Retaliation vs Pre-emptive Strike
This is a topic which I’ve been contemplating for quite some time, even before starting this class. When, if ever, is it justified to strike first? Now, I’m sure that most people are already saying in their minds, “it’s never just,” since it seems natural that it’s only just to attack if we are attacked first. But, what if the pre-emptive attack were to prevent, or reduce, the damage of a much larger conflict?
So let’s look at an example. Seven years ago tomorrow, we were attacked by terrorists. As the years have progressed, it has been presented that we could have stopped these horrific attacks, given the knowledge we had at the time. Why didn’t we? I won’t answer this yet.
Next example: March, 2003, we invade Iraq, based on enough intelligence to convince Congress that there were weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), and in order to prevent their use, we decided to stop them before they were used. Looking at it now, we never found any. Why did we attack then?
This all seems clear and straight-forward at this point, background information and such, and I’m sure some of you are probably saying, “And your point?” Let’s go back in time far enough to where we could have prevented 9/11 with what information we had. What would we have done? Detain people who haven’t done anything yet? Or, perhaps we would have used the opportunity to invade Afghanistan, citing claims of terrorists bent on using our own commercial airliners as missiles? Would this have stopped the attacks? Probably; but, if no attacks happened, how did we know that they really were going to happen? We never found anything substantial – no ‘smoking gun’ screaming: “Hey look, they were going to attack.” Why? Because, when an attack is imminent, you will do anything you can to discredit your enemy, leaving them to look like fools. And so, we would be faced with the same situation we have encountered with Iraq: a pre-emptive strike under supposed false pretenses, leaving us with a drawn-out guerilla war making us look like complete buffoons.
So then, what would have happened if we hadn’t invaded Iraq? We were under the assumption that they had WMDs, and we all know what happens when we assume. Did they have them? Our current evidence says no, but pre-war intelligence said otherwise. They must have had something at some time then. What should we have done then? Waited for an attack that we know would have come, and probably would have killed thousands of people?
And so I pose the question again: when is it justified to strike first?
1 comment:
I liked this post a lot and I don't think there are any simple answers to the moral justification of a pre-emptive strike.
However, it's important to know that our invasion of Iraq was not a pre-emptive strike, but rather a *preventive* strike. The difference is that even if our intelligence on their WMDs was correct, there was still no intelligence that said that he would A) use them or B) give them to anyone, Al Queda or otherwise. In fact, we now know that having WMDs (or just pretending to have them) was for keeping Iran from invading Iraq.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/01/27/saddam.cbs/index.html
The context is key, because pre-emptive strike says "you have the means to attack us and are going to" while a preemptive strike says "you have the means to attack us and aren't going to, but we'd rather not take that chance".
By that logic, we should have gone to war with Pakistan and North Korea, especially with their hostilities to the US and their nuclear weapons and/or programs.
Post a Comment