That’s it, then. Prime Minister Tony Blair has been warned that military action against Iraq to force a regime change would breach international law. According to the Financial Times, he received confidential advice from Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith and Solicitor General Harriet Harman that international law would allow military action in “limited circumstances” to support U.N. resolutions, but it rules out war to achieve regime change.
Apparently, the legal advice explains why Blair has shied away from openly calling for a “regime change” like U.S. President George W. Bush who wants to see Saddam Hussein gone regardless of whether United Nations inspectors return to check Iraq’s weapons capability.
This is Tranzis at work using ‘international law’ to restrict national sovereignty, this time from within a national legal system. Let’s not forget their true agenda:
A good part of the energy for transnational progressivism is provided by human rights activists, who consistently evoke “evolving norms of international law” in pursuing their goals. The main legal conflict between traditional American liberal democrats and transnational progressives is ultimately the question of whether the U.S. Constitution trumps international law or vice versa. Before the mid-twentieth century, traditional international law usually referred to relations among nation-states: it was “international” in the real sense of the term. Since that time the “new international law” has increasingly penetrated the sovereignty of democratic nationstates.
It is, therefore, in reality, “transnational law”. Human rights activists work to establish norms for this “new international (i.e. transnational) law”, and then attempt to bring the United States into conformity with a legal regime whose reach often extends beyond democratic politics and the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution.
Or the United Kingdom or anywhere else…
Curse those evil human rights activists! Their agenda of sovereignty-destroying anti-torture legislation is keeping China, Columbia, and Israel from exercising their sovereign rights to break the bones of dissidents, Marxist guerrillas, or dastardly stone-throwing Palestinians. For shame!
International human rights groups have done a huge amount to defend a genuinely libertarian ideology. They’ve worked hard (and often succeeded) at defeating tyrannical opposition to human liberty and freedom. If this means that some nations lose their “sovereignty” to oppress their citizens, then I’m all in favor of that.
In any case, the invasion of Iraq would plainly not be a domestic issue for Britain nor the U.S. This also isn’t something which has been invented recently, but is a part of the U.N. charter–a document which has been largely ignored by the U.S. The invasion of Panama was plainly a non-defensive action, but we went through with it anyway. Why would we act differently this time?
Lucas: If the sort of ‘International human rights activists’ being referred to here actually gave a damn about the rights of individuals, as opposed to the rights of the state to intermediate itself into private lives for purported ‘public good’, then they would indeed be defending “a genuinely libertarian ideology”. But what about the rights of the Iraqi people not to be killed with poison gas or murdered by the Iraqi Police? Or the rights of the Iranian people or Kuwaiti people not to be attacked by the Iraqi military? Somehow when people condemn US and UK use of force against the supporters of the Iraqi regime, claiming Iraq’s problems are just an internal affairs, it is blithely overlooked that Saddam Hussain has twice initiated war against his neighbours.
As for the ‘rights’ of Marxist guerrillas not to have their bones broken, as far as I am concerned, the only good Marxist guerrilla is a dead one.
The next idiot that refers to International Law should be drawn and quartered. I don’t remember any so-called freely elected representational body having been granted, by free people, to power to enact International Laws.
Wee error above, but the meaning is still VERY clear. Sorry!
Lucas: The economic and military power of The United States and it’s partners has provided the only impetus for advancing human rights that has mattered in the last 50 years.
So what were Goldsmith’s and Harman’s stance on the Kosovo intervention? Given that the UN said No to that, but that NATO went forward anyway, how does that differ in terms of “international law”?
Since European governments supported that, as did most but not all of their people, is that not genuine proof that “international law” is must be respected…. as long as it isn’t MY ox being gored?
Milosevic was a genuine threat to European stability. Ergo, “law” to the winds, we do what we have to do. Saddam is a genuine threat to the US… but not directly to Europeans. Ergo, (to Europeans) “law” is all important, and must be followed…. until he DOES become a direct threat to any given “us”, then the tune changes.
