So basically in techno lingo... you guys made your constitution overide the UN charter you signed ? More or less that. So the US did "break" intl' laws... even if they didn't do anything "illegal" at home.
Even if its justified internally for Americans… it was a mockery of Intl’ laws the US had chosen to abide by. So no wonder no one is worried about Saddam… but by Bush. Imagine every country putting a new constitutional amendement saying “We can invade anyone”. Presto… anyone can invade anyone then and do so legally. Why have a UN charter then ?
I think petty dictators can use those tactics… but the supposed defenders or law, order and justice… come on. “Advanced” and developed countries should be setting positive examples. The US while pursuing their interests are creating instability. Instability that hurts their own interests. International laws are what allow for commerce, peace negotiations and in general reduce attrition and conflict. When you start meddling with the rules of the game in order to do something as stupid as invading Iraq… its silly.
Now if you prefer raw power demonstration and vigilantism... what can rational people tell you ?
Well it depends on what your purpose in this thread is... is it to try and debate and possibly enlighten a few americans about how things are nasty in Iraq ? Or to vent anger ? Thou I agree in some of what your SHOUTING... by doing it the way you did you totally hijacked a possibly very informative thread right from the beggining.
Imagine a young 18 year old "true american" and pro-bush kid checks out the thread. First if he is smart he will notice that the info he is getting elsewhere never mentioned US troops shooting recklessly... that might get him thinking about. He might agree or not... but it might be his first contact with anything that contradicts his rosy views of Iraq. Right after that he sees your:
What do you think will be his reaction ? Disgust probably... since you just called "his" president a murderer. This only feeds the general (wrong) view that anti-Bush = Pro Saddam. You could have called Bush a murderer by proxy in a worked out vocabulary and argument of course. Still the point of the thread was not if the US invaded illegally... but if soldiers were killing illegally Iraqis as per Geneva or US army rules.
Now that kids will just close the thread and go back to his before mentioned rosy views.... one more Bush voter lost to logic. So Aldebaran do us a favor and tone down your posts. Do feel free to fire away at SPECIFIC postings which contain a lot of rubbish... but overall don't hurt a whole thread please.
Essentially, Aldebaran is correct. Since the entire invasion is illegal, it logically follows that every civilian killing is illegal since the US has no right to be in Iraq to begin with. Not only are the civilian killings illegal but so are the killings of Iraqi soldiers, the killings of former government officials, the killings of Saddam Hussein’s sons and even the attempts to kill Saddam himself. Bush is indeed a mass murdering scumbag, IMO.
You people stamping your feet and insisting it’s illegal just because you do not thinkit is right are acting just plain childish. No nation has ever willingly signed over its soveriegnty to the UN or inernational law. Yet you insist that is the way it should be. Or you think that is what happened by those nations who created the UN.
I got news for you, it would be a bloody battle in this day and age before most nations, most notably the US, would ever relinquish such rights.
It is funny how most of you will scream that a soveriegn natio should never be invaded due to their inaliable rights, yet when those rights are put to use and you do not agree with them you insist it should be illegal because you dont agree with it.
Until you are willing to debate the facts at hand, I am done with this conversation.
I’m not saying the invasion should be illegal, btw, I’m saying it is illegal. The UN charter was ratified as a treaty by congress and therefore has the weight constitutional law within the US.
It’s not a question of “signing over sovereignty” it’s about the US agreeing to live by a set of international laws and then violating those agreements. It’s also hypocritical to try to use Iraq’s perceived violations of UN resolutions as an excuse to invade on the one hand and then claiming exemption from UN authority on the other hand.
There is a REASON why international law should be followed.
Not the leats of which is that the U.S has AGREED to follow it.
It exists as an effort by civilized peoples to solve their problems in a civilized manner.
If we allow any country with the military power to attack other nations simply because their ideology is different than the other countries we’d have chaos on our hands!
And that’s basically what the U.S lead invasion boils down to. We don’t agree with them, we think Saddam is an a-hole (which he is), so let’s killing thousands of iraqi troop (and let’s not forget to have U.S soldier buldoze over their charred bodies so as not to leave a nasty sight for journalists to report) and civilians at whim.
Fortunately internaitonal law does not recognize the right to invade a foreign nation based on the fact that it’s leader is an a-hole (thank goodness for bush too!), unfortunately the U.S does not appear to care.
Anyway, this thread, more specifically, was about the attitude of the U.S army when ti comes to iraqi civilian casualties.
They are not investigating them as well as they should be, and by doing this they are basically telling U.S soldiers that’s it’s ok to shoot at anything that moves because you won’t have to face punishment if it happens to be a little kid running away from the scene instead of a gunman. There is a difference between making mistakes in the field of battle. It is another thing entirely to consistently use indescrimnimate fire and disproportionate force in these situations, especially when they are costing iraqi civilians their lives!
>> Until you are willing to debate the facts at hand, I am done with this conversation.
The fact is that the USA invented the UN as a place for nations to peacefully resolve their differences. The charter of the UN states that member nations renounce the use of force to resolve their differences. The USA is a founding member of the UN and is bound by this agreement which it has broken. The USA has broken a promise it had made the rest of the member nations. That is a fact.
