Jus Post Bellum. On NPR’s On Point last Wednesday (7.21.04) Doghead had the opportunity to call in to converse with the political philosopher Michael Walzer, whose 1977 classic Just and Unjust Wars inspired arguments both pro and con about the Iraq War. Walzer’s just war theory asserts, pace pacifists, that war is sometimes justifiable; and pace realists, “that the conduct of war is always subject to moral criticism.” Walzer himself, while critical of Saddam Hussein and desirous of action to displace him, opposed this war and its shoddy justifications, labeling them immoral. Not that Walzer has become less bellicose (in the name of justice) with age however. He writes in his latest book Arguing War that, “Faced with the sheer number of recent horrors – massacre and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo; in Rwanda, the Sudan, Sierra Leone, the Congo, and Liberia; in East Timor (and earlier in Cambodia and Bangladesh) – I have slowly become more willing to call for military intervention. I haven’t dropped the presumption against intervention that I defended in the book, but have found it easier to override the presumption.” In addition to greater willingness to override his earlier presumption, Walzer with time has recognized the need to expand just war theory. To the conceptions of jus ad bellum (the justice over the decision to go to war) and jus in bello (the justice of conduct in battles) he has added jus post bellum (justice after the war). This is of prime interest to Doghead since the ugly chance that the invasion could leave Iraq either hopelessly fractured or in a prolonged state of civil war was one of the best antebellum arguments against kicking over the rotten Baathist regime as wantonly as the Bush administration did. Kanan Makiya, the respected Iraqi exile, once asserted (q.v. last two paragraphs) that this war had to have been fought even if there was a “less than five percent chance” of success, which is a stunningly irresponsible claim for a man of his stature and accomplishment. How can he explain the loss of life, maiming and destruction to those Iraqis who lost so much on the basis of such a thin gamble? Five percent!? An occupying force of America’s might, making claims of Bush’s high standards, had a far greater moral obligation to see this soured venture through than a measely dice roll with five percent odds. Alea Jacta Est and it hasn’t been pretty.

Walzer, both on radio and in “Arguing War,” questions the relationship bewteen pre-war planning for the aftermath and the ability to attain a just outcome:

"What is the relation of planned and unplanned occupations to just and unjust occupations? Surely occupying powers are morally bound to think seriously about what they are going to do in someone else’s country. That moral test we have obviously failed to meet. But what determines the overall justice of a military occupation is less its planning or its length than its political direction and the distribution of benefits it provides. If its steady tendency is to empower the locals and if its benefits are widely distributed, the occupying power can plausibly be called just."

But this presumes that after catastrophic errors in planning, and/or a long, bitter occupation, that the invading force can still provide a democratic political direction and a broad distribution of benefits. Such a distribution would require a vast and efficient bureaucracy able to merge with and respond to regional demands, adequately manage national resources and dispense benefits widely and fairly. Even if the Bush administration were not ideologically and philosophically opposed to such efforts does the United States still have such bureaucratic capacity . . . especially to integrate and work within the shattered state apparatus of a foreign country? The American Occupation and reconstruction of Japan was a titanic bureaucratic and societal effort, and as John Dower typified it in his Embracing Defeat, “The reforms that the victors introduced were unique to both moment and place. They reflected an agenda inspired by heavy doses of liberal New Deal attitudes, labor reformism, and Bill of Rights idealism of a sort that was in the process of being repudiated (or ignored) in the United States.” And with repudiation came amnesia as to the cost, structure and impelling idealism of successfully rebuilding a conquered country (if Iraq can properly be called conquered). Walzer seems to realize these difficulties and present deficiencies yet holds out for some way to redeem an American escapade gone sickeningly wrong: “Jus post bellum can’t be entirely independent of jus ad bellum. The distribution of the costs of the settlement is necessarily related to the moral character of war. But there is still a case made for the partial independence of the two and then for a wider distribution of the burdens of Iraq’s reconstruction.” Perhaps there was a window through which such efforts were still possible with much international help, and many of the editors here at OTR argued the necessity to do so, but that opportunity in that context is probably gone now and the search for new ones is grim.

