Susan, I agree with a lot of what you say, especially the part about women's rights suddenly being on the agenda. Hear, hear.
And I respect pacifism, when it's consistent. But you make the point that " it is just not our right to decide what form of government is in place in other countries". Following that argument, you would have respected Germany's right to elect Adolf Hitler, with all the consequences thereof, and you would have condemned any other nation that tried to interfere with what the Germans (let's face it, the Germans, not just Hitler) were doing to the Jews, the gays, the mentally ill, the physically disabled, the dissenters, the academics? Nationhood cannot be a curtain behind which people may act as they please. One of the very great advances of the last century was the advancement of human rights as a universal concept. No group of people can now arbitrarily decide to destroy any other group with impunity. If they do, regardless of whether they're an independent nation-state, or a gang of thugs on a street corner, they risk being hunted down and tried internationally, or attacked militarily if a trial is not possible. Their claim to statehood and the right to be self-determining is no longer respected, just as a man attacking his wife behind closed doors is no longer regarded as a private matter. As a pacifist, you have a moral right to refuse to take part in violence. But others equally have a moral right to go to war, provided the conditions of "just war" (jus ad bellum) apply. These are: having just cause, being declared by a proper authority, possessing right intention, having a reasonable chance of success, and the end being proportional to the means. "Being declared by a proper authority" does not mean the United Nations by the way (although it might). It refers to a government that does not rule arbitrarily and which is accountable to the people and the law. Whether some of these conditions apply are arguable. But the first and most important - "having just cause" does apply. The people of Iraq are being destroyed. There is NO doubt about that. You can doubt the weapons of mass destruction. You can doubt the oil interests. But the humanitarian aspect stands in stark undoubted contrast to all the other murkiness. It was exactly the same during WW2. There was a lot of doubt about the rightness of acting against Hitler from many different perspectives, especially for Britain, which stood to lose an empire, and whether you think the empire was a good or a bad thing, it was a lot for a country to lose and so suddenly. And there were arguments about whether Hitler had an atom bomb, and should we act/not act/act faster because of that. But after all the analysis, one thing stood out, and that was that Hitler was a monster, that he was doing terrible things to his people and the people of neighbouring countries, and that he would continue doing them unless stopped by force. It was this moral clarity that made that war just. A similar moral clarity applies to Iraq too. Don't let the murk blind you to that. Sarah
