Customer Reviews

But Was It Just?: Reflections on the Morality of the Persian Gulf War

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This book collects responses to the Gulf War from some of the most important thinkers about war in our time - - among them Prof. Elshtain and the Palestinian moderate Sari Nussebieh. Truly important to read if you want to understand how the world views the U.S.

Do not buy this book. Period. Worse than useless, it will actually distract you from answering the question posed by the title. More to the point, it's full of disinformation.

I was hoping that But Was It Just would be a highly informative debate about the war. Instead, the book turned out to be very scant on facts, filled with abstract and vague generalizations and hypothetical examples of what might be considered just in the abstract, philosophical sense of the term.

You might find this book interesting if you care what Saint Thomas Aquinas said about just warfare, but who in their right mind would defer to the six moral criteria of jus ad bellum when evaluating an international conflict? These are ivory tower issues that have nothing to do with the Gulf War in specific, nor justice in general.

Even when the book does attempt to paint an objective picture of what happened, though, it fails miserably. "The bombs were 'smart' and the pilots morally sensitive.... And it does appear that direct civilian casualties were kept fairly low: in this sense, at least, the air war was unprecedented." This is, quite matter of factly, a steaming load of balderdash.

The truth is that the air war was devastating. As William Blum shows in his brilliantly researched book, Killing Hope, Operation Desert Storm was the equivalent of a veritable massacre. Thousands of civilians were killed - smartly or otherwise - and the motives were downright dirty. Black gold dirty. Says George Bush Sr., "Our jobs, our way of life, our own freedom, and the freedom of friendly countries around the world still suffer if control of the world's great oil reserves fell in the hands of that one man, Saddam Hussein" (Blum, 1995).

Other critics of the war, like Noam Chomsky, have also laid out serious indictments of American motives. In his Rogue States, Chomsky provides solid evidence that top US officials were giving Iraq mixed signals, most likely in an attempt to nettle a Kuwait invasion. However, a discussion of motives can only lead us so far in understanding the (in)justice of the Gulf War. One must also pay close attention to actual consequences that ensued.

As this book was written 1992, discussion of US-imposed sanctions is not up-to-date. Currently, these sanctions have lead to the death of over 1.5 million civilians (500,000 of those being children under the age of five). There is also no discussion of depleted uranium radiation illness, which has caused Iraq's leukemia rates to skyrocket into the number one slot. See Arnove's Iraq Under Siege for a thorough discussion of these issues.

If you are interested in learning about the Gulf War, which is in my opinion the first step in determining whether or not it was just, Was It Just is of no help. This book is little more than a distraction.

In the end I am left to wonder, is this perhaps one of the many books the CIA publishes every year in an effort to convince the nation its foreign policy is legit?

Would have given it zero stars if the program allowed.