I thought I provided [my strategy and argument of its validity] with the report on Nation Building
No, you did not. Here is what you provided:
The parts that are relevant are contained mostly in the executive summary and lessons learned and include: the intensity and length of the war phase, how homogenous the population is, the troops levels used to establish security, the building of judicial and police power, the cost spent per capita in rebuilding the economy, transition time for creating local governments, longer time for holding national elections.
The above is a not a report on nation building, it is list of topics. Even its source is not a report, so much as it is a BOOK. And if you have read more than the executive summary, or knew the arguments within the book, your comments have not reflected it. I gleaned more information from press releases on the book than you have given in your comments.
It's not enough to just say that there's a book that outlines a strategy, and it is not what Bush did, so therefore the Iraq War is a disaster. Why don't you show how they're right, and Bush is wrong? How can you even examine Bush's strategy when you don't begin by acknowledging he has one? I wouldn't be so frustrated, except I know you know better. I don't intend to read this book. I have neither the time nor money to buy and read every book that disagrees with Bush anymore than you do every book that does otherwise (hell, you couldn't be bothered to read a post I liked to). If we're going to discuss this book, you're going to have to bring its arguments here, not just a list of topics.
What they should do is stop thinking that "stay the course" is a legitimate strategy.
In fairness, you have already responded to my previous rebuttal of this assinine comment, in which I asserted that "Stay the Course" is not really a strategy so much as a slogan. It proposes the opposite of "Cut and Run" supported by the likes of John Murtha. And here is your response:
"Stay the course is not a strategy." Exactly. What we need is a strategy, and a proactive one that defines what victory is.
Don't be rediculous, Bush has a strategy. If you don't recognize it, that doesn't mean it does't exist. Experts meet on a regular basis to discuss strategy without your awareness or approval. Your characterization of our leaders as "idiots" who sent troops into Iraq with no plan is beneath this discussion. I love a sarcastic quip as much as the next guy, but this comment sounds like what you get from teenagers on pot.
And how about this? We are victorious. Saddam is being prosecuted. His oppressive regime is destroyed. His twisted, sadistic sons are dead. His Baathist allies are fighting for their very existence. All that's left to do is restore stability. That's not to be taken lightly, but consider post war Germany. For more than two years after the end of WWII, Seigfried Kabus was still carrying on an insurgency. It didn't mean we didn't defeat Nazi Germany. It didn't mean VE day was premature. We don't call Eisenhower, and Churchill idiots, even though they left us with Stalin. Maybe you don't call that victory, but I do. What do you call victory?
An official declaration of war through Congress
This is not a strategy for winning the war, nor was its lack an act of dishonesty. Congress gave its overwhelming approval for the use of force in Iraq. Everyone knew there was going to be an invasion. You yourself said you initially supported it. Were you unaware at the time, there was not an official dec. of war; or was it okay with you at the time, but not now?
a draft
This is a TERRIBLE idea. Our modern warcraft is more suited for highly trained units with high tech weaponry. Consider this quote from a Global security article by Dennis O'Brian.
Another key factor in improving a soldier's chances of avoiding injury is better training.
"In some ways, it is like a football game," says Frederick Kagan, a professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. "The training, experience and skill level of your forces are all crucial."
Kagan says today's military is better trained than its counterparts were in both world wars. In those conflicts, he says, some U.S. casualties can be attributed at least partly to having inexperienced troops who entered the wars late and fought German armies that had several years of battlefield experience.
"We had to put green troops up against the Germans who had been fighting for years," Kagan says. "You're not going to walk into a situation like that and clean their clocks."You'd have a hard time convincing me that a mass of minimally trained soldiers would do much more than make a bigger target. Basic training alone would take at least 6 mos; that's twice as long as the initial phase of the war. Even if we redefined the initial phase to include the capture of Saddam, that would only have been 9 mos. Plus, how well do you think these conscripted (and perhaps bitter) young soldiers would interact with the Iraqi people?
