nternational war proper, lasted from March 19 until April 14, 2003. It was followed by a
period of military occupation; the return of sovereignty to Iraq; and finally, an
unprecedented democratic election in the country all of it amidst virulent insurgent
violence.
3

1
Tobias Simon Eminent Scholar, Florida State University. Copyright © 2005 Fernando R. Tesón. Do not
cite without permission.
2
See Mark Kusnetz et al., Operation Iraqi Freedom (Kansas City: Andrews McMeel, 2003) p. xii. This is
the account of the war by NBC news.
3
In addition to the NBC News account just cited, a useful source is M.L. Sifry and C. Cerf, eds., The Iraqi
War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions (New York: Touchstone, 2003).

1 The war in Iraq has reignited the passionate debate about whether it is justified for
democracies to wage war to counter tyranny. The second inaugural address by the
American president made conveyed, somewhat surprisingly, the message that, at least
under the present administration, the might of the worlds only superpower will be used
to fight, with and without arms, tyranny and oppression in a world not always willing or
ready to join in that fight. Whether we like it or not, humanitarian intervention is again on
the forefront of world politics.
4
Specialists and ordinary citizens alike have acrimoniously criticized the war, in all
parts of the world. Much of the criticism challenges the twin assumptions made by
Coalition leaders: that the United States had to defend itself against the dangers posed by
Saddam Hussein, and that the war in Iraq can be justified as an extension of the war on
terror. The legal arguments against the war have focused largely on self-defense and
enforcement matters, in particular: whether the justifications given by the Coalition were
genuine, given the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were discovered in Iraq;
whether the war could be justified as enforcement of prior Security Council resolutions;

4

4
The literature is so voluminous it has become unmanageable. Recent book-length treatments that include
the philosophical issues of intervention include: J. L. Holzgrefe and Robert O. Keohane, eds.,
Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal and Political Dilemmas (Cambridge, UK.; New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1521-23; Jennifer Welsh, ed., Humanitarian Intervention and
International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004);Anthony F. Lang, ed., Just Intervention
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2003); Aleksandar Jokic, ed., Humanitarian
Intervention: Moral and Philosophical Issues (Peterbourg, ON: Broadview Press, 2003);Deen K. Chaterjee
and Don E. Scheid, eds., Ethics and Foreign Intervention (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2003);Brian Lepard, Rethinking Humanitarian Intervention (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2002);"The Responsibility to Protect," (Ottawa: International Development Research
Centre, 2001). (ICISS Report); Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in
International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Other recent works that address
humanitarian intervention in any detail include: Allen Buchanan, Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-
Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004),
especially chapters 10 and 11; and Darrel Moellendorf, Cosmopolitan Justice (Boulder, Colo.: Westview
Press, 2002), pp. 117-126.



2 whether preventive self-defense could be admissible under international law; whether the
war on Iraq can be justified as part of a reaction against the attacks of September 11,
2001; whether the Iraq war has severely undermined the system of the UN Charter; and
whether the law of self-defense should be radically changed in the light of the new
realities that the international community has to face.
5
These criticisms have blended, in
complicated ways, with a growing distrust of American power and with the uncertainties
associated with a unipolar world hampered by new and unexpected threats to peace and
liberty.
In this essay I respond to a different criticism of the war: that it cannot be justified
as humanitarian intervention. I will not, therefore, address self-defense or other possible
justifications of the war unrelated to the abject human rights record of the deposed Iraqi
régime. I argue that the war was morally justified as humanitarian intervention.. In
substantiating this claim, I will for the most part set aside legal and political questions
and concentrate mostly on the moral legitimacy of the intervention.
6
Much of the
argument here, however, is relevant to the legal case as well, since the legal issues
considerably overlap, on this matter, with the moral issues.
The claim that the war in Iraq cannot be justified as humanitarian intervention can
be understood in at least four different ways:

5
A survey of these arguments can be found in Dominic McGoldrick, From "9-11" to the Iraq War 2003:
International Law in an Age of Complexity (Oxford: Hart, 2004); Karine Bannelier et al., eds.,
L'intervention En Irak Et Le Droit International (Paris: Pedone, 2004); and in Agora: Future Implications
of the Iraq Conflict, American Journal of International Law, vol. 97 (July 2003), p. 553.
6
I believe that the war was legally justified as well. For a full discussion of the legal aspects, see my
Humanitarian Intervention , 3
rd
ed. revised and updated, (Irvington-On-Hudson, NY: Transnational, 2005)
(forthcoming).

