December 1, 2015
WHICH IS WHY W LET TONY AND COLIN PRETEND THERE WAS A WMD THREAT:
The moral case alone is not enough to justify Syria air strikes (Robert Fry, November 30, 2015, The Prospect)
[D]avid Cameron's pitch rested as much on moral exhortation as the cold eyed calculus of strategic planning.His central, and rhetorical, thesis was simple: how can we stand back when others go in harm's way to defeat an organisation that threatens us all? Quite simply, it is morally indefensible to accept a free ride on the back of military operations--and potentially military sacrifices--made by our friends and allies and we must accept our share of the burden. The House of Commons will deliver its verdict next week, but that outcome may owe more to the bizarre internal contortions of the Labour Party and the insistence of the SNP on having an opinion on everything but responsibility for nothing, than the Prime Minister's excursion into moral philosophy. [...]As a convinced interventionist, I want the arguments to stack up and that is far more likely to work around a theme of coalition building than one of shining moral example. In the contemporary world, all countries seek coalitions. They represent a collective solution to the dilemmas faced by nations, like us, that cannot act decisively alone, or nations, like America, unwilling to act decisively alone. Within this context, burden sharing is an entirely legitimate and laudable aim but it should not, as the Prime Minister is in danger of doing, be confused with high moral purpose.
In the Anglosphere, the moral case alone is always sufficient, but does not necessarily compel action. W shocked Tony Blair when he told him he'd understand if the Labour Party wouldn't go along with the war and we'd not hold it against them and he allowed Blair to rely on the WMD argument, although we'd already decided on regime change based solely on the moral case.
Posted by Orrin Judd at December 1, 2015 4:55 PM