I want the US to lose the war in Iraq

Boy, go to lunch and everyone jumps on my case!

Let's see if I can sum up...

The UN is important only so long as it does not hinder American principles and ideas. Check.

The previous UN resolutions gave the US legal authority to invade Iraq. (As outlined by Chyamberlain so thoughtfully provided by JustWonders). Check.

American law outweighs international law when it comes to the security and defense of our nation. Check.

Some people have had their feather ruffled because the US has a mighty big stick and have suddenly decided to start using it against terrorism. Check.

China is not the US and they do not hold the same principles of freedom, democracy, as the United States does. Check.

I am not a lwayer with the ability to understand what each word in a UN resolution is supposed to translate into just as a UN lawyer may not have the ability to understand what a C++ program is supposed to translate into. Check.

Abraham Lincoln was smart. Check.

The UN sanctions against Israel are generally bad for Israel, yet the US continues to veto them because they do not properly address the issue of terrorism and Israel's response to terrorism. The UN has NO, let me repeat that that, the UN has NO place in US decision making. Check.

Anything else?

Yes, your mother wears army boots.

McGentrix can clearly communicate his confusion. Check.

Awwww... you guys are going to hurt my feelings! I try so hard to just argue the points instead of getting into these personal back and forths. This is what I get in return...

*sniff*


:wink:

(for the sarcasm impaired, the above was written as satire)

Impeach Earl Warren and Git out of the UN!

So was mine, but it was funnier. Don't get your panties in a bunch.

My point is that you made a series of statements without putting together a logical framework. We've pointed out the contradictions in your statements; you have not reconciled them.

It is OK if you do not wish to do so, but don't claim to have a well-considered position on the issues if you cannot clearly communicate it.

If you cannot pick out the answer to your specific question in the answers I gave, I am truly sorry. But, You can assure yourself that I believe you were wrong and whatever the opposite of what you said is what I would have said. Does that help?

No. The opposite of what you said would make no sense either.

No Bob or Weave here, Joe. I am disputing your claim that the invasion was illegal based on it being an unprovoked attack… or in your words, "the US was never attacked by Iraq". This is a false statement as demonstrated by my original post:
This disproves your claim "the US was never attacked by Iraq" and thereby means you have not fulfilled your burden of proof to claim the war was illegal. That's all it means.

I never said "the no-fly zone violations made the invasion "legal" AND I'm still NOT saying that they were "justification." Only the middle section of this Circulus in demonstrando (circular argument or is that a complex question?) is true. By stating the no-fly zone violations prove false your claim "the US was never attacked by Iraq", I am not stating the no-fly zone violations prove legality or justification for the war. This assumption constitutes a non sequitur fallacy doesn't it?

For my edification, haven't you committed the logical fallacy of "Argumentum ad ignorantiam?" in your conclusion as well? (This is the fallacy of assuming something is true simply because it hasn't been proven false.) Also, doesn't your original conclusion revert back to being a ipse dixit (sez me) since your proof has been demonstrated false and you have yet to provide alternate proof?

You have yet to prove that the invasion was illegal. Your Bob and Weave accusation is false. You are attempting to shift the burden of proof to me. I don't accept it. (what's that one called?… It's gotta have a name... and my brain is about fried from locating the others. )

Ps. Please, please, please be 100% honest in your answers to my fallacy questions/accusations, Master Joe (Did I snatch the beads? :wink:).

lol.

You can try to equate calling someone "confused" with calling someone "retarded" but that dog won't hunt.

Oh, sorry, you called my question retarded... still seems like you meant to direct it at me.

All of this does not detract from the fact that your attitudes are missing some key linkages.

I shall not respond on a personal level again; feel free to engage me again when you have something of substance to discuss.

Really? You don't see the difference? That would explain quite a bit.

I had a nice long response here with your question and my reply all quoted out and I decided it wouldn't be worth it.

Please stick to your word.

McG...deal with Nimh's hypothetical. It goes to the heart of one of your "reasons" for saying this war was justified.

Nimh's hypothetical is pointless because no resolution as such exists as such and it never will. Perhaps we should instead wonder if a bunch of over-anxious bunnies invaded N. Korea if the UN would respond?

The point has been made that the U.S. government violated treaty law (The Treaty of San Francisco in which the U.S. and other States established the UN and its charter) by invading Iraq. Under the Charter signatory nations renounced aggressive war, but retained the right of serf-defense. (There is other verbiage amplifying all this but I have expressed the essence of it accurately.) The UN Security Council was given the authority to deal with exceptional cases threatening general security, but even in these was expected to abide by the Charter.

