Reply #6: And just think, this came out about the same time as [View All]

[jamesinca]

Gen Myers and Wolfowitz saying things are just a "pocket of activity" or "really going well in Iraq". They said these things this week, earlier this week mind you. The media whores put out the Myers and Wolfowitz stories not the other side of it. Will they get significant international help, no. Why because as the Financial Times put it so well it would make a contributing country a war criminal:

Because they rejected a United Nations-supervised administration of post-Hussein Iraq, the US and Britain needlessly shoulder most of the legal responsibility for the success or failure of the administration and reconstruction of Iraq. No wonder other nations and groupings, such as India, Pakistan and Nato, have rejected Washington's appeal for troops. Why risk the liabilities of a military occupation under current conditions, especially when a simple Security Council mandate could trump occupation law, with all its attendant burdens?

In an awkwardly crafted resolution in May, authored by Washington and London, the Security Council designated the two victorious nations as the "occupying powers". This title carries all the responsibilities, constraints and liabilities that arise under occupation law, codified in the fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and other instruments. The UN assumed an advisory role but left the legal responsibility squarely with the US and Britain and reminded other nations of their obligations if they deployed troops in Iraq.

In the last half-century no country requiring such radical transformation has been placed under military occupation law instead of a UN mandate or trusteeship. No conquering military power has volunteered formally to embrace occupation law so boldly and with such enormous risk. And never in recent times has an occupation occurred that was so predictable for so long and yet so poorly planned for.

Occupation law was never intended to encourage invasion and occupation for the purpose of transforming a society, however noble that aim. The narrow purpose is to constrain an occupying military power and thus discourage aggression and permanent occupation. The humanitarian needs of the civilian population take priority and usually require the occupying power to act decisively for that purpose.