3 1) The war cannot be justified as humanitarian intervention because it is always
prohibited to wage war for human rights, i.e., the doctrine of humanitarian intervention is
invalid.
2) The war cannot be justified as humanitarian intervention because the Coalition
leaders did not offer that justification but different ones. They did not say that the war
was waged for humanitarian reasons.
3) The war cannot be justified as humanitarian intervention because Coalition
leaders did not intend the humanitarian objective. They had a different intent: to suppress
a security threat.
4) The war cannot be justified as humanitarian intervention because the Coalition
did not comply with other requirements established by the doctrine of humanitarian
intervention whether or not the Coalition had the right intent.
In this article I bypass question (1); that is, I assume that sometimes it is morally
justified to intervene for humanitarian reasons (as was the case in Kosovo and
elsewhere).
7
I will concentrate instead in (2), (3) (which I think can be collapsed into the
same objection), and (4). I will examine, then, the criticisms that humanitarian
intervention principles cannot justify the war in Iraq because it was not really
humanitarian, and the criticism that the war did not meet other requirements for
legitimate humanitarian intervention. I conclude that, whatever its value as a defensive
reaction against terrorism, the war was indeed justified as humanitarian intervention.

The Question of Right Intent: Intention and Motive


7
I address this question fully in my Humanitarian Intervention.

4 It is important at the outset to get out of the way a factor that few dispute: the
horrific nature of the Iraqi régime. I hope I do not need to rehearse, yet again, all the
evidence showing that Saddam Husseins rule was one of the most brutal in history.
While in the heat of controversy this is sometimes overlooked, almost no one seriously
challenges the proposition that, if there ever was a good candidate for humanitarian
intervention, it was this one. Some highlights: Saddam Hussein murdered about 100,000
Kurds in 1988; killed about 300,000 Shia after the 1991 war; buried about 30,000 in one
single grave; murdered around 40,000 marsh Arabs; caused millions of people to flee;
and tortured many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, between 1968 and 2003.
8

(However, some critics claim that the régime should not have been overthrown because it
was not engaged in ongoing mass atrocities an objection I examine below.)
Many commentators have dismissed the possibility of treating the intervention as
humanitarian. Citing the shifting justifications that President George W. Bush and Prime
Minister Tony Blair gave before, during, and after the war, they claim that the United
States was really trying to find weapons of mass destruction (or really doing
something else) and not trying to rescue the Iraqis from Saddam Husseins rule.
9
This
objection may take the form described in (2) above that Coalition leaders did not say
they were intervening for humanitarian reasons, or the form (3) above that they did not
really intend the war to be humanitarian but had other, non-humanitarian, intentions.

8
See, inter alia, Con Coughlin, Saddam: King of Terror (New York: HarperCollins, 2002); Louis Wiley,
Saddams Killing Fields vol. 1, (videocassette) (Alexandria, VA: PBS Video, 1992). The Iraqis themselves
are compiling millions of documents attesting to the horrors of the régime. See the Iraq Memory
Foundation, at www.iraqmemory.org
9
See, e.g., Harold Hongju Koh, "On American Exceptionalism," Stanford Law Review 55 (2003): 1521-
23;Richard A. Falk, "What Future for the Un Charter System of War Prevention?" American Journal of
International Law 97 (2003): 596-97; Michael Walzer, Arguing About War (New Haven: Yale University