400,000 man army for the initial phase of the occupation
Is more necessarily better? This article has something to say about that. We have the best military in the world. If you think we need 400K troops for any given ground war, then we might as well hang it up. I'm not sure we could support an army of that size in peacetime, and draftees do not make a superior army. As much as you and your polls say the Iraqi's hate us, imagine them being surrounded by 400k minimally trained, not professional, US soldiers.
The total cost, had security been established, would have been around 200 billion.
How do you know? That's an estimate which I presume came from the book. It's possible this is right, but few projects in the private sector come in on budget, and I've never heard of a government endeavor that did. Also, it depends on what you're buying. You wanted to seal the border. That may have been cheaper, but I like the strategy of drawing in the non Iraqis that wanted to fight us. Financially, it might be more expensive, but it roots out people that would've preferred the extension of Islamofascism into Iraq, or the continuation of Saddam's defiance of the UN resolutions which were aimed at protecting the region and the world.
We are well past that number right now and no clear end in sight
We are past that number, true. And maybe there's no clear end in sight. But there's an end in site. Iraq is getting more stable as time passes. Saddam is in prison. Iraqis have held their elections. Insurgencies are weakening. We are making progress.
retaining what was left of the Iraqi Army
Please clarify this. You seem to mean we should've kept the Iraqi army intact and reassigned them to work with our soldiers. I don't think this is such a good idea, since some number may have remained loyal to Saddam, or just hated the US, or just may not have wanted to be soldiers anymorel. That seems like a good opportunity for such folks to do us harm. The ones who want to join the security forces can do so, and I'm sure, have done. BYT has commented on this topic in his chaotic way, and at the time, I thought that he meant for us to recruit the Iraq army. I argued against it at that time. But in a later comment he made it clear that he thinks we should have detained them. Perhaps that's what you mean, also, but I think that's an even worse idea. I think that detaining a mass of people for no crime except serving in their country's army could hardly help us win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. Besides, to arrest them, you'd have to fight and capture them. How is that better than just fighting the ones who decided to become insurgents.? I think the best idea was to let them go. Those who don't want to get ivolved with the fighting may abstain. Those who wish to fight the insurgency, can join up with the new Iraqi forces doing so. Those who oppose democracy in Iraq can face the allies who defend it.
securing the border
That's one strategy. Here's a better one. Let terrorists in so our soldiers can engage them in Iraq. That way, we don't have to invade someone else to get them, and they're not free to plot against the US. Bush has spoken often of this strategy. Are you unaware of it, or or just not acknowledging it? I'm guessing the latter.
rebuilding their infrastructure
We are.
giving the UN a prominent role in the diplomatic/political effort with security provided by the US
Perhaps you can be more specific about exactly thier role would be. This is extremely vague.Why have them doing something unless we couldn't it do ourselves? After all, they couldn't even support us in enforcing the terms of the very resolutions they created. Also, whatever they offer, does it justify adding some one else for our troops to protect before the nation has been stabelized? The UN has had its own problems their safety in Iraq, and their plans are not always the best. Some in Iraq considered them to be just a mouthpiece for the US anyway, and Iraqi people didn't really appreciate the sanctions that were starving the infrastructure and the people themselves. The insurgents don't seem to see a great deal of difference between the US and the UN. The new Iraqi government and the UN may interact as they please. That's not up to the US.
open judicial system . . .
What does this have to do with the war? Besides, that's for the Iraqi government and people to establish in their own time, per the terms of their own constitution. It cannot be Bush's failure, as the choice does not belong to him.
. . .with a competent police force
We have been training the Iraqi security forces since 2003. Are you proposing a different force? Beyond leaving someone behind who can keep peace, how far do you think the US should go in micromanaging Iraq's affairs?
