Do We Have a Moral Obligation to Iraq?

26, March 2008 , 13:15

by Mark Rowlands

With the possible exception of John McCain, pretty much everyone, whether on the right or left, agrees that getting out of Iraq is a good idea. Of course it is, at least in one sense of ‘good’. I don’t think anyone needs reminding that Iraq is the most serious foreign policy debacle in living memory. The war was based on a premise that was unfounded and its consequences – human, economic, and political – have been disastrous for us, and truly calamitous for the Iraqis. Of course it is a good idea to get out of Iraq. If you think this, then what must you think the word ‘good’ means? I suspect that you’re thinking about the word ‘good’ in the way that got us into this mess in the first place.

Iraq, of course, wasn’t a very nice place to live before the invasion: no country run by a psychopathic dictator whose hobby is starting wars with his neighbors ever is. But, by the standards of the region it was by no means exceptional. Indeed, many women had a freedom and access to higher education that they could only dream about in some of the neighboring countries. However, this didn’t stop us from going in and utterly destroying the country, transforming it from the merely unpleasant to the positively nightmarish – with every indication that it is going to get even worse if we should leave.

The decision turns out to be somewhat unfortunate for us too: costing over four thousand American lives, exacerbating an already weakened economy, and diverting our attention from areas – such as Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan where people who actually might want to kill us, or have tried to kill us, or have succeeded in killing us, are currently residing. We all know this.

So, naturally, we want to get out. But the terms in which our withdrawal is debated always turn on what is best for us: the good thing to do is the good thing for us. And this overlooks, of course, that we destroyed their country and made their lives s**t.

Suppose you suspect – groundlessly as it turns out – that your neighbor is throwing garbage into your yard. So, you do what seems to you to be the best thing: you invade his house and largely destroy it, rendering it uninhabitable. Realizing your mistake, you volunteer to stay on and help him or her rebuild it. But, you soon weary of this for a variety of reasons. Maybe it’s hitting you financially because you can’t go to work. So, the best thing to do – you decided – is withdraw. If you decide this, then ‘best’ clearly means ‘best for you’.

We seem to have such a hard time thinking about the foreign policy in anything other than self-interested terms. I suspect that’s because today we have a hard time thinking about morality in anything other than self-interested terms. We have, more or less, forgotten what being moral means. This is a tendency that afflicts liberals as much as conservatives. If we at least suspect that there might be a problem with our self-interested behavior, we devote our energies to inventing laughably weak reasons to excuse it. ‘The Iraqis want us to leave’, they say. Yes, some do – perhaps the majority. But this is the same majority that is likely to come out on top after the ensuing bloodshed. Alternatively, as Bill Maher argued last week, whether we leave now or in ten years, they’re still going to kill each other anyway. So, we might as well leave now. I’m not sure what evidence this assertion is based on, but it is clearly the moral equivalent of ‘you’re f****d, so f**k you!’

The point is that when self-interest is at stake, you don’t need a good reason for pursuing it – a bad one will do.

Here’s one way to think morally, a way that has a lineage that runs from John Rawls, through Immanuel Kant, to, dare I say it, a certain Nazarene carpenter. Imagine you don’t know who you are. You don’t know whether you are American, or an Iraqi Sunni, an Iraqi Shia, or an Iraqi Kurd. Then ask yourself: what would I like to happen? I don’t know what answer you would come up with. And, to be quite honest, I’m not sure what answer I would arrive at either. My point here is not about what is the morally right thing to do but how to think about what’s the morally right thing to do. If you do this, then you are at least trying to think morally as opposed to self-interestedly. Of course, you can’t really imagine this. Neither can I. Morality is not an exact science. But we can do the best we can. And, (morally) the best we can is not always (self-interestedly) the best for us.

Original Article at Secular Philosophy (click here to be redirected)