There is some truth, or a kind of truth, to your implicit position - that as soon as one has "taken a side," one has lost one's objectivity. The problem is that preservation of absolute objectivity would in this analysis require total and permanent non-participation, even in making arguments. In this sense, even your "neutral" statements, reflect a "bias" toward neutrality. In political terms, they would amount to a policy of inaction and non-alignment: A purely negative politics, but still a political position, of the sort implicitly adopted by large numbers of people. In effect, it abandons the field to those who are willing to embrace a position and seek to advance it. My disagreements with Administration policy have not been particularly relevant to most of the issues and items that we have discussed here. It's been hard enough keeping up with and attempting to counter the distortions, outright lies, and extreme accusations that constantly arise from Administration opponents. When, for example, someone finds it clever to toy with font sizes while calling Bush a "lying sack of shit," the nuances of tax and social policy or the details of post-war planning don't come directly into play. No, we don't. In a sense, Bush & Company may not even know Bush & Company's "real agenda," just as no human being can ever know the full truth about his or her own motivations. All any of us can do is attempt, on the basis of our individual experience of the world, to make our best calls. On the issue of Iraq, I remain persuaded that removing Hussein's regime was the correct policy, and for a number of reasons. In the end, it the policy was just, then it was just, regardless of Bush & Co.'s motivations. If, however, it is demonstrated to my satisfaction that those motivations were corrupt - as would be far from the present case - then I would be hesitant to trust Bush & Co. again, but, if they were the only ones available, I would still try to take each issue on its own terms. Here you accede to and participate in the latest line from war opponents. If it can be shown that some public statements by Bush and others inflated the immediate threat from Iraq for political purposes, then this will severely damage the Administration's credibility, as I have conceded elsewhere. However, the actual and public justifications for the war were never reduced to "Hussein is about to kill a bunch of us any moment with WMDs, look out!" The justification was always larger and more complex than that. The underlying WMD issue was always more critically the existence of WMD programs and WMD ambitions by Hussein's regime. The larger cause of war rested legally on the defiance of ceasefire agreements and related UN resolutions whose relevance in turn rested on the dangers that Hussein left to his own devices already had repeatedly and amply demonstrated. This issue has been addressed elsewhere, by others as well as myself. You might check the Opinion Section of today's LA TIMES for one helpful discussion: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion...1,4760417.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions The above cannot, of course, exhaust all possible explanations for Hussein's actions. Generally speaking, it is not in my opinion very helpful to depend on simplistic presumptions about the motivations and likely behaviors of a figures like Hussein. I'll answer your question: Justified legally, no. Justified morally, sometimes: If you suspected that a known child molestor had abducted your son, you or a police officer might be driven to violate his civil rights in the process of ascertaining the truth. He might even end up suing you if you were wrong. If you were right, you might save your son, but prosecution of the individual might be complicated. In any such situation, you would make your best call, and presumably you would be willing to deal with the consequences - or forced to do so whether willing or not. Fortunately, such situations are rare, but we face lesser incidents of this type virtually every day. Being forced to act on the basis of belief rather than certain knowledge is, as above, the nature of life on earth. The decision to make war is usually a very complex one, and often of the "illegal" or "extra-legal" type in the child molestor example. War itself usually comes above as a result of an overdetermination of factors. Simplistic justifications and explanations are sometimes comforting (Hitler: bad; Hussein: bad or WMD: bad), but are usually conclusions offered in the place of much more complicated perceptions and calculations. As for the rest of your analysis regarding potential impropriety on Bush's part and the significance of any such charges if shown to be true, I am entirely in agreement with your overall point, though I disagree, as above regarding public war-justifications, with some of your underlying assumptions. I have yet to see any good reason to believe that the wholesale hijacking of democracy you fear has taken place. At present, such charges are mainly coming from those who have been strongly against Bush from the start - the kind of people who are begin drafting articles of impeachment within minutes of the opposing party's leader's oath of office. (John Dean is a special case, and I consider the article you c&p-d to be rather premature and unpersuasive.) So, I agree that we should always be on guard against the misuse of power. On the other hand, if we are so reflexively cynical and suspicious that we make it impossible for our government ever to satisfy us or even to function, then we have already lost the larger struggle - as was previewed during the Clinton impeachment - and are even further down the road to the dissolution of democratic government and its replacement by one or another form of anarchy or authoritarianism. For these reasons, we should earnestly hope that the Bush Administration has acted with due respect for legality and the credibility of the office: NOTHING would please his opponents and the enemies of this country more than for Bush to be brought down like Nixon. I'm pleased to say that, at this point, I consider this outcome highly unlikely.
Justification is a process used by those who don't follow the law. If in your example, someone broke the law, they would then be brought up on charges of violation of civil rights. A judge or jury would then evaluate whether or not the circumstances were sufficient to dismiss the charges, or perhaps give a suspended sentence. He was guilty of violating the law, but there was no punishment for the violation, and perhaps his record was expunged. Does this mean that justification should be practiced by a government without due process when the justification is discovered, and that laws or protocol were broken because the end justifies the means? History says no. Moral justification of illegal acts by those in power is a very shallow ground to sew the seeds on democracy on. Nixon, Clinton, Reagan all "felt" morally justified, as did their inner circle of supporters.
Liberal whiners that claimed the war was implemented just so the US could steal Iraq's oil: BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq on Thursday concluded its first oil sales since the U.S.-led war, awarding a tender to sell 10 million barrels of crude held in storage with only one U.S. company among the six winners. http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtm...XCCRBAEKSFFA?type=reutersEdge&storyID=2921388
Rep. Waxman Letter to Acting Secretary of the Army Editor's Note | Rep. Waxman's letter to the office of the Army Secretary raises a number of disturbing issues. It appears that Halliburton subsidiary, Kellog Brown & Root, was given nearly $500 million in government contracts for the Iraq war without said contracts being proffered to other companies in a standard bidding process. Given Halliburton's close ties to Vice President Cheney, the potential impropriety of this action is manifest. As Rep. Waxman notes in his letter, Halliburton's contracts with the government allowed them "to profit from virtually every phase of the conflict with Iraq." Perhaps more disturbing is the timing of the issuance of said contracts. Waxman states that Brown & Root was contracted for Iraq war work in 2001. Was this contract offered before September 11? truthout is in the process of finding the answer to that question through Rep. Waxman's office. - wrp http://www.truthout.org/mm_01/4.Wax.Brn.Root.Halli.pdf