- posted by Editor @ 5:09 PM

 
Doghead has listened with supercilious amusement as some clown recently served up a line of crackpot static as to how the interim Iraqi government of Ayad Allawi is indubitably legitimate. Citing a poll listed in the Washington Post the ludic interlocutor insisted that the Baathist terrorist and current Caretaker prime minister had somehow established structural legitimacy.
What is legitimacy?
The issue of legitimacy is a problem of political representation and consent and centers on which individuals are legally entitled to act as representatives of political power. It is often influenced by, but by no means determinant upon, issues of sovereignty and popularity. The most often cited work on legitimacy, which said clown has never heard of, is by M. Weber who breaks it down into traditional, charismatic and legal-rational ideological bases which confer authority. The traditional form is characteristic of “primitive” societies in which legitimacy was passed down through feudal or monarchical relationships (kings, emperors and such), the charismatic regimes are those in which the raw charisma of the leader(s) alone established consent above any laws (Hitler, Stalin or Ayatollah Khomenei) and the legal-rational is the more democratic mode in which laws, electoral procedures and institutions bestow authority. The Allawi government has none of these democratic features as it is a CARETAKER or TRANSITIONAL government. It is not designed to win or hold legitimacy. It is not supposed to have legitimacy. It is not a legitimate government with a legal-rational authority that ensures that it is answerable to the people. It is not even really sovereign as it lacks a monopoly of violence within it borders. That distinction goes to the US Army.
Now it would be nice if Allawi, through his pursuit of sagacious policies, were to win popularity in the remaining five months of his tenure, but that doesn’t come close to establishing legitimacy. Legitimacy is not his mandate. Attempting to enforce security (after the shameful failures of the Coalition Forces) and preparing to administer elections in January are the tasks outlined for him under the TAL.
As a State Department “hand” told the Economist, Allawi is “our kind of bully”, which is sickeningly reminiscent of hard-boiled cold warriors’ appraisals on America’s dictatorial third world allies -- from Nicaruaga’s Samoza to the Iranian Shah. They were all “our bastards”. Surprise, surprise Allawi, according the Christian Science Monitor, has lost no time in bringing out the rubber hoses. On June 28th, the premier action of the new government was led by a Kurdish General whose Iraqi security forces raided a largely Sudanese neighborhood called Bettawain in Baghdad. “That raid, however, was not without problems, with witnesses in the neighborhood saying some of the arrested men were beaten severely with sticks and rubber hoses.”

But wait, it gets even weirder once the “suspects” were rounded up, beaten then interred:

“Shortly after the arrests were made, teams of US soldiers surrounded the Interior Ministry and demanded the captured men be released into their custody, prompting a tense standoff. Iraqi officials contacted senior US officers, who told the soldiers to stand down. The Interior Ministry official says that "low-level" US officers were involved, and were seeking to protect some of the rounded-up Iraqis who had served as US informants in the area.”

US intelligence has had an infamously difficult time culling intelligence from local informants but somehow they got in tight with a bunch of largely Sudanese thieves? Why did American soldiers try to spring these guys? There’s a deeply odd story here that has not been answered to Doghead’s satisfaction.

Regardless, the apparent suspension of civil rights under an emergency declaration of martial law should trouble those that hold out for a democratic result to this mess (As it apparently troubles Colin Powell).
It seems to be driving Spencer Ackerman of The New Republic nigh apoplectic as he dissects the abrogation of Transitional Authority Law that putatively undergirds Allawi’s rule. “Claiming such broad powers based on such slender justifications is absurd and dangerous, the stuff that tyrannies are made out of.”
Or
“Typically, checks and balances on executive authority require an entrenched rule of law if they're to exist on more than just paper. No such thing exists in Iraq today.
In fact, the very passage of this emergency measure contravenes the rule of law.”
Now that’s real structural legitimacy for you.

- posted by Editor @ 4:42 PM