The dilemmas of militant humanitarianism

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Notes

1 For a fuller discussion of the consent problem, see C.A.J. Coady, The Ethics of Armed Humanitarian Intervention, Peaceworks Report no. 45 (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2002), 10–11. Similar points are made in Coady, ‘War for Humanity: A Critique’, in Ethics and Foreign Intervention, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee and Don Scheid (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 275.

2 This matter is more fully discussed in Coady, Ethics of Armed Humanitarian Intervention, 11–13. See also Coady, ‘War for Humanity’, 276–7.

3 C.A.J. Coady, Morality and Political Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

4 David Rodin, War and Self-Defense (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

5 Most conspicuous was the Australian Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, who declared: ‘I would have to accept that if Iraq had genuinely disarmed, I couldn't justify on its own a military invasion of Iraq to change the regime’, only to later reassure the Australian troops at Tindal Air Base in the Northern Territory; ‘You went in our name in a just cause; you were properly sent to liberate an oppressed people, and with your coalition partners you did that job magnificently and in a way that will always be remembered’. Transcripts are available online. See http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2004/s1159892.htm and http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0WDQ/is_/ai_102043440.

6 Thomas Cushman, ed., A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005).

7 Mitchell Cohen's contribution to the debate shows such qualms. See Mitchell Cohen, ‘In the Murk of It: Iraq Reconsidered’, in Cushman, A Matter of Principle, 76–92.

8 Pamela Bone, ‘They Don't Know One Little Thing’, in Cushman, A Matter of Principle, 302.

 9 Reported in The Age, Melbourne, March 18, 2008.

10 Mark Davis, ‘Tough Days Ahead for Troops: As Campaign Moves from Desert, Deadly Urban Warfare Expected’, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 24, 2003.

11 See, for instance, the discussion in Marybeth P. Ulrich and Martin L. Cook, ‘US Civil Military Relations since 9/11: Issues in Ethics and Policy Development’, Journal of Military Ethics 5, no. 3 (2006): especially 167–70.

12 C.A.J. Coady, Messy Morality: The Challenge of Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, forthcoming). See also C.A.J. Coady, ‘The Moral Reality in Realism’, Journal of Applied Philosophy; Special Issue on Moralism 22, no. 2 (2005): 121–36; reprinted in C.A.J. Coady, ed., What's Wrong with Moralism? (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).

13 Gilbert Burnham et al. ‘Morality after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cross-Sectional Cluster Sample Survey’, The Lancet 368 (October 2006): 1421–8. Supporters of the war have been quick to challenge these figures, but the methodology behind the findings and the integrity of the investigators were endorsed shortly after the controversy surrounding their publication by a group of 27 distinguished medical scientists in ‘The Iraq Deaths Study Was Valid and Correct’, The Age, Melbourne, October 21, 2006, Opinion, 9.

14 See ‘Letters from Barwon: Williams “not ashamed”’, The Age, April 2, 2008. Link to Williams’ letter online at: http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/carl-williams-says-he-was-forced-to-kill/2008/04/01/1206850910952.html?s_cid=rss_news

15 For his earlier position, see David Luban, ‘Just War and Human Rights’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 9 (1980): 160–81. For the later, revised view, see Luban, ‘Intervention and Civilization: Some Unhappy Lessons of the Kosovo War’, in Global Justice and Transnational Politics: Essays on the Moral and Political Challenges of Globalisation, ed. Pablo de Greiff and Ciaran Cronin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 79–115.