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Comment by berntb | Hacker News Reader

>>since without the invasion, there wouldn't have been a civil war.

Uh...

This happened: A starts a war W with B. As a follow on effect, some groups inside B starts a civil war W2 with others in B.

You say that A is responsible for the second war W2 too, which they didn't start and even actively tried to stop?!

After the war, when does A stop being responsible for everything bad that happens to B, done by B themselves? After 10 years? 100?

You just blame A for everything, including the weather? :-)

(It is easy to make a good argument that the W2 war would probably have happened anyway, at some point. Or that Saddam was already doing a continuous civil war with his army/police against everyone but his supporters, to keep power. You might even argue, but not with your definitions, that USA is responsible for all those killed by Saddam when they didn't topple him in the first Gulf war...)

Edit: Clarity.

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I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that it is what the Nuremberg principles say (as I understand them) and that this has not even seemed controversial in the past, as long as it was we who were applying the principles to others.

It's hardly fair to make those the principles of international justice when we are doing the judging but suspend them in the case of our own activities.

Yes - A is responsible. If I set fire on half of a fireworks factory, I definitely could be hold responsible if the other half burns down to.

Saddam was keeping Iraq relatively stable. The toppling of the regime was done so clumsy with so little idea what to do next that it enabled the sliding down of Iraq into the madness that culminated in 2006-7

Greatly oversimplifying the situation with that terrible metaphor.

"This happened: A starts a war W with B. As a follow on effect, some groups inside B starts a civil war W2 with others in B.

You say that A is responsible for the second war W2 too, which they didn't start and even actively tried to stop?!"

Well, let's see, the argument at Nuremberg was that Germany invaded Poland and sought diplomatic efforts to avoid conflicts with Britain and France, but those two attacked them over the invasion of Poland, which was Germany's war of aggression.

So, it seems to me that if Germany was in a war of aggression against Britain, then the same applies to the US being in a war of aggression against the insurgents.

I'd argue the US contributed to "W2" through "De-Ba'athification," disbanding the Iraqi military, and the incompetence of the occupation (eg insufficient troops to enforce martial law/secure weapons caches). This isn't simply claiming the benefit of hindsight because there were many people warning about these decisions at the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_End_in_Sight

I answered someone arguing that legally -- someone that starts a war is absolutely responsible for the effects. But then he turned around and wrote that one group was responsible for starting a war they weren't really involved in, except for trying to stop it.

There is a contradiction in there, if you think about it.

(People do make lots of mistakes in war, but the Bush administration did make a new face for f-ckups while handling the Iraq occupation. They did get lots of help from the Iranians to trip up, the guy arguing for disbanding the Iraqi military was working with them.)

> I answered someone arguing that legally -- someone that starts a war is absolutely responsible for the effects. But then he turned around and wrote that one group was responsible for starting a war they weren't really involved in, except for trying to stop it.

So let's consider this story. Germany invades Poland and tries to resolve the tension between itself and France and Britain. France and Britain declare war on Germany.

Who is the aggressor? Are we to agree, in the end, with Reichspresident und Grossadmiral Karl Doenitz and recognize that who is the aggressor is a political determination (presumably dependent on who wins the war)? Or do we accept that since the situation seems reversed in Iraq we should hold ourselves accountable?

It seems to me that this is largely confirmation that Doenitz was right, that "aggressor" is a term to be decided by the victor. I suppose we can say that aggressors never win wars ;-)

Wasn't there an ultimatum re WWII that if you start this war -- then we are part of it?

That is, joining an attacked ally in an existing war.

How do you differ from "If you don't censor your newspapers about the Archduke's death, we will invade?"

>> How do you differ from "If you don't censor your newspapers about the Archduke's death, we will invade?"

If you make a bad argument, admit it. Don't equate declaring a defence alliance with making threats of war, that is just stupid.

(To the downvoting idiot: There is another comment in my history you can find and downvote.)

But Germany essentially went to war in WWI to defend their allies, who had suffered what was quite arguably an act of war, namely a terrorist attack on their dignitaries on foreign soil, and which the nationalities involved were, according to them, not very cooperative. Now if you argue that is not the same, then the US invasion of Afghanistan is also a US war of aggression.

I don't see any relevance. I showed your Poland argument wrong, re WWII.

Since you lack better arguments, you're going to make me drag up definitions for casus belli and discuss this a long time, I take it?

But I don't need to do discuss Afghanistan since I only showed there were logical inconsistencies in an argument.

Edit: Removed the rest, not relevant or interesting enough.

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