Henry Chien, 11/8/04

Separately, Leslie Su Cheng and Donald Shih wrote passionate anti-war responses to my article entitled "Right War, Right Time, and Right Place". Their main themes were similar that an immoral preemptive war can never be called a right war and they called for the withdrawal of our troops ASAP from this immoral war. At first, I wondered about the need to respond to their comments simply because:

1. Both candidates had already indicated their own resolution in the use of preemptive wars against the Islamic Terrorist people that attacked us on 9/11, the moral basis of which was challenged by Cheng and Shih in their responses; and

2. The presidential election is over; it is time to find common ground and not to search for differences anymore.

Then, I decided to discuss the common moral basis between the "Anti-war" and the "Preemption" philosophies and also talk about possible means to avoid deep divisions in America on controversial issues.

Most people in this country enjoy very comfortable life styles and have freedom to think and to act differently. Why can't we respect each others' distinct opinions, different values and try to find common grounds and work together? These questions came up when I was reading their personal attacks on me. "Callousness", "distorted or twisted view", "devoid of the most basic common sense", just to mention some of their kinder words. The reason, of course, was the Presidential Election with so much at risk. Was it necessary for them to discredit my personality, my values and my intelligence to help strengthen their arguments against my theme? Probably not. Both of them believe that war is seldom "right" and can only be justified on the ground of self-defense. Apparently, they did not hear that Kerry was in favor of preemptive actions (that could indeed kill thousands of people who had not participated directly in the 9/11 attack on our homeland).

The vast majority of people in the world want peace not war, myself included. The vast majority of people in the world could justify fighting back when attacked, myself included. Among the peace loving people, we have a complete spectrum of value systems with regard to the use of force (or war) against attackers.

At one extreme, we have people who would never fight back unless the attack is directly against their own lives and interests. Even when they fight back, they will limit their killings to those directly involved and not to their fellow fighters or supporters. In a way, they apply the strict rules in our judicial system to those attackers: innocent until proven guilty. So, until the act of aggression has started (proven), there will not be any defense or punishment in advance. Sometimes, they are called antiwar people because of their very strict rules to limit the use of fighting against their (potential) enemy.

At the other extreme, we have people who would use force to prevent their enemy from becoming an overwhelming threat, (especially if the enemy has already attacked us with thousands unarmed civilians killed on 9/11 in America). They can justify attacking if there is a concentration of enemy resources, such as people, facilities, weapons & ammunitions, etc. It is not a zero-sum game, but a war of attrition to eliminate their capability to harm us while other social changes slowly taking place.

In an overall accounting of total casualty, the anti-war philosophy may not save more lives. To a professional warrior, his advice may very well be like that in the oil change business: you pay me now (for a preventive oil change), or you pay me later (for an engine overhaul). Even though the anti-war people have always claimed sole ownership of the life-saving objective, this value actually is equally shared by the preemption people. In other words, both sides are trying to save lives and one side is not holier than the other. Many historians now believe that if the European nations had taken preemptive actions against Hitler before he got to be so big and strong, a lot of casualties in the Second World War could have been avoided.

Remember the famous Chinese saying: act first to gain advantage; act last to suffer, (pardon my translation). There was also the virtue of fighting in defense of the weak ones against evil forces in the Chinese Culture. Both suggest other considerations to the anti-war philosophy.

Actually, it was really a moot point for us to debate the morality of the preemption philosophy in this election since both candidates support it. Why argue about something that the voters did not really have a choice? As we all know, Kerry had been an anti-war activist in the past. During this campaign, he wanted people to know that he would be strong in the war against terrorism, so he showed up on the podium at the Democratic Convention and saluted the entire nation as if he was reporting for duty in our fight against the terrorists.

Through out his campaign, he said that he will win the war in Iraq and use preemptive action if needed without hesitation. When Bush said that Kerry won't hit terrorists until they hit us, some columnists (like Jonathan Alter of Newsweek) called Bush lying, because this was "clearly" a misrepresentation of what Kerry actually said (during this campaign). However, no one denied that Kerry did call the Iraq war as the wrong war, at the wrong time, in the wrong place.

Even after one accepts the moral basis for preemption in this war against terrorism based on its life-saving goal, or simply follows the leadership of either candidate, could the war in Iraq be claimed as a preemptive war? My point was that it could be so claimed, or the right war.

To get approval, preemptive wars must meet some basic principles in saving lives. They must have a significant impact to the defeat of our enemy. Obviously, attacking a center of their forces is justified. Attacking renegade regimes sympathetic to the terrorist cause is also. Before the invasion of Iraq, there were several main arguments in its justification: 1) Sadam was playing a dangerous deception game to suggest to the world that he had a secret WMD plan; 2) he was sympathetic to the terrorism tactic and rewarded $10000 to families of suicide bombers; 3) he hated America and wanted to hurt us; and 4) the country was so poor and hence ideal for the terrorist group to flourish. (There were probably additional arguments for the Iraq War when the Congress approved it.)

Of course, after the fall of Iraq, we could not find any WMD. Some Kerry supporters claimed that Bush lied to the Country to win support for the war in order to achieve a number of his personal goals, such as revenge for his father, getting oil resource for his oil friends, etc. At one time, Kerry stated that with the same information before the war, he would have made the same decision to help stop these frivolous charges. Even though we did not find evidence in support of the first argument, the rest of the arguments were still valid, and the removal of Sadam and him as a threat was still a major accomplishment of the War.

The part of the overall strategy that was brilliant (to me) came after the fall of the Sadam regime. Many Americans already had enough. They called for the immediate withdraw of all US troops and let the Iraqi people finish the reconstruction. The decision by Bush to keep our forces there until a multi-ethnic non-religious democratic government is established is the part that brought in the terrorists for us to attack them with our military forces and spare the civilians at home from further attacks by this group.

George Wang brought up another important point. As we all are aware that Muslim terrorist attacks were merely a way of fighting. The real conflict has been that between Palestinians and Israelis. This conflict together with other social problems in Muslim countries has created despair and desperation for the people, and for some religious leaders to turn this sentiment into a religious fight between the Christians and the Muslims. A democratic government in Iraq would bring prosperity and fairness to the people and eliminate excess influence from the extremists. This is another important benefit in addition to killing the terrorists.

This picture of only two types of people is obviously much too simplistic. How people move on this spectrum depend on how much the war is costing (in lives), how big is the real risk from this enemy (in potential lives at risk), what is the cost to him/her individually (or to their sons & daughters), all perhaps on a hidden scale of lives saved. As Kerry said on public TV one time, whether he supports the Iraq war or not would depend on the outcome. In other words, if we win the Iraq war quickly (which includes the establishment of a democracy), most voters would support the war, and then so would Kerry. But, voters are not leaders. Only strong leaders would take the risk and try to take us, the entire nation, to a different security level.

In conclusion, when I wrote this article on the Iraq war being the right war, at the right time, in the right place, I was only trying to convince those (including Kerry) who are morally not against the use of war to prevent potential attacks. It was never meant to tell the anti-war group that they are wrong, or that they should accept preemptive concept.

In my thinking, Kerry's strategy in this election has always been 1) keeping his loyal supporters, and 2) taking away some Bush supporters. So, during the last few months, he sounded like another conservative. He will cut taxes for the middle class, fight terrorist aggressively, not support gay marriage, etc. Unfortunately, when he flip-flopped, his loyal followers, like Donald Shih and Leslie Su Cheng, continued to argue against preemptive action, with passion. At the end, Kerry lost because his own loyal supporters will not allow him to move and take over the conservative issues.