To War Or Not To War In Iraq? - Why Is This Question So Controversial?!

	Surely war is wrong and therefore there can be no controversy!? On the other hand, has any democratic country gained its democracy without blood being spilt? Can we only entertain the first alternative courtesy of the second?

	Obviously, this question cannot be asked in ideal terms of reference, in ‘a one size fits all’ type of response! Ask the rhetorical question “Would you defend your country if it was being attacked?” and most would answer “Yes!” ‘Merely fighting a war’ then is not the issue, but, what type of war or particular war should be fought or not fought? Most people, I believe, hopefully, are of the firm opinion that warfare is an evil that this world would be better without. So, then, how do we arbitrate this type of question in a particular situation, e.g., Iraq, say, as that country presented itself on the international stage in or around the month of March in this year 2003? Would it be right for the USA and its ‘Coalition of the Willing’ at this time, or in the near future, to go to war against that country… with or without UN support?

	In this short introduction I am going to argue in the next paragraph the case for ‘not going to war’, and, in the paragraph following this negative position I will argue a case for ‘going to war’. In the rest of this essay I am going to examine why a controversy is controversial from a phenomenological point of view with this current debate in mind. To conclude I will outline to offer a tentative solution, or process-pathway, as to how one might attempt to try to resolve this type of controversial situation for oneself. As to my own preferences in this matter I am currently stuck in a position of indecision and would gladly accept what ever advice and insight you may have to bring to this impasse of mine as it is not in my nature to sit on the wall even if I can be indecisive, like most people, from time to time. Indeed, a year ago I would have strongly argued the case for the negative with many of the arguments as will soon be presented. Hopefully, the rhetoric of the next two paragraphs will fuel this open forum, about to be conducted, and from our critique of those arguments, with the additions of your own thinking on this vexed matter, we might be able to effectively debate this issue with some form of resolution, or, at least, a recognition of the validity of points made by those who oppose us even if we do not agree with their final conclusions or the apparent finality promoted by those conclusions….

Some reasons for adopting a negative position: To argue for the illegality of this war with Iraq let me state quite simply that under international law it is wrong for one country to just attack another country! According to such law it is deemed wrong for one country to attack some other and for America to initiate this war is to do exactly what Baghdad did a dozen years ago in Kuwait and makes for a very dangerous precedent. Furthermore, two wrongs do not make a right! On the other hand, to defend yourself from such an attack is quite legal and Baghdad would be justified in defending itself should that situation arise. In the same light, a first strike in response to a hypothetical threat, even if apparently real, could well be considered illegal in the light of this principle; the proposal of a policy for the exercise of a pre-emptive strike should it be felt necessary’ has recently been enunciated by the American government. Even a non-partial assessment of the situation could hardly see how this weakened regime could pose a threat to its neighbours let alone to the United States of America! So why should America go to war with Baghdad? Its primary motive or motives could not be security, nor terrorism for that matter since no real connection has been made with the organizations that promote the same. Some argue it is ‘oil’ especially in the light of the fact that if the Saudi Arabian government were to go fundamentalist then at least Iraqi oil, some 11% of world’s reserves, would then be secured by this war in that eventuality. But, many critics quite correctly worry over the fact that such an act of aggression on a Muslim country can only reinforce the perception or misperception that the ‘Christian’ West is still involved in a war against Islam, a war that can only completely unsettle the Middle East to no one advantage or benefit. If this rattling of sabers has ensured the resumption of inspection and systematic disarmament of weapons of mass destruction then so be it… but let us then continue on this now proven course for peace! In a war it is the people these days that generally suffer both during and after the conflict. At all cost this path to destruction must be avoided. The spilling of blood for the awarding of political points elsewhere is never in the interests of the people of that targeted country. Why must the West inflict itself again on Iraq? Why pick on this much weakened despot when the world is still full of them? What is the real agenda that promotes this extremely expensive military enterprise – money better spend on the twenty percent of Americans that technically are in a state of poverty. Should we not listen to world opinion? See that the world has neither desire nor need for this adventurous and potentially dangerous conflict. The power of America is best preserved through its non-exercise – a conflict like this can only show it up for what it is – a bully who can bomb but who cannot fight a real urban war despite it modern material advantages in this type of theatre. Then the fruitful illusion of pax americana would be completely shattered to be replaced by an anarchic world where the stronger will merely walk all over its weaker neighbours with international impunity in the same way that the USA might try, and might fail, in Iraq. In this war it has no proxy troops on the ground as in Afghanistan and an air-war alone could not succeed. Indeed, the American government has shown no appetite for urban warfare in the past and will, no doubt, try to avoid one in the future. On many reasonable grounds many people have argued that this war should not proceed. Too much blood has already been spilt and wasted in the name of peace; and we should not add our names to this list either as victims or as victors. Such an action is criminal and would amount to the commission of a war-crime; especially as Hussein has shown some degree of willingness to disarm at last.  We should listen to those voices of world-wide protest for they are our true conscience in this matter…!

