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Ok folks, I've spent some time studying the questions submitted for the Cross-Blog Iraq Debate. First: many thanks to all those who linked to the kickoff post, and even more thanks to those who participated and suggested questions.
I decided it might be worthwhile to put up a "preliminary" list of the final questions immediately and ask for one last round of feedback from the peanut gallery. So listed below you will find my suggested final five.
I'll take comments until 5pm PST today, and will then finalize the list shortly thereafter. So to be clear: this is not the official list, and this post is not the final post, so don't link to this one! There will be a time to link very soon, but this isn't it.
In selecting the questions, I tried to ensure that we covered the major areas of the war debate: the moral (is the war just?), the legal (national sovereignty, international law), and the pragmatic (is war the best possible solution)? Obviously, I had to discard the vast majority of the questions submitted to narrow it down to five. Often, I combined suggested wording from one or more questions to more clearly express an idea for debate, and where I felt it helpful, added my own verbiage to drive points home.
I tried to ensure that the questions posed would genuinely lead to thoughtful and interesting responses. "Gotcha" questions, while fun in live debates, won't be very useful here, so questions like "If you lived in a tyranny, wouldn't you want to be liberated?" got thrown out --- because I can't see them generating any more substantive response from our opponents than "Of course I would; but that's not the point..."
Anyway, this is a deeply imperfect process, of course, but I've tried my best to represent our side well and pick a good batch. So please, take a look, share your thoughts, and we'll finalize the list later today.
And as a reminder: these are the questions which will be answered by the anti-war side of the debate. So, without further ado, here's the preliminary list:
1) If you were President of the United States, what would be your policy toward Iraq over the next year? What advantages and disadvantages do you see in your proposed policies versus the current path being pursued by the Bush administration?
2) Is there any circumstance that you can conceive of where the United States would be justified in using military force without the support of the UN Security Council --- or does the U.N. always have a veto against the United States’ ability to defend its interests, protect its citizens, and intervene to protect the lives and civil liberties of oppressed peoples?
3) What, in your view, would be the worst case scenario if an invasion happens, and correspondingly, what would be the worst case scenario if an invasion doesn't happen? What are your reasons for preferring to risk one over the other?
4) Do you believe an inspection and sanctions regime is sufficient and capable of keeping weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of the Hussein regime? In what way is an inspection/containment/sanctions regime preferable to invasion? Civilian casualties? Expense? Geopolitical outcome?
5) Does the sovereignty of a state derive from the consent of the governed, and if so, should a brutal dictatorship such as Hussein’s regime receive the protection of national sovereignty? If you agree Hussein does not deserve such protection, do you believe that regime change --- liberating the people of Iraq --- should be a goal of U.S. policy? And if so, how do you propose to accomplish this goal absent military action?