By what standard would you judge their competence? After all, not every one can live up to the esteemed reputation of the UN peacekeepers in Kosovo. Police work is very difficult, and no force is without its embarrassments. I hope you're more fair in your judgement of the Iraqi police than you are to the Bush administration.
local elections held within the first year, national elections held in the second year
Actually, "by February of 2004, democratic elections, under the supervision of the CPA, had already been held at the municipal and city level in some of the southern and northern provinces" according to this report. The same report further states that the national elections took place on Jan 30, 2005, not within 24 months, but 34 months. Your timeline is arbitrary in the big picture. It's more important that it happened successfully. Sooner is better, usually, for anything in life, but later is not necessarily incomptence. Consider that the Iraqi people had to overcome a certain threshold of confidence that the US would protect them in spite of the fact that many within the US predicted failure, and still do.
This would work because it worked in Kosovo,
This is rediculous statement! Only a small fraction of what you describe has anything to do with Kosovo. In one breath you're calling for a largely conscripted army of 400,000 troops, in the next, you want to do it like Kosovo. The Bosnian conflict was almost entirely an air war. It didn't depose Milosovich. He was left isolated, but nevertheless ruling Yugoslavia. We had to wait for his own people to hand him over for prosecution when they got tired of being isolated. We'd already tried this in Iraq with Desert Storm. Saddam was left isolated and sanctioned, but ruling Iraq. The problem was that the Iraqi people couldn't get rid of him. He squashed two rebellions after Desert Storm, and continued his cruel reign, refusing the inspections, scamming the sanctions while torturing and starving his people, keeping anthrax seed spores, and maintaining his WMD expert teams. By definition, what worked in Kosovo had already failed in Iraq. As a side note, all was not perfect in Kosovo, either. Bombing the Chinese embassy didn't exactly enhance America's reputation, did it? Intelligence isn't always correct, is it?
which was in the midst of a civil war when our intervention started.
That doesn't necessarily mean the job was harder, there. In fact, I think that probably made it easier, mostly because the people were ready to oppose Milosovich. This was not at all the case in Iraq. The Iraqi people were utterly subdued by Saddam.
If Bush is going to fight the war on terror by invasion of other countries, (which is a dubious strategy at best)
I don't see how it can be done any other way. The governments who harbour terrorists ARE our enemies. They don't give them up just because we ask nicely. They like them. And sanctions were essentially ineffective against Saddam in any respect.
Of course, there is a certain degree of discretion that must be exercized in terms of who we take on and when. One should only start a fight they have a chance of winning. But that doesn't mean it's not the right strategy. Of course, we could return to our pre-911 way of dealing with terrorism: Place all hope in the chance of capturing intelligence about an attack before it happens; of course gathering our intelligence without upsetting anybody's understanding of what they think are their civil rights; and then capturing and prosecuting the would be attackers where ever they may be, but without invading anyone.
Stephen, your ideas really are not bad, but your argument doesn't rise to the level of showing the war to be a failure, or its management, incompetent. If Bush didn't prosecute the war the way you would have, that's not to say he deserves the redicule and scorn you have heaped upon him and his administration. There are experts who disagree with the path you would have taken. That's a judgement call, not a failure. I'm not saying everything has been done as well as it could have, but nothing ever is. The book you cite, though surely written by good historians/ strategists, is not the sum total of strategic expertice. Your 20/20 hindsight scrutiny is shallow, unjust, and over dramatic.
P.S. I thought I had finished this post when I ran across this bit of brilliance form the Euston Manifesto. It takes me back to Stephen's accusation that I place partisan concern over the welfare of the country. Though the insult is grievous to me, I had judged it to be beneath response. After all, anyone of intelligence can see it for what it is. Here is a very appropo quote from this group of truly reasonable Liberals.
The founding supporters of this statement took different views on the military intervention in Iraq, both for and against. We recognize that it was possible reasonably to disagree about the justification for the intervention, the manner in which it was carried through, the planning (or lack of it) for the aftermath, and the prospects for the successful implementation of democratic change. We are, however, united in our view about the reactionary, semi-fascist and murderous character of the Baathist regime in Iraq, and we recognize its overthrow as a liberation of the Iraqi people. We are also united in the view that, since the day on which this occurred, the proper concern of genuine liberals and members of the Left should have been the battle to put in place in Iraq a democratic political order and to rebuild the country's infrastructure, to create after decades of the most brutal oppression a life for Iraqis which those living in democratic countries take for granted — rather than picking through the rubble of the arguments over intervention.