	Some reasons for adopting a positive position: Every sane person is in agreement that war is a horrible and horror-filled enterprise and that all measures should be invoked before it should be engaged. But, we live in the real world and no amount of negotiations, inspections, and processes of token disarmament are going to persuade a person who has experienced such political power, and whose history has steeped others in blood, from following a future peaceful course of action when the very survival of this regime is dependent upon the exercise of that power. With the eventual acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, be they nuclear, chemical and/or biological, the equation will inevitably tilt in the direction of this psychopathic dictator who will then be able to further extend his ambitions to dictate the course of events upon the international stage to his own advantage. What was started twelve years ago, and left unfinished (for fear of a divided Iraq with a fundamentalistic Shi’ite government in the south), will have to be finished lest this predictable dictator will be left merely to continue on his same, sorry way. For twelve years he has played games with an indecisive UN and is still able to divide such an ultimately ineffective body. The United Nations was effectively circumvented in the recent war in Yugoslavia by being successfully conducted by NATO. All proscriptions issued by that august body of the United Nations come with implicit penalties even if not spelt out as those resolutions are not in the business of legislating for every eventuality that might arise or might not arise at some time in the future. The much defamed Machiavelli tells us in his writings that the republic has its birth assisted by a Prince who is willing to surrender some of their power for the good of the populace otherwise the populace must wait for some other prince to appear. Democracy may not be inevitable but at least a less despotic, less autocratic style of government must inevitably come into existence as a government more concerned for the interests of its citizens. Who are we to rob the poor, patient, long suffering people of Iraq from gaining a government that better represents their ideals and aspirations! Every sane person subscribes to the ideals of a more peaceful world but does that allow us to become addicted to our so called principles at the expense of a population of peoples subjugated by this tyrant in Baghdad who lives very comfortably in his more than twenty air-conditioned palaces when his subjects are forced to subsist on monthly hand-outs when his conformity with United Nation resolutions would have obviated the need for those punishing and ineffective sanctions in the first place! A despot who, locked in some mediaeval time warp, has committed ecological vandalism, drained the Southern Marshes in order to further subjugate the Marsh Arabs, has gassed entire Kurdish villages and physically eliminated his real and perceived opposition, and, firmly entrenched his own tribal clansmen in positions of power and privilege with no real rule of law other than his own arbitrary dictates. What right have we to promote our ideal political preferences over the wishes of the Iraqi people who have no real voice in this matter and who have fatally demonstrated in the past that they do wish for a better life than the one this ruler has dictated for them. The Americans have shown that they can conduct a modern, less bloody form of warfare and should be allowed to enforce the implicit penalties of United Nation backed resolutions all ready to hand regardless of whether that body is currently capable of being appropriately decisive in this matter (and, hopefully, despite the generous enticements offered by the Baghdad government in the form of oil concessions to such countries as China, Russia and France – permanent members on the Security Council)? It is easy to be anti-war and pro-peace but, unfortunately, real peace is won, worked for, realized through sacrifices that sometimes call for the exercise of warfare. We should think more deeply through this issue and see the advantageous opportunities that could exist for the Iraqi peoples should this dictator be deposed. What ever our political and religious commitments one way or the other we should stand back and suspend those assorted grab-bag of prejudices, preferences and privileges in the hope that we can make the right decision in this matter and that in the clear light of such reasonableness the option of war should be left open and not closed off completely. I ask you, would this dictator allow weapons inspectors into ‘his’ country and go through a process of apparent negotiations if the presence of military force were absent from his shores? Alas, there comes a time, however, when “enough is enough” and other options need to be followed up should this path of true peaceful intent not be realized. A process of decision-making that demands a suspension of our ambitions and principles for the good of all peoples upon this planet… and not for the sake of a warm, fuzzy feeling we might individually feel…!

