Does Violating International Law Make Us Safer?

[Demeter]

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2008/01/does-violating-international-law-make.html


This Administration is not merely incapable of learning, but seems insistent on doing the wrong thing with a vehemence. The invasion of Iraq was a violation of international law (the fig leaf of UN Resolution 1441 in the run up to the invasion has not impressed the experts), an attack on a country that posed no threat to the US and had taken no aggressive actions. Even if Saddam had possessed WMD, he had no ability to deliver them to the US.

Henry Kissinger spoke about a year ago at a synagogue to which he owed a big favor. It had sponsored his family's escape from Germany, and as he tells the story, they got out at the last possible moment. It was an informal presentation, and Kissinger could not contain his contempt for the Administration, stating repeatedly not merely that they had made mistakes, but that every decision they made was the wrong one. My friend who was in attendance said it was the most unequivocal condemnation she had ever heard.
.....

The Nuremberg principles are the bedrock of international law on war crimes. Principle VI criminalises the "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression ..." and states that the following are war crimes: "Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity."

To state the obvious: the use of a nuclear weapon on the military production facilities of a non-nuclear state will mean dropping big bombs on populated areas. Nuclear test sites are kept remote for obvious reasons; research labs, reactors and enrichment facilities need not be. Nuclear bombs inflict total devastation on the "cities, towns or villages" that they hit. They are the ultimate in "wanton destruction". Their use against a state with whom we are not actually at war cannot, by definition, be "justified by military necessity"..."The west" has lived from 1946 to the present day with a nuclear-armed Russia; no necessity of using nuclear weapons against that country ever arose. Similarly with China, since 1964. To attack some new nuclear pretender now would certainly constitute the "waging of a war of aggression ..." That's a crime. And the planning and preparation for such a war is no less a crime than the war itself.


It's not just citizens and presidents who are obliged to think carefully about what General Shalikashvili and his British, French, German and Dutch colleagues now suggest. Military officers - as they know well - also have that obligation. Nuremberg Principle IV states: "The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."

[mwb970]

1. Always the wrong answer. Always.

This Administration is not merely incapable of learning, but seems insistent on doing the wrong thing with a vehemence.

This is what bothers me the most about the bush administration. I don't expect them to do the right thing - they're Republicans. But the things they do are not merely "not the right thing". They invariably choose instead to do the exact opposite of the right thing. bush & his buddies always (always) land on the absolute most destructive, expensive, illegal, unfair, un-American option, no matter how many other paths lie open.

It. Is. Maddening.