The war is only two days old, but it’s already clear that its central rationale is fatally flawed. If Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction represented a threat to the US under any circumstances, they would already have been used, against US forces or against Israel.

The absence of an attack on Israel is particularly striking. US forces are already seizing possible bases for Scud attacks in Western Iraq (finding no Scuds apparently) so the opportunity for such an attack will be over very shortly. There is no reason why Saddam should refrain from such an attack except that he lacks any capacity. Similarly, the Iraqi forces in Southern Iraq are throwing everything they have at Kuwait. This clearly doesn’t include WMDs and, despite early reports, apparently doesn’t include Scuds either.

Although the war has just begin, a lot of crucial decisions about the post-war shape of the Middle East are going to be made over the next day or so. The post of Palestinian PM has been accepted by Mahmoud Abbas, thus meeting Bush’s stated condition for the publication of a “roadmap” for an Israel-Palestine settlement. Sharon has already rejected crucial elements of the roadmap inclduing the ultimate goal of an independent Palestinian state.

Bush has the choice between publishing the roadmap now, as he is committed to do, or deferring it until after the war with Iraq is resolved, as the Israeli government hopes and expects, knowing that delay will give them enough time either to force their desired changes through or to derail the process altogether. I expect he will defer, but I would be very glad to be proved wrong.

On another front, it appears likely that the Turkish government will mount what is, in effect, an independent invasion of Iraq, with the stated objective of coping with refugees, but the barely-concealed motive of keeping the Kurds in check. Ken Parish has a good post on the problems this will raise.

Turkey’s moral position may be weak, but, as I note in Ken’s comment box, the legal position is trickier. Turkey can use all the same arguments as the US about resolutions 678, 687 and 1441, as well as the right of self-defence. Again this will be a big, and difficult, test for Bush. Will he seek to protect the Kurds, risking the loss of Turkish airbases and airspace, or leave the problem to be resolved after the war, when the Turkish army may be well-entrenched? Again, I expect the worst, but hope for the best.

One hopeful sign is that the much-heralded “shock and awe” attack has not been launched (at least not yet). Again, Ken Parish has a good post on this. I expressed the hope a few days ago that talk of “shock and awe” was the product of a misinformation campaign. It’s still unclear whether this is correct or whether the delay has been due to the confusion about whether Saddam had been killed in the opening surprise attack. Given that war had effectively been declared, an attempt to end it quickly by killing Saddam was justified, but it appears not to have succeeded. The chances of a sustainable peace will be greatly enhanced if the “shock and awe” option is forsworn.

I sort-of promised a post on my impressions of Question Time, but Geoff Kitney was there too, and has done a much better job than I would have.

Now that war has started we can only hope that that it will be over quickly and that there will be as little bloodshed as possible on all sides. While all loss of life is equally tragic. it’s natural for us to think particularly about Australians. One thing I learned in listening to Question Time is that in addition to our troops (about 2000), there are about a dozen other Australian citizens known to be in Iraq (some media people, some human shields and a handful of others) as well as an unknown number of people with dual Australian-Iraqi citizenship. Regardless of their reason for being there, I hope that all will survive unharmed and that no Australian families will be bereaved by this war.

Reuters reports that

The Palestinian parliament ratified the new post of prime minister on Tuesday, drawing U.S. praise coupled with disappointment over President Yasser Arafat’s retention of key powers …Bush had said the release of the long-awaited peace plan to end Israeli-Palestinian violence and establish a Palestinian state by 2005 was conditional on the appointment of a prime minister with “real authority.”

Asked if the newly created office met the standard Bush had set, a senior State Department official in Washington said: “Yes.”

Arafat is an obstacle to peace both because of his actual record of failure and because the Israelis won’t deal with him, so assuming the expected appointment of Mahmoud Abbas goes ahead, that is one obstacle out of the road. On the other hand, Sharon is an equally serious obstacle and there has so far been no US reaction to his rejection of the roadmap for peace. I don’t know what to make of endorsements of the Palestinian move by an unnamed “senior State Department official”. If this is Powell, it seems as if he’s unwilling to go on the record with the endorsement even though he did go on the record about ‘disappointment’.

It seems incongruous to be discussing such a pacific philosophy as liberalism in the context of imminent war, but liberalism as an idea will outlive both Saddam Hussein (not that that’s saying much) and George Bush.

The basic range of meanings associated with liberalism were set by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty which, fortunately is in the public domain. Reading Mill, we can distinguish three separate arguments associated with liberalism, listed in order of the importance Mill attached to them
(a) An argument for freedom of speech, thought and discussion, based not only on the rights of the individual speaker but on the social and intellectual damage done by restrictions on freedom of speech. As Mill observes, our own beliefs are weaker if we need to protect ourselves from counterarguments
(b) An argument that individuals should not be ‘protected from themselves’ in relation to ‘self-regarding’ acts such as taking drugs
(c) An argument for free trade (in the broad sense of laissez-faire) economic policies, based on classical economic theory. Mill says that doctrine of Free Trade,‘rests on grounds different from, though equally solid with, the principle of individual liberty asserted in this Essay.’ Mill observes that market transactions are social acts and may therefore be regulated without infringing individual liberty.

It follows that there is no logical inconsistency in accepting Mill’s arguments for individual freedom while rejecting or modifying the economic arguments for Free Trade and in fact, late in his life, Mill himself announced a commitment to a rather abstract form of socialism. Most of those whose thought descends directly from Mill’s liberalism similarly accepted substantial modifications to the classical theory of Free Trade, so that, in economic terms, most “liberals” in the US and UK are social democrats of one form and another.

However, beginning with Hayek, there has been a resurgence of versions of liberalism which focus on free markets. Hayek rejects Mill’s ranking arguing that freedom of action (most notably, freedom of contract) is at least as important as freedom of speech and thought. Radical versions of the Hayekian position are commonly referred to as ‘libertarian’.

More significant in practical terms has been the trend of thought often called ‘neoliberalism’, and also given a range of more-or-less pejorative labels such as ‘economic rationalism’ (in Australia), ‘Thatcherism’ (in the UK) and ‘the Washington consensus’ (in relation to less-developed countries). Just to confuse things, neoliberalism is also used in the US to describe a specific subgroup associated with the Democratic Leadership Council. I’ve given a lengthy discussion of neoliberalism here.