	From this hypothetical debate just carried out in these two previous paragraphs good reasons, I believe, have been declared as to why both war might be necessary and why this war should not be conducted. Could foreign policy, or any other form of governance or administration for that matter, be conducted by this long-winded type of seemingly fruitless rhetorical process. Certainly not in the short term! On the other hand, representative forms of government, or at least governments more representative of its citizens, need this type of debate! I have a strong faith that the process of debate, properly and appropriately conducted, can ensure good governance given the time necessary for this type of process to fruitfully unfold. “More heads are always better than one”, but, a proper debate needs to follow appropriate procedures or rules of debate, namely, presuppositions should be accepted or at least found acceptable in a hypothetical format, i.e., be thought rooted in factual reality as perceived consensually; arguments should be valid; and, conclusions should demonstrably follow from the conjunction of those ‘facts’ and those valid arguments. Those conclusions opening us up to various practical possibilities in the resolution of those problematic issues under such serious considerations, avenues of resolution varying in their degrees of potentially perceived successfulness in application. Would that reality could be so simple! This rhetorical science can only work, in my opinion, if we are better acquainted with the phenomenological nature of what is truly controversial and what must be put in place if we are to truly surmount the otherwise intractable divisiveness of such philosophical aporias, cultural blind-spots, regions of social fracture..! To conclude let me, therefore, briefly spell out both why I believe controversies are controversial, and, how we might start to circumvent them through a process of integrative resolution and positive resolve! This I shall attempt in the double hope that no debate should ever be allowed to be won merely through rhetorical force alone, and, that we can always find in a natural debate valid means for its resolution, in part or in whole, given that we do indeed successfully navigate this world of conflict despite the overlapping abundance of controversial eddies that inhabit its all-embracing ambit!

	Not long ago I was of the opinion that a controversy was merely a set of principles that clashed, which most people subscribed to, and, that their resolution was achieved through a preferentialistic re-organization of those principles in a hierarchy that marked some up and discounted others. But should controversies be resolved by such ad hoc means, and, are controversies actually resolved by such means in practice? In the course of current phenomenological research I have discovered that controversial phenomena are not just a set of conflicting principles and our preferential treatment of the same, but, also a conflict between different types of value-claims, and, our preferential treatment of the same. Witness, e.g., the apparent conflict between descriptions and prescriptions/proscriptions (in the naturalistic fallacy), a deontological sense of duty and pragmatical concerns in the design of an object that might prove to be dangerous to us at some future point in time, such as, e.g. a bridge or a building. etc. It is this mix and clash of values and value systems that controversies appear to be so heated and interminably intractable. On the other hand, in the course of our daily lives we seem somehow to navigate many of these whirlpools of conflict and conflicting interests. So how is this feat of navigation conducted, and, can we learn from doing what we are already doing in such a manner as to do that sort of thing even better once we realized how this fact is achieved in the normal course of our daily lives?!

