“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" - Matthew 16:26

From Salon.com:

The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength
by Peter Daou

The unbridgeable divide between the left and right’s approach to Iraq and the WoT is, among other things, a disagreement over the value of moral and material strength, with the left placing a premium on the former and the right on the latter. The right (broadly speaking) can’t fathom why the left is driven into fits of rage over every Abu Ghraib, every Gitmo, every secret rendition, every breach of civil liberties, every shifting rationale for war, every soldier and civilian killed in that war, every Bush platitude in support of it, every attempt to squelch dissent. They see the left's protestations as appeasement of a ruthless enemy. For the left (broadly speaking), America’s moral strength is of paramount importance; without it, all the brute force in the world won’t keep us safe, defeat our enemies, and preserve our role as the world’s moral leader.....

They have held this view consistently since 2002. Millions marched down the streets of our cities before the invasion, believing that the administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein constituted a dire and imminent threat to the US was absurd on its face (whether or not the exact word ‘imminent’ was used is a semantic exercise, the implication was clear).

...Yet to many of Bush’s supporters, anything short of ‘victory’ is a weakening of America in the eyes of its enemies. They believe we are "taking the fight to the enemy," with the word 'enemy' defined so over-broadly as to conflate Iraq and the attacks of September 11th. It’s the “kicking ass and taking names” mentality, moral justifications be damned. Revenge for being attacked is rationale enough. Material strength trumps moral strength.

Bush plays to the basest instincts of this crowd, but he and his handlers know it’s not enough. If the left values moral strength over material strength and the right values material strength over moral strength, the common ground between the two, and the place where Bush would find his widest base of support, is a case where material strength is put to use for a moral cause. Bush et al want desperately to prove that Iraq satisfies both conditions. That’s why the Sheehan-Bush battle revolves around the words “noble cause.”

Faced with the disintegration of the original rationale for war, Bush and his supporters are scrambling to find the elusive moral ground to undergird America’s presence in Iraq. But when you’re on the record invading a country because it was a grave threat and the threat never materializes, you’re left with little but a means-ends argument to justify it. In the eyes of the war’s opponents, Bush and his apologists are mired in an ethical swamp trying to justify the mess they created. Judging from recent polls, what they’ve come up with so far is inadequate:

MORAL JUSTIFICATION #1: Bush and his administration may have knowingly exaggerated the threat but still had a hidden, righteous agenda: the removal of a murderous dictator, liberating the oppressed, etc. They simply used the most "marketable" story to gain the support of the American public.

This borders on the absurd. I'm no fan of slippery slope arguments, they're easy and ubiquitous, but this leads to the slipperiest of slopes: if it's OK to fib the country into war as long as the fibber has "good" intentions, then it's OK to lie about any policy so long as the president believes he or she is aiming for some secret "good.”

MORAL JUSTIFICATION #2: Ends justify means. In other words, pick and choose your preferred version of the following argument: “Despite the shifting rationales and lack of WMD, removing Saddam ... free elections ... an Iraqi constitution ... spreading freedom and democracy justifies the death and destruction.”

This point is often made in the form of a challenge: "Would you rather Saddam still be in power?" But rhetorical questions can go both ways. Estimates of Iraqi civilian casualties range from the low tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands. Taking 50,000 as an arbitrary number, who tells those 50,000 families that they have to suffer and die to prevent 100,000 other families from suffering and dying under Saddam? Are Iraqi lives fungible? Who plays God? Without an iron-clad moral justification for war, aren’t we callously and capriciously toying with matters of life and death?