CIAO DATE: 05/05

The War in Iraq: Justified as Humanitarian Intervention?

Abstract

I am particularly honored to give a lecture in Fr. Ted's name. For the longest time you have been one of my heroes for your vision about the role of civil society in addressing global security issues. I often think of Human Rights Watch as part of the tradition that led to the Kroc Institute and the various institutions that you have built at Notre Dame. To me, these institutions represent a determination to see civil society play this important role, not simply by picketing or demonstrating, but by bringing the highest levels of academic achievement, deep concern with ethics, a commitment to activism, and a healthy distrust of government monopoly in these important areas. I feel proud to share in the tradition that you have established so beautifully here at Notre Dame and privileged to give this lecture today.

I am going to address the question of whether the war in Iraq can be justified as a humanitarian intervention. If I were asking this question a bit over a year ago, you might ask me, "What are you talking about?"

At that time no one even pretended that the war was about humanitarian intervention, that the war was designed principally to spare the Iraqis the repression of Saddam's regime. At that point, if you believed the Bush administration, the war was about Saddam's supposed weapons of mass destruction, about Saddam's alleged links with international terrorism, or perhaps about creating a model for democracy in the Middle East. Human rights were occasionally mentioned only as an after-thought, part of an effort to tar the enemy, to show that Saddam was the worst of the worst.

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