Steve (as 41oo) wrote:Ok Thanks McG understand.
That argument is exactly the one deployed by US and UK for "re starting" a war that never really finished. But I see two problems with this. First you can't just restart a war after a break of 12 years as if hosilities had only finished yesterday. Something has got to change. But nothing had in the case of Iraq.
Bad logic. If a country that surrendered to you in a war has failed to live up to its treaty promises, even though you have given it a dozen years, then you are within your rights to conclude that enough is enough, and enforce the provision.
Steve (as 41oo) wrote:The policy of containment was working, it may have been ugly, but nothing had materially changed between Clinton and Bush.
Answer me this if you dare. Supposing that Hussein had not destroyed all of his WMD, or had made new ones, or was close to making new ones, how would we contain him since he would have the option of sneaking one or more WMD into a western country and using it from within? You do understand that one single use of one single WMD could kill from a few thousand to a million or more people, depending on the scenario? Seems to me this is something we should be concerned about.
Steve (as 41oo) wrote:The thing that did change was Bush 2's desire to seek vengeance for the humiliation of his father. That doesnt make starting or re starting a war legal.
No, fear of WMD. Had Hussein retained WMD, or been in the process of creating new and more lethal WMD, we might have had a finite time window in which to act. He might have suddenly said, "I have enough WMD now to deter anyone from invading. I will now go ahead with all the WMD development I please, and if anyone tries to invade, they will be on the receiving end of my WMD. More or less what Korea is saying now, since we dropped the ball there and allowed them to develop nukes. Or he might have simply decided to take a nuisance out of the equation and used WMD on New York, Washington, and Los Angeles, then denied responsibility and offered us aid.
Steve (as 41oo) wrote:Secondly the conditions were UN Chapter 7 conditions, and mandatory. Saddam was probably in breach of them, but that was for the UN to decide, and for the UN to determine what action should follow. It was not for the US to suddenly hijack the process and act unilaterally.
Well, you pay lip service to the idea that any country is foolish to let other countries determine its defense policy, but you keep advocating it. Furthermore, we did act in concert with numerous other countries. Who said that the UN is the legitimate voice of world government? We signed the charter with hopes that it might be, but, the League of Nations turned out to be weak, feeble, and useless, and the UN isn't looking that promising either. Bush appealed to the UN to do the right thing, but finally had to act with the countries that were willing to come along.
Steve (as 41oo) wrote:As far as I can determine, the balance of opinion seems to be that the war was illegal because the UN did not specifically authorise the use of force. The British made strenuous efforts to secure the so-called second resolution which would do so, but failed. (Much to the annoyance of Rumsfeld Wolfowitz Cheney etc. who were never that bothered anyway. They probably blame Blair for delaying the start from Oct 2002 to March 2003 and the subsequent quagmire that has developed).
Nations have been conducting wars without permission from the UN (and you are clearly talking about permission) for many thousands of years, and for most of recent history too. Looking for other countries'permission to go to war would foolish in the extreme, and does not have much historical precedent either.
now this I have to laugh at. The United States signed the UN charter because it believed the UN would be the World Government?