by Kyle Pynn

Created on: February 07, 2010

No we do not have a moral obligation to stay in Iraq until peace is secured.  We have accomplished the mission of ending Iraq’s drive for WMD and atrocities of Saddam Hussein.  We have a legitimate government in place and it is up to this new government to ensure for the security and well being of all Iraqi citizens.  The institutions and processes that we will leave Iraq with will be able to govern as Iraqi’s see fit.  

What is moral varies from one side of the political spectrum to the other.  Morality is a term that is subjective to belief systems of the individual.  In order to answer the question on whether the US has a moral obligation to stay in Iraq until peace is secured we need to come to an agreement on how we define morality.  For the purpose of this essay we will define morality based on the ideas of John Stuart Mill.  According to Mill’s the only time that one should interfere with another individual is when harm is being done.  This idea helps to support why we were justified to invade Iraq as well as why it is okay for us to now remove ourselves from Iraq. 

The atrocities of Saddam Hussein against his people were many.  UNSC Resolution 688 outlines some of these atrocities.  Saddam Hussein was responsible for repression of the civilian population through military force, conducted arbitrary executions without due process, destroyed Kurdish and Turkomen villages, forced deportations, conducted chemical weapons attacks against civilian populations, attacked Shia civilians in southern Iraq, and killed Shia religious leaders.  Clearly these actions were in violation of human rights and would be keeping with Mill’s philosophy of when a government could interfere. 

But taking Mill’s one step further we can also come to the conclusion that when harm is not being done then non-interference is the rule.  We have established the framework for a democratic society where all are equally represented under the law.  The framework allows for equal representation and it is now up to the Iraqi people to decide.  Sure there is violence, even at one point the question of whether Iraq would slip into a civil war.  But as time goes on, without the presence of the US, these democratic civil institutions will gain a larger footing.  Iraq will become secure based on the actions of Iraqi's not some third party occupier. 

Our presence in Iraq will not ensure security.  In fact one could argue that security is threatened by our presence.  Al Qaida in Iraq will continue to create instability in the country as long as we remain.  For true democracy to take hold it must be the Iraqi people who provide for their own security.  If Iraq is able to provide for its own peace and security democracy will have taken root much deeper than a continued US presence. 

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