Philosophers, theologians, and thoughtful practical statesmen have for centuries recognized that war is the gravest act of international relations. There are no "good" wars, because the very essence of war is mass slaughter. At best, war is at times the lesser of evils. Few except strict pacifists would dispute that World War II, for all its horrors, was less terrible than the prospect of a world dominated by Nazism.
Thus it has been broadly acknowledged that going to war can at times be justified, but that such justification must pass a high standard. To be justified, a war must meet five standards: It must be necessary, it must be in a just cause, it must be proportional to the evils it is intended to prevent, it must have a reasonable chance of success (i.e., not a futile effort that merely causes more death and misery), and it must be entered into only as a last resort, after alternatives such as diplomacy have failed.
In the spring of 2003, the United States went to war against Iraq, then ruled by Saddam Hussein. The United States had not been attacked, so the war was not thrust upon it. The burden of justification thus lies on the US and the Bush Administration. It will be argued here that the war was not in fact justified.
Much of the political and media debate about the Iraq war's justification has revolved around "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD), and the failure to find any such weapons in Iraq after the war. The claim that Iraq had such weapons was central to the case for war made by the Bush Administration to Congress, the American public, and the world community as embodied in the United Nations. Certainly the absence of these weapons has been profoundly embarrassing to the administration.
It may be said that the apparent nonexistence of these weapons in Saddam Hussein's Iraq at the start of 2003 does not, in and of itself, automatically undermine the WMD argument as a justification for the w...