Joe from Chicago is certainly correct in asserting our Constitution recognizes such treaty obligations as binding law. So the question remains, - Did the U.S. government break its own law and international law by invading Iraq? No action has been brought in any U.S. court on the question, and, given that the Congress of the United States authorized the action, I don't see that any judicial or enforcement action is possible. No action has been brought in the UN either. Admittedly, we have a veto in the Security Council and could readily stop any attempt to express a judgement against us in this matter. However, it is significant that no such action has been attempted by any of the members of the Security Council. There is no charge against us on the International law aspect of this supposed crime, - we are not accused.

These points are not as quibbling as they may appear. There are several forms and levels of law, and laws that are not enforced, or which are incapable of enforcement, are not laws in the same sense as (say) the criminal laws of most countries. Some countries claim extraordinary legal jurisdiction over what we (and others) consider to be international waters or international straits or passages accessible to all under our interpretation of international law. We (and others) routinely sail our ships through disputed passages, often only to establish the precedent and our rights under our interpretation of the law. Indeed the ultimate historical test for just what constitutes international law (given the many different and often competing claims put upon it) is the regular and effective enforcement of it by a sovereign nation or collections of them.

The history of the last 60 years is rife with actions which can arguably be construed as violations of various segments of the UN Charter, and which have seen no response whatever from that august body. It is neither reasonable nor fair to expect the UN to rise above the level of political and legal development of the mass of its members. No standards have been established for membership. as in the case of the EU: virtually every nation in the world is represented in the UN General Assembly, and all have ratified the Charter. We must accept and deal with the UN as it is, not as we may wish it in some fanciful abstract excursion of thought. "Laws" that as a matter of practical fact do not bind some nations such as Rwanda, Congo, Zimbabwe, the Former Soviet Union, Islamist extremists operating from and with the cooperation oif several countries, and many, many others, cannot be rigorously applied to others - unless they wish to be the fools of the lawless.

In 1991 Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait without evident provocation. By the conventional standards of international law this was clearly and unambiguously an aggressive war that violated the UN Charter. Ironically, Saddam had fairly good historical and national strategic arguments on his side. Kuwait was largely the creation of British imperialists who wanted a small controllable government in "control" of the principal then known oil fields. In Ottoman terms it was not distinct from the province of Basra, and before that it had been under the rule of Bagdad. Who was right?

The US led a coalition that later obtained UN sanction for driving Iraq out of Kuwait, and Iraq signed an agreement with the coalition principals establishing the terms of restored peace between them. .The U.S. has argued that Saddam failed to comply with the agreement settling that dispute and that, as a result it has a right to act against Iraq under the original sanction. Later, during the dispute over the WMD matter, the U.S. claimed - at the time it was passed - that the Security Council ultimatum to Saddam authorized us to take action if he failed to comply. France quickly expressed a contrary view, but this was a contest of interpretation, not fact. That dispute has never formally been resolved, at least to my knowledge. So the present situation is that the U.S. claims that it has acted fully in accordance with Security Council Resolutions, while other Council members have argued the to the contrary. The Council itself has not resolved the matter. Finally the U.S. has argued that it was acting in self-defense in the face of an international conspiracy - that had already attacked us and which vowed continued attacks- involving Islamists and certain authoritarian states coopertaing with them and supporting them, and that this alone justifies its action under the Charter. No contrary resolution has been passed by the Security Council.

This is where the legal question stands.

This situation certainly does permit Joe from Chicago to argue that the U.S. has violated international law, but that is merely his opinion, not established fact. I would argue to the contrary, and I strongly believe the weight of evidence is with me.

No, McG...Nimh's hypothetical is not pointless...and it wouldn't be a hypothetical if it did exist.

So calm down...and try to think rationally.

You are essentially saying that we can interpret UN resolutions to our own convenience...even if the Security Council is indicating that they do not agree with our interpretation...and the resolution is a product of that council.

Now...with that as a precedent...go to Nimh's hypothetical and give us an answer.

We really wanna know.

You dance and weave better than most...and we wanna see a master in action.

This is as clear a demonstration of your confusion over "provocation" and "justification" as any so far. I never said that the US lacked "provocation." My point is that any violations of the no-fly zone restrictions (and I don't recall any attacks by Iraq that violated those restrictions, although the point is immaterial) could not have constituted "justification" for the invasion.