An international consensus that sovereignty must be respected, no matter how odious, does make sense. But if it fails to deal with the world as it is, not as many wish it were, then it is meaningless or even dangerous. Such is the case today. And the willingness of all of us to avert our eyes to the murder of millions in Iraq, North Korea, Rwanda and now Zimbabwe, simply in the name of “stability”, is a shame we will bear for a hundred years.
Perry: The actions against Iran took place with strong support from the U.S. (including the CDC giving Iraq samples of various pathogens, including anthrax), and were largely condemned by the “international community” you so despise. Isn’t it interesting that the agression that Saddam showed towards Kuwait caused such outrage, but the same kind of aggression towards Iran caused military support? Perhaps there were other forces at work here (not oil, but the fact that we disliked Iran, and didn’t care who hurt them or how). I don’t think that the oppression of the Iraqi people is just an internal matter, but more oppression in the form of war is not the answer.
“the only good Marxist guerrilla is a dead one.”
Columbia would probably be much better off if all the marxist guerrillas and all the paramilitaries were to die suddenly of say, some kind of extremely painful heart malady. Agreed. However, torture and murder are not good ways to achieve peace, especially if this means giving the Columbian government too much power to arbitrarily arrest people. (Aside: probably the best way to take the steam out of the war in Columbia is to legalize cocaine, but I doubt I’ll get much disagreement on that one).
(from another post) “The economic and military power of The United States and it’s partners has provided the only impetus for advancing human rights that has mattered in the last 50 years.”
What about the peace negotations in Sri Lanka (brokered by Norway)? What about the end of Apartheid in South Africa? The end of oppression of Blacks in the U.S. itself? The fall of the Khmer Rouge after the Vietnamese invasion? The fall of the Pinochet government? The fall of Suharto’s government?
U.S. military and economic might has helped preserve liberty in Turkey and western Europe, Japan, S. Korea and Tawain (give or take depending on the government), but we’ve also been very injurious to it. For example, there was the Pinochet coup, the support of Indonesia after its invasion of East Timor, the support of oppressive regimes and or guerrillas in Nicauragua, Guatamala, Columbia, Panama, Iraq, Israel, Spain, and most recently Pakistan. We did nothing to stop the genocide in Rwanda. If you support military intervention to further the cause of human rights, then our track record is inconsistent at best.
Lucas,
Most of your arguments are irrelevant. The case for war must always rest on its own merits; will a war against Iraq do more good than harm? Another way of putting this is: would a war against Iraq be morally right?
I think it would, for various reasons. But the facts that the West is not perfect, that war is rather horrible and involves deaths and is not perfect, that there are other horrible places than Iraq in the world, that sometimes good outcomes can happen without the use of war, and that maybe war won’t turn out how we want it to anyway: none of these make the slightest bit of difference when it comes to deciding what is right to do.
If we are thinking about war, things are already very bad. It would be lovely if we could solve problems without war, but the price of doing nothing isn’t the postponement of solutions; it’s the risk that things get worse in the meantime.
Great article. It’s for this reason I belive the US should be disbanded into its component states. Has there ever been a more Tranzi document than the US Constitution? States used to be indpendent and sovereign, and now the Federal Governemnt can intervene almost at will in our affairs.
The UN telling other nations what to do is nothing compared to what Congress and the Supreme Court has made States do, in the name of Federalism. States’ rights don’t exist anymore in this country.
In the long run, U.S. support for the Pinochet coup was a shining moment in the history of human rights.
Only 2000 of Pinochet’s enemies died (1000+ of the famous “3000+ victims” were Pinochet supporters killed by Marxists), most of them during actual combat, and the eventual outcome was a stable, prosperous, democratic Chile. The alternative was Allende, who never won a majority of the vote, forming a Marxist dictatorship in league with the USSR, guerilla or open war along Chile’s frontiers, and a weak and poor Chilean democracy today.
Thank Nixon for Henry Kissinger.
Adriana nails it yet again. These people are poison.