including one conducted after the revelations about the torture of Iraqi prisoners--show that about half of Americans remain convinced that the war was morally justified. President Bush, in a speech on March 19 marking the first anniversary of the conflict, articulated a moral defense of the war that has been repeated many times: "No one can argue that the Iraqi people would be better off" with Saddam Hussein's regime "back in the palaces." Even those who opposed the war have, up to now, found the President's moral argument difficult to answer. The Indian novelist Arundhati Roy, in a speech to this year's session of the World Social Forum in Bombay, lamented how "plenty of antiwar activists have retreated in confusion since the capture of Saddam Hussein. Isn't the world better off without Saddam Hussein? they ask timidly" .

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040531&s=savoy&c=1

Thus, despite the fact that the war has done the world a favor by getting rid of Saddam the war is still totally immoral.