Let me explain that point in detail so that we have no further confusion on the subject. The UN Charter specifically allows member states to exercise "self-defence if an armed attack occurs" (Art. 51). "Self-defense," however, is not an unlimited right. As I have pointed out elsewhere, international law requires states to abide by the "principle of proportionality." In simple terms, a small attack can be met with a small response, a big attack with a big response. Furthermore, any response must be proximate in time to the attack: a country, in other words, cannot wait for months or years to exercise its right of "self-defense" (if a nation can delay its "self-defense," then it can clearly enter into negotiations, which is what the UN Charter mandates).

In the present case, even if Iraq fired missiles at American airplanes, the principle of proportionality dictates that the American response must: (1) be proportional to the attack; and (2) take place directly after the attack. Any response that violated either of these conditions would be unjustifiable under both traditional international legal norms and the UN Charter.

The last time that the US military retaliated against Iraq for violations of the no-fly zone rules was during the Clinton administration (Operations Desert Fox and Northern Watch). Any "provocation," therefore, occurred 2-3 years before the March, 2003 invasion of Iraq. Furthermore, as the previous responses to the no-fly zone infractions demonstrated, the proportionate response was a series of limited bombing strikes, not a full-scale invasion.

So, because the violations of the no-fly zone rules did not justify the disproportionate, late response of an invasion, it is little wonder that no one in the Bush administration has seriously put forward those violations as providing a "justification" for the war. Indeed, it is only the administration's apologists, eager to find something that might explain why the US went to war, who advance this feeble argument.


Then you are saying nothing worth saying.


For the sake of argument, I'll accept that the US was "attacked" by Iraq (although I await some evidence for this claim). Nevertheless, if that point is at all relevant to the discussion at hand, it must be relevant to the issue of "justification" (the notion of "provocation" is simply a non-issue in any discussion of international law). So, if you are saying that some attack in 1998-2000 by Iraq proves false my claim that the US was never attacked by Iraq, my response is: "so what?" My assertion that the US was never attacked by Iraq was made in connection with a discussion about justifications for the war. If you want to talk about other attacks that may have occurred in the past but which do not bear on the question of justification, then you're free to do so, but be aware that you are not engaging me (or anyone else for that matter) in a discussion. At most, you are initiating a parallel discussion about something that is simply irrelevant to the present one.


Neither the former nor the latter.


I am satisfied that I have proven it to the extent that anything can be "proven" in law. You have just failed to accept my proof.


It's called "burden-shifting," but I haven't done that either.


Not this time.

When I use the term, "never been attacked by Iraq" I mean it like US citizens have never been attacked by Iraq nor were they ever in any danger of being attacked by Iraq from saddam hussein.

So to say that we have been attacked by Iraq in the no fly zone thing is I guess technically correct but is no justification for the Iraq invasion as joe from chicago said much better than me.

Clinton did respond a few times to the no fly zone thing and got called "wag the dog" for his troubles which did happen to be pretty close to his impeachement thing. So it seems to me that we already responded to no fly zone thing so we can't very well use the same excuse to attack Iraq, as again Joe from chicago said better.

We imposed the no fly zone on Iraq so if Saddam did fire at our planes a person could argue that he was defending himself since the no fly zone was not part of any cease fire agreement that he signed so he was not in breach of contract so to speak. So it might not be technicallyan attack by Iraq.

all those here said it much better than me, but anyway, The UN had (of which we are a part of which certain parties seem to keep forgetting) resolutions and conditions concerning Iraq. It was up to UN as a whole (or at least it's main members or however the thing works) to decide how or when or if to respond if they decided Saddam was in breach of the cease fire agreements and things. It was not up to individule party members to decide when and if to respond. So the UN resolutions did not give us legal authority to attack Iraq.

It doubly ironic to use the UN resolutions as an excuse when we dismiss the UN's relevance when it came to attacking Iraq. To say that we don't need UN just don't make any sense when we use the UN resolutions as an excuse for invading Iraq. If we were attack by saddam hussien like we were by Osma Bin Laden (remember him?) then the UN would not be important in our deciding to attack Iraq.

Why is something so logical that even a child could understand be so hard to understand among bush supporters?

I doubt very seriously that we will ever be brougt up on charges unless the whole world (or at least enough) gathers up some moxy to take us on and challenge us in a court of law over Iraq.

I hope they do because we deserve it and it will put back a feeling of balance between powers in the world.

revel, I think you just joined the "usual suspects" club and are now an official "blame america first" member. welcome aboard.