This opposes us not only to those on the Left who have actively spoken in support of the gangs of jihadist and Baathist thugs of the Iraqi so-called resistance, but also to others who manage to find a way of situating themselves between such forces and those trying to bring a new democratic life to the country. We have no truck, either, with the tendency to pay lip service to these ends, while devoting most of one's energy to criticism of political opponents at home (supposedly responsible for every difficulty in Iraq), and observing a tactful silence or near silence about the ugly forces of the Iraqi "insurgency". The many left opponents of regime change in Iraq who have been unable to understand the considerations that led others on the Left to support it, dishing out anathema and excommunication, more lately demanding apology or repentance, betray the democratic values they profess.
7 comments:
Sorry it took so long to respond, I only check over here every other week or so.
I don't know why, but there is definitely a lack of comprehension going on here. My criticism for the way the occupation and transition has been conducted does not mean that I am anti-war, nor do I think all of the reasons for going into Iraq were unjust. The problem is that having any unjust motives for going to war and/or conducting that war in less than a forthright manner is a moral stain on America's honor, which I do care about preserving. Part of my suggestions were meant to confer legitimacy upon us, to show our seriousness and commitment to the War on Terror. Of course it is easy to say we want to fight terrorism, but if no sacrifices are being felt by the general populace why should anybody believe it?
The size of the force used to invade was sufficient, but the size needed to conduct the occupation and transition was and still is deficient. Like you say, Kosovo was an air war UNTIL they accepted the peacekeeping forces, which required a large number of troops on the ground. The number needed to accomplish this was around 2% of the population, which is how I came up with 400,000. They do not all have to be American forces, but considering how many coalition troops we have, the vast majority of it will need to be American.
I wrote that invasion of other countries was a dubious strategy, but I concede that it may be the best strategy out of a host of bad choices. It still needs to be done correctly, and some of your remarks seems absurd: "If you think we need 400K troops for any given ground war, then we might as well hang it up. I'm not sure we could support an army of that size in peacetime, and draftees do not make a superior army. As much as you and your polls say the Iraqi's hate us, imagine them being surrounded by 400k minimally trained, not professional, US soldiers." First, we are not in peacetime, what kind of silliness is that? Second, draftees make as good a soldier as National Guard, nearly all of whom have seen action in Iraq. The window of opportunity for winning hearts and minds passed by a long time ago, but the Iraqis did not always hate us. When we were unable to stop insurgents from taking control over entire villages and cities and had to keep going back to flush them out, I think that is a good indicator of how we failed to send enough troops. Goodwill is established by a constant presence, not by infrequent and violent visits.
Also, I was for retention of the Iraqi Army, not detention. We could have used them to seal the borders, while our forces concentrated on the interior. As for the flypaper strategy you seem to be describing, it is unjust and ineffective. It violates two parts of just war theory, right intention and comparative justice. Furthermore, the jihadists are pawns in a much larger game, and eliminating pawns will never win a game of strategy.
As for the Euston Manifesto, anybody who labels their ideology a manifesto deserves to be excommunicated (see Marx or The Crunchy Conservatives). Nor does the statement they wrote make any sense, because if the occupation and transition fails because of bad strategy, which is what I have been criticizing, then we are culpable for it. It is our duty to criticize bad strategy if we perceive it, not to just blindly go on faith and wishful thinking.
I love this deconstruction argument tactic you have going. I hope you realize it is a postmodern liberal artform. In fact, I am going to use it on one of your paragraphs just to exemplify:
"And how about this? We are victorious."
Wow. If this is what victory looks like, I sure don't want to see what an open ended quagmire looks like.
