Illegal War?

I'm not an expert on anything. I'm clearly not a lawyer. I'm often profoundly ignorant and have no steel-trap mind for clutching, massing and deploying the critical facts in an argument. Just another half-baked dummy who could easily say anything, take any position, without much accountability.

Apparently, the present war in Iraq has been promulgated by the current administration with the support of Congress ... moreso in 2003 than in 2007. For this fact alone (ignoring for the moment the administration's well-established spinning, tweaking, misdirecting and downright lying that may have led to such widespread congressional support), one could argue that this war is "legal" ... all parties acted within their constitutional rights.

And yet ... we might study the charges levelled in the proposed (and fanciful?) Articles of Impeachment ... the first of which is:

1) Seizing power to wage wars of aggression in defiance of the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Charter and the rule of law; carrying out a massive assault on and occupation of Iraq, a country that was not threatening the United States, resulting in the death and maiming of over one hundred thousand Iraqis, and thousands of U.S. G.I.s.

Then there's the notion of International Law. The U. S. has signed on to the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions. Consider this statement by the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms upon the following principles:

General principles of international law hold that:

- peaceful resolution of conflicts between States is required,
- the use of force is only permissible in the case of an armed attack or imminent attack or under UN authorization when a threat to the peace has been declared by the Security Council and non-military measures have been determined to be inadequate,
- enforcement of international law must be consistently applied to all States

These are just hints toward a path down which a person's mind might go ... in a study of the question of this war's legality.

I'll add elements as I come across them. Any suggestions?

Comments

[ms]

legal war?
why does it matter if it's "legal"? Legal is mostly (if not wholly) a manmade concept, one that has nothing to do with right/wrong, morality, justice. Abortion is legal, as is the death penalty in this first-rate nation but what does that mean? It is illegal to steal but is it "wrong" for someone who takes only what he needs, and it is truly a need he steals to meet? Sophomoric questions, yes ... but i dont see what legality has to do with any of it as men (predominantly white upper-class well-educated men) can make anything legal simply by dint of saying so, and getting enough of their similarly well-fed comrades to go along.

[brtom]

true ... legality is a flawed and arbitrary limit ... lacking the weight of "morality" ... but as a culture we acknowledge "the rule of law" ... so to establish that a government itself has stepped outside that limit may be just one more reason (tool?) for calling that government back ... to rejoin the community that acknowledges certain limits ... a way to call the offending entity to account ...

[ms]

but in war especially, those who need caled back are those who made the laws to begin with. since legality is flexible and can be changed at will -- and all too easily by those being challenged based on the lagality or not of their actions -- it seems morality is a stonger framework, the only one of substance, not changeable at will. I have read and reread much of the stuff on your other page, am haing trouble with the idea of "just war" (perhaps some siliar to those qualms re the legality of war) ... im not sure i have the ability to grasp or understand "just war" but it is interesting, thought-provoking

[ms]

if this war is illegal on our side, does it matter that the jihad is also illegal? I suppose (though i'm still trying to understand) that if there is indeed a "just war" then a jihad that could be referred to as "just" would the kind favored by the Saudis, which seems (from the little I've read) to have structure and regulation. One that I found interesting is that in the true or "authorized" jihad the son must have permission of his parents to join in the fighting. It is illegal to kill a person yet in many instances where that person already violated the law, as in attacked you or even pointed a gun at you, the law does not regard your act of killing that person as illegal but as justified. I know its not analagous exactly since we went over there to engage the war, but assuming (for the sake of argument) that the stated reasons were in fact true, would that change anything so far as "legality" or "justness" of this war?

[ms]

ps, i liked the last banner; the dark colors and the style of writing were i thought fitting for a page on war and all that entails. This one is nice but it is also very polite, pretty even.

[ms]

seesm to be abondoned here ... if you decelare a war and pretend it doesn't exist as long as you can, and ignore it when you can't, is is still a war? is there any harm?

[ms]

if you have a blog and never put anything on it is it a blog?

[brtom]

yep ... still a blog ... this is only one page of much more expansive project :-)

about the november war comment ... i guess it's still a war if people are dying, getting displaced, and generally suffering way beyond the norm because of that "war" that everyone "back home" is so busy ignoring ...

[ms]

what is the norm for suffering and displacemnt?
what we/they/all of us are doing -- either by acting or not -- is it "war" or is it a more pervasive arrogance/ignorance?
The Civil War (never quite got that), WWII .. those were wars.
This is more like Vietnam and makes as much sense