Intervening in Iraq

The Washington Times ^ | 8/25/04 | Sylvain Charat

[lancer]

As a duty of memory, it is necessary, on the eve of the presidential election, to give a clear and definitive look at one of the most crucial events of the Bush administration and understand there was no room for hesitation.

First, the U.S. intervention was legitimized by the U.N. Charter itself....Therefore, undertaking a military course of action was legitimate, and the United States respected the spirit and principles of the U.N. Charter.

Second, it was not a new war.... Military intervention was necessary, and even a moral obligation, to eradicate this threat.

Third, to this military threat must be added the threat to human dignity. A humanitarian situation may justify military intervention. This is legitimate because the Security Council issued (under Chapter VII) Resolution 940 in 1994 that authorized military intervention in order to re-establish democracy in Haiti....

Thus the violence of Saddam's dictatorship was internationally recognized: suppression of freedoms; use of torture; the use of rape as a political tool and so on, resulting in an all-pervasive repression and oppression sustained by broad-based discrimination and widespread terror....

Thus, leftist politicians and the media should think twice when they are questioning the U.S. intervention in Iraq.

...In the light of the above facts, President Bush's decision was responsible and legitimate. International law was not despised, it merely showed its limits and should be reconsidered and even rebuilt in the light of warfare changes. And at least now, there's hope for democracy in Iraq, even if the fight for it will be hard. But it is worth fighting.

Sylvain Charat is director of Policy Studies in the French think tank Eurolibnetwork and chief of staff for Alain Madelin, former secretary of finance for French President Jacques Chirac.

[lancer]

In the light of the above facts, President Bush's decision was responsible and legitimate.

Something most of us knew from the git-go, but it is still nice to hear it from a Frenchie. Worth reading the whole article (damn these excerpts!)

[Dominic Harr]

Measured by

• we achieved all our military goals.
• the number of enemy units overcome.
• a casualty rate of *less* than 1%.
• we gained a strategic forward base for use against our enemies.

This was perhaps the most successful major war in US history.