"Saddam is being prosecuted. His oppressive regime is destroyed. His twisted, sadistic sons are dead. His Baathist allies are fighting for their very existence. All that's left to do is restore stability."
Everyone enjoys a liberation, unless the result is total chaos. On a less snarky note, your list of accomplishments is an example of what I meant by proactively defining victory. Restoring stability is far too vague a term, we need some hard criteria for saying when we will withdraw the majority of our troops. Not necessarily the dreaded time line, but something that is specific and accountable. It gives us and the Iraqis something to look forward to.
"That's not to be taken lightly, but consider post war Germany. For more than two years after the end of WWII, Seigfried Kabus was still carrying on an insurgency. It didn't mean we didn't defeat Nazi Germany. It didn't mean VE day was premature."
I honestly did not know that. VE day would have been premature if vast swaths of territory were still lawless and dangerous.
"We don't call Eisenhower, and Churchill idiots, even though they left us with Stalin. Maybe you don't call that victory, but I do. What do you call victory?"
You mean FDR and Truman right? If you are Ann Coulter you call them Communist traitors. I call victory a representative government that has a working economy, a monopoly on use of force, and is not beholden to another nation. Personally, I am willing to petition Iraq in order to separate the Shia and Kurds from the Sunnis.
Yes, Warrick owes me an apology. Refuting a single phrase out of his story does not negate the rest of it, since that phrase was not critical to the rest of his piece. It is like saying this entire next sentence is a lie: "On an overcast day in September, hijacked planes were used to destroy the WTC and damage the Pentagon." It is technically a false statement, but not the important parts of it. Although Seixon's post refutes that one phrase, his main contention was not the part you copied but the attempt to discredit the expert conclusions cited in Warrick's story, which he failed to do.
For that matter, I should apologize because the other two teams did have technical experts on them. I still think that the first two were prone to pressure from above to find a smoking gun, which is why it took three separate teams (with the last being composed of people whose reputations and diligence were above reproach) to conclude the matter.
FWIW, I only thought Bush should apologize for what he got wrong, not for the totality of the decision to invade, so I am not being wildly inconsistent in my demands. Part of the problem with the initial justifications for the war was that there were so many. Some of them were true and some were not and quite a few of them contradicted each other.
That should have been partition Iraq, not petition.
"Sorry it took so long to respond, I only check over here every other week or so."
Don't sweat it, Stephen, it's not a race. In fact, I prefer a thoughtful post to a hasty one.
I didn't say we are in peacetime. I criticized your troop size requirements for any given ground war. Presumably that would include not only the wars we are in now, but future wars as well. By your requirement, the draft would be the only way to provide enough troops for a legitimate ground war. Drafting is an appalling limitation on personal freedom. One reason we develop and use technology is so we won't have to put so many men in harm's way, and so we don't have to institute this near slavery to prosecute a war. How interesting we've come full circle. At the start of this debate, Endymion characterized the Democrats as "Backward looking" and "calcified"including their approach to war, in his April post, "Rumsfeld, the Generals, and Tom Barnett". You still cling to the idea that the only way to win a war is to put large numbers of men in front of bullets.
Draftees make just as good soldiers as National Guard, you say? Really? Why don't you discuss that with a guardsman, I'm sure they'll appreciate that. Do you have any data for that? Why even have a national Guard? After all, they're no better than draftees, and apparently we'll need draftees to invade anything bigger than California anyway.
Also, I love how you speak for the Iraqi people. Do they only hate the U.S., or do they also hate the insurgents? Do they hate both equally? Do they hate us more? Do they hate the insurgents more? If they hate us for allowing the insurgents to take them over, it stands to reason they hate the insurgents more. Our mainstream media focuses on one point of view, the sexiest, most scandelous one. It's the same reason Natalie Holloway is still a story. There is no story of right and wrong, just death and failure. It's what sells.
So you want to conscript not just our citizens, but also the Iraqi soldiers. Is that condoned in the Bellum Iustum? What part of just war theory negates the fly paper strategy? Show me a quote.
