President Bush's decision to take us to war in Iraq has been a hotly contested issue in the presidential race. It seems that almost every single man, woman and child has weighed in with opinions on the issue. Often overlooked, however, is the fact that great thinkers from the past are hardly silent on the ethics behind such conflicts.
Immanuel Kant, one of the most influential philosophers in history, is a prime example of an historical figure whose ideas could shed some light on our current debate. In "Critique of Pure Reason," he argues that the outcome of an action is not as important as the motivation behind it.
For example (and this is a very hypothetical example), if a man attempts to murder his wife by giving her an overdose of aspirin, but the drug actually staves off a heart attack, the act is immoral regardless. Because the man's motivation was to commit murder, it was nefarious even though it brought about a positive consequence.
So it is with the situation in Iraq. Bush rallied our troops -- indeed the country -- to go to war based on the fact that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Bush went so far as to claim in a 2002 press conference that Iraq had a "growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons" to areas where Americans live and work.
However, we have recently come to understand that Bush's information wasn't credible, and that Hussein's government did not possess the WMDs. In fact, Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, concluded that Iraq had not manufactured weapons of mass destruction since 1991.
Since this information came out, Bush has tried to backtrack and claim that the WMDs weren't really the reason we went to war. It was because Hussein was a murderous dictator (which is entirely true) and bringing freedom and democracy is justification enough for launching a preemptive strike.
While this is a noble sentiment, it still isn't the reason we were fed to support the war. We were told that we could have anthrax, or mustard gas or any other sort of lethal weapon in our backyards at any moment. Fear gave rise to a groundswell of support for the president and the war.
But Bush sold us this war based on faulty information. U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts said any assertions that Hussein was reconstituting programs to manufacture weapons were "not supported by the raw intelligence reporting."
While history may conclude that removing Hussein from power was right, Bush still should have dug deep enough to discover that the evidence wasn't watertight before leading us into war.
What is even worse is that after the intelligence was found faulty, Bush didn't want to allow an inquiry into how our intelligence agencies failed. Kant remarks on this issue as well. He argues that one should act as though the precedent set by one's actions would become universal law.
Think about it: Bush has set the precedent that after giving faulty information to the public on a matter of great importance, he doesn't have to be held accountable or lead an effort to make sure it doesn't happen again. A rather dangerous precedent if you ask me.
Because of these giant missteps by the president (among others), he doesn't deserve another term in office.
Julie Messner is journalism senior, and still can't believe she recalls anything from a philosophy class taken last fall. Reach her at julie.messner@asu.edu.
