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How will the next President handle the war in Iraq?
By Lauren | October 31, 2008
With less than a week before the election, it’s time for American voters to choose between the candidates for President. Many of my prior posts on ethical issues facing the next President have focused on economic and domestic topics. Today, let’s look at some of the ethical issues the next President will face concerning the war in Iraq.
We know at this point that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when we invaded and that reports to that effect were exaggerated, based on faulty intelligence, or both. We know that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserved to be ousted from power, but that Iraq was not home to the 9/11 terrorists and probably wasn’t hiding Osama bin Laden when U.S. troops went in. We also know that it’s been a long time since President Bush declared victory in Iraq from the deck of a Navy warship but our troops are still there, the casualties continue to mount, the new Iraqi government isn’t ready to assume its responsibilities, and American tax dollars continue to pour into the war effort.
Here are some things we don’t know. U.S. casualties have been relatively low (though I wouldn’t want to say that to the grieving families of fallen American troops), but the Administration has been loathe to give us accurate numbers on Iraqi casualties and it’s almost impossible to find out how many slain Iraqis were innocent civilians. Marine CorpsTimes recently reported that the war is creating an environmental disaster in Iraq, but you won’t hear that from the White House. We don’t know how many U.S. deaths could have been prevented if our troops had adequate equipment. We don’t really know how much money has been and is being spent on the war in Iraq, because so many expenditures get excluded from the federal budget and so many of the post-invasion reconstruction contracts were sweetheart “cost-plus” deals with friends of the Administration. We don’t know how long our troops will have to stay in Iraq, we don’t know how the allocation of military resources into Iraq has affected the war in Afghanistan, we don’t know what impact extended tours of duty are having on our men and women in uniform (although it can’t be good), and we don’t have an accurate assessment of how much damage the war in Iraq is doing to America’s reputation with the rest of the world. Perhaps worst of all, the Administration has failed to give the American people any meaningful prediction of when the war in Iraq will finally end.
There are always reasons to argue that, in war, the best strategy is silence. At the same time, one of the few points on which the American people seem to agree these days is that this war needs to be brought to a close. Senators McCain and Obama both have presented proposals to end the war, but the American people also deserve to know how we got into this mess, what we can learn from it, and how we can avoid similar mistakes in the future. Will the next President have the integrity to tell the American people the truth about the Iraq war, even if it means breaking with the Bush Administration or departing from his party’s “official” position? Will the next President deal honestly with the new Iraqi government and other nations, taking responsibility for any American mistakes and apologizing if appropriate? Do you trust your candidate to be truthful and forthcoming about the causes and consequences of the war? You decide.
Topics: Presidential Campaign, Social Ethics, ethics |
October 31st, 2008 at 9:14 pm
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November 6th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
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