Examining arguments peice by piece is not deconsrtuction in the way you are using it. What I have done is not an artform, any more than discecting a frog. Nor I opposed to participation in Liberal artforms. I am only opposed to Liberalism (in the Leftist sense) in politics and ethics. All I have done is address your pertinent arguments systematically. You should not use terms if you're not sure what they mean.
You were right to point out the error in my quote,"We don't call Eisenhower, and Churchill idiots, even though they left us with Stalin.
Humbly, I did not mean FDR and Truman. I meant Truman and Churchill. And I am not Ann Coulter. That kind of hyperbole is more your style than mine. I used Truman and Churchill as an example because I think they did what they thought was best. They won WWII, and we don't play arm chair quarterback with the vitriol you employ against the Bush admin. I gues I am bothered by the fact that by your standards, every warmaker in history (and before it) owed or owes apologies, but you only talk about Bush. Your concentration on Bush could be conveniently explained by the fact that Bush is the current commander in chief. But there is the implication that Bush is a bungler above and beyond the scope of bugnlings past. Your term "the idiots in charge" suggests that Bush is unique in making mistakes in war. Every war has something to criticize. By holding only this war up as a failure, as having no strategy, being unnust and dishonest, you show a lack of historical perspective. Not a lack of historical knowledge, but perspective. This is what partisanship is.
Finally, that's some definition of victory, but what's the timeline? Since the war is not over, the only failure of your criteria can be in the time it is taking. Also, how do your criteria for victory apply to Kosovo?
I'm glad to see Warrick owes you an apology. This concept is becoming amusing to me. I have the mental picture af all humans constantly in a state of either apology, or of determining who should be apologising and to whom. What I don't understand is how you place so much faith in a known liar. You clearly just believe who you want to believe even when the evidence is not there. Here's how I deal with liars:
Scenario A: A known liar says to me "Your husband is cheating on you. I have sources that have seen it. I can't tell who they are. There is no way you can verufy this information. You should trust me. You should leave your husband".
I would laugh in his face.
Scenario B: A known liar says to me "Your husband is cheating on you. Here are pictures of him with his girlfriend. Here is the phone number of his girlfriend. Here are reciepts of purchases he's made for her. You should leave your husband."
Well, I think you can see this would have more weight. Warrick however, is scenario A. If you believe liars with no other support than their word, you are a fool. I'd like to add, comments are best placed following the post to which they apply. I would appreciate it if you would take the little extra time to place your comments accordingly. There are other readers who would appreciate this as well. They tell me the comments are already exceedingly long. I'm going to take the liberty of adding this section of the comment to its corresponding post.
I agree too many reasons were given for the invasion. Only one reason was necessary, and that was Saddam's noncompliance with the UN resolutions. But that's just a political criticism. You only need one reason, the rest are gravy. The public demanded more, Bush gave it. Then the Left spun that to be a bad thing. More justifications are just more justifications, not in-justifications. It's useless to make statements like "Some of them were true and some were not and quite a few of them contradicted each other". Name them.
The proposal to partition Iraq is appealing to me on some levels. It certainly fits much of what I learned in Western Civ. I have my reservations about it, but definitely, it deserves consideration.
I think it is important to separate a couple of points in this discussion. 1) Can the invasion of Iraq be justified? 2) Were the justifications given by the administration overstated? 3) Is the war being conducted in a just manner?
The answer to number one is clearly yes. Saddam was an evil tyrant, his regime was reckless and volatile, he was in blatant violation of UN resolutions. The liberation of the Iraqi people is the only acceptable moral justification for the war, since his ability to threaten us never in fact rose to the level of self-defense. Just war theory demands that the offending nation inflict damage that is lasting, grave, and certain. This is an incredibly high standard. Even if a preemptive war of disarmament were permissable under this standard, which Pope Benedict has said it does not, it still would allow a war of liberation for the Iraqi people.