	In a nutshell let me say that this feat of navigation is achieved through the natural practice of transcendental suspensions, suspensions deep enough to reduce all different forms of value judgments to the same level upon which all forms of judgment take place in epistemological experience (i.e., in transcendental terms of reference). Now, don’t be fooled by the technical language that I have adopted and adapted from Husserlian Phenomenology and modern German Philosophy. Suspensions are naturally entertained when one asks oneself a question, uses a metaphor, treats a certain phenomenon as a mere phenomenon, etc. In critical philosophical practice, however, we consciously exercise such a process through the deliberate intentional use of the bracketing of all relevant prejudices, as prejudgments, in the course of those ideal, transcendental deliberations. All prejudices are psychic positions in the life-world and through their suspension we ideally re-locate ourselves in between their correlative possibilities. From this position of effective neutrality the mutual interaction and negation of all relevant options in a certain investigative state of examination are allowed to re-formulate themselves and therein re-present us with an existential response that is relatively appropriate to that situation of resolution that we now find for ourselves in this world-of-life-lived-with-others. Essentially, all of our relevant ontological commitments (and epistemological expectations) in a given situation-type are suspended and found a mode of resolution often, but not always, in accordance with genres and rules of activity already to be found in situ in this market place of the world. By such means most problematic issues do not become controversial. And when we are exposed to a relatively controversial situation we find it less controversial when we try to adopt deeper, less superficial (more transcendental) means for its apparent resolution! An attempt that necessitates our need to thoroughly suspend all our ontological commitments (and epistemological expectations)! An attempt realized through the bracketing of all our commitments in a given situation (-type). All relevant principles, all so-called factual interpretations, all arguments and expected genres of response, and, all possible pathways for resolution and conclusion are called into question, bracketed, put out of action, suspended… subjected to this type of epoché. Then, in this suspended state, an existential response is allowed to re-fashion our activity in the natural spontaneity discovered in and through the resultant harmony experienced in this adoption and adaptation of a more appropriate direction of behaviour… the existential aptness and richness of such intentional activity allowing us to experience the harmonizing influence of such a process of resolution realized through this purifying process of suspension. In, and from, such a state our most cherished beliefs and ideals are not forsaken, merely suspended, and from their mere ‘giving up’ we find a neutrality that centers us in the spirit of that type of controversial situation and therein to find, or more correctly, recognize the ways and means for transcending the controversial aura of that type of situation and, thereby, finding for ourselves a moving on in the normal coursing of our daily lives. 

	Lastly, there is one more complication that often ensures a controversy remains a controversy, namely, that of perspective! Just which ‘point of view’ should we adopt in our attempt to resolve such an annoyance… and by that I mean more what ‘perspective’ and not just mere matters of opinion? In this imminent war with Iraq just which perspective or perspectives should we adopt? – the Iraqi government’s perspective, that of the Iraqi peoples, the American perspective (and would that be Republican or Democrat, or both; and would that be rightwing-Christian and/or non-conservative Christian…?), that of the Australian Government, the Australian people, an International perspective, a legal perspective, an historical perspective, a moral perspective, then a particular moral perspective that is what kind…, etc., etc? Phenomenological appreciation demands the presence of a perspective… but which one should we adopt? Is there normally, in the examination of a controversial situation, a lack of perspective or too much? Well, my reasoned response to this pseudo-dilemma is to adopt the same type of approach that I have advocated just previously in this paper. That is, to both adopt all relevant perspectives and suspend all of these relevant perspectives collectively. Hopefully, from the existential interaction of this now fertile and well-informed ground various appropriate modes of advantageous opportunity will present themselves as does happen in real life when, and only when, people become less ‘psychotic’ and find themselves entertaining the suspension even of their most beloved beliefs. Once everything is up for re-consideration, even if only in hypothetical terms of reference, the situation usually starts to resolve itself. This of course takes time but in this I am an optimist… but, alas, often you need to be a very patient one too!

	What can we learn from such ‘insight’ simulated through this non-reluctance to merely cling to any and all of our cherished attitudes and practices. That everything clung to becomes a ‘sacred cow’ and that the sacrifice of all our ‘sacred cows’, if you will forgive this mixed metaphor, is the ‘true’ path to finding ourselves released from such otherwise intractable tensions and conflicts, or, at least, the hoped for suggestion of an exit that can be followed that will potentially remove us from such turmoil should we wish to avail ourselves of this or that relatively less prejudiced re-vision of the life-world…

	However, let me examine this phenomenology of the controversial and its natural resolution in greater depth in a future paper. Suffice to say that we have the bare bones of a technique that might help us to navigate this current debate, this open forum on the question “should we go to war in Iraq or should we not go to war in Iraq?”… in the process seeing first hand how a controversial issue operates and how this clash of principles, attitudes, values and value-systems might be obviated through a deep transcendental suspension of all of our different prejudices, preferences, perspectives and privileges amid, and in despite of, the general, commonly accepted, intuitive, non-controversial agreement as to what ‘fundamental’ principles are at stake in that controversial type of issue!! 

And now… may a fruitful debate commence!!!

							          Noël Tointon, Sydney, 6.3.03.