The answer to number two is clearly yes. The connection between al Qaeada and Iraq was tenuous, Saddam sent some money to a splinter group in the Philippines, at most he had a few information exchanges with al Qaeada proper and never an operational relationship. The nuclear threat was unfounded speculation and the other WMD threats were overstated. Unfortunately, these were the main reasons given for the invasion.
The answer to number three is most likely no. Especially if what you say is true about a flypaper strategy. As an analogy, assume a scenario where the police want to catch all the child molesters in an area. Do they set up a sting operation with actual children and actually leave them unwatched? Of course not. Even if this is not our strategy, this is the effect that has occurred to the Iraqi civilians. The fifth criteria of just war is that the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders greater than the threat to be eliminated. As great an evil as Saddam was, a country spiraling towards a civil war is even worse.
In response to some of your other comments:
I think Lincoln and LBJ both made major errors in judgement during their war campaigns, and Wilson wins first prize for stupidity with his unworkable peace agreement after WWI. I could expand on their mistakes, but since that was the past and this is the present, I will concentrate on what is currently happening.
The National Guard does have an advantage over draftees in that a portion of them were formerly active service members. In terms of actual training, which is what you say is the basis for determining their capability, the Guard normally receives only slightly more than what a draftee would get.
Stephen's analogy doesn't work. The "insurgents" are not being invited to attack the Iraqi people, the way his analogy has the pedophiles invited to encounter children. In fact, the insurgents are invited to engage U S soldiers, just as real cops use themselves as bait to capture pedophiles. What makes Stephen think Iraq would not have had to face these various insurgents and terrorists when we left. In fact, we did not decalre war on the insurgents, they declared war on us and Iraq. Right now, we're there to take them on.
Stephen's use of Just War Theory is grossly over simplified, and incorrect. Just war theory is neither a pact nor a fact. It is a philosophical tradition, and the criteria of Just War are the work of only one philosopher in this tradition. It's good stuff, but I don't find anything to support Stephen's argument in it. The fifth criterion of the jus in bello refers to actual arms, the types of weapons used. Precision weapons are justified, WMD are not. WMD "produce evils and disorders greater than the threat to be eliminated". It does not refer to the general use of arms in this statement, as that would require those prosecuting the war to have clairvoyance. The jus in bello do require that the war has a reasonable chance of being won, not a guarantee of success.
I urge anyone interested in Just War Theory to check it out. A child could see how Stephen has misused it. There are numerous sites, I found these helpful:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/ethics/war/jwhistory.shtml
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/#2.1
http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/interrogatory101501b.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war#When_is_a_war_just_by_the_criteria_of_Just_War_Theory.3F_.28Jus_ad_bellum.29
Note this quote in Wikipedia's "Just War Theory" entry regarding conscription:
"It is debasing human dignity to force men to give up their life, or to inflict death against their will, or without conviction as to the justice of their action." -- Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi in the Manifesto Against Conscription and the Military System.
Not even Stephen agrees with everything in the Just War tradition.
I hope your readers take the time to view the links, since they will see that Just War is a comprehensive doctrine, not the work of only one philosopher. They will also see that my claims about it are correct. Although I agree with you that the primary sense of the fifth criteria concerns type and collateral effects of weapons used, the Stanford link also shows it is a prohibition on evil methods. Torture is forbidden, as is ethnic cleansing. Deliberately establishing security conditions such that these evils are easy to achieve is also an evil method, i.e. the flypaper strategy.
As for the conscription quote I have four rebuttals:
1) See my earlier comment about anything entitled a manifesto.
2) Even with conscription, conscientious objector status allows one to avoid military service.
3) Although it has a strong pacifist appeal outside the JW tradition, it has never (at least to my knowledge) been accepted by anyone writing within the JW tradition. It would make clearly just wars, WWII for instance, impossible.
4) The goal of prohibiting a draft is to make self-defense the default position for any war and to discourage aggressive wars. Since we have committed ourselves to a strategy that is preemptive, we have to assume the costs and responsibilities of that strategy.
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