Saen I do not think that you understand the concept of soverignity. We are not tlaking of U.S. soldiers killing people in Nebraska or putting down a revolution in Menphis. Your troops are fighting in Niniveh and Bagdag. Without entering in the shaky ground of Human rights (and the controversial “universal jurisdiction”).
You have to recognize that even if the American constitution is supreme to international treaties, that constitution is not “the law of the land” in Irak. The moment you chose to interfere in a foreign country is the moment you lost all claim to protection from your sovereignity.
You guys are still stamping your feet and insisting what you say is true and that was an illegal war. Most of you know how it works, so your petulance is a bit annoying.
I need a cite.
Show me wher a treaty signed. ratified and even blessed by the Holy See takes away POTUS’s power to wage war.
Again guys, we are not debating what you think is right or wrong, we are debating legalities.
And sailor I deffinaltely need a cite about your facts.
Where have you been the last 15 years? The UN sanctioned force against Iraq. I guess every nation in that coalition, even the UN, had broken it’s promise.
I am willing to concede my oint if I get something better than this rhetoric.
First we mmust determine if we are debating whether this war is right or wrong or, like the OP says, legal or illegal. And second we must define what sovereign means. AFAIK It means a right to self determine, however that sovereignty does not instill any inherent protection from anyone.
You guys are still stamping your feet and insisting what you say is true and that was an illegal war. Most of you know how it works, so your petulance is a bit annoying.
I need a cite.
Show me wher a treaty signed. ratified and even blessed by the Holy See takes away POTUS’s power to wage war.
Again guys, we are not debating what you think is right or wrong, we are debating legalities.
And sailor I deffinaltely need a cite about your facts.
Where have you been the last 15 years? The UN sanctioned force against Iraq. I guess every nation in that coalition, even the UN, had broken it’s promise.
I am willing to concede my oint if I get something better than this rhetoric.
First we mmust determine if we are debating whether this war is right or wrong or, like the OP says, legal or illegal. And second we must define what sovereign means. AFAIK It means a right to self determine, however that sovereignty does not instill any inherent protection from anyone.
Very interesting. Strangely enough nobody knew that. Koffi Annan is not aware of that. The USA is not aware of that. The USA blames France and Germany for blocking a resolution which would have authorized the invasion. I guess the US government is wrong. The US government has been trying lately to pass a resolution involving the UN in Iraq because the US wants to give the occupation some stamp of legitimacy. I guess you should be telling the US government what you know and they don’t. They don’t need to do anything because the resolution authorising the use of force was passed while everybody was asleep.
Or better said UN sanctioned force against Iraq in 1991…
Still the point of the thread is that US soldiers are shooting Iraq civilians. Without any investigations to deter trigger happy soldiers more will die needlesly. This contrats strongly with Hawkish rosy views of Iraq and Baghdad being safe places and the “great” job of the poorly trained for policework US army.
A Monkey With a Gun, I would rather answer your point here than continue to hijack the thread in the pit.
I said “It turns out that US troops often are aiming at innocent civilians” and you disagree with my using “often” so let me clarify. I do not mean to say that most troops, most of the time are doing such things. I believe for your average Iraqi or your average American troop this would be an very exceptional occurence. But the numbers of troops and the numbers of Iraqis are very large so that, even if the number of incidents per capita is very small, the absolute numbers are large enough that these incidents are happening at a rate of quite a few of them daily. When I say “often” I mean they are happening daily, continually, that innocent civilians are being shot at daily, not that all troops are purposely targetting civilians all the time. I know that is not the case. But the media carries news of innocent Iraqis killed or injured by US troops almost daily. The impression is that the troops are given a free hand and that we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. A couple of days ago we saw footage of troops beating an Iraqi man who was not resisting. How many beatings are not caught on tape? My guess is most of them.
I am even not blaming the troops directly. They are caught in the crossfire. I am blaming the US government who sent them to a situation where they cannot win. Individual soldiers may exceed their limits and commit attrocities but the real blame lies in the government who sent them there into a situation where these things would inevitably happen.
Allright, I don’t want to get into a debate over semantics. From the context of the pit thread it sounded like you were saying it was a widespread problem and not just a few isolated incidents.
Iraqi civilians are being shot, I agree, but you made it sound like a duck hunt. The reasons for the deaths are far more complicated. Have US forces been too agressive in their raids? How much firepower is acceptable in an urban environment? How do you fight an enemy that can so easily disappear in the populace? How do you police that populace? Are our troops trained for this type of police work?
These are questions that need to be answered, and soon, but I think you do a disservice to the Human Rights Watch’s report and to the situation when you describe a complicated situation so glibly and inflammatorily.
Exactly.
And that is why I say with every right that GW Bush and his team are self declared mass murdering terrorists and those who support them are supporters of their terrorism and mass murders.
Every Iraqi has every right to kill every foreign soldier/occupyer inside Iraq and to try by all means to drive these invaders out.
Every dead or wounded is on the account of the criminal US president and government, and equally on the account of their supporters.
People can argue against that as much as they want, they only hide for the bitter truth.
It is a pitty that the vast majority of the US’ers are so reluctant to learn other languages and thus open the door to the - now for most among them misty and distant - non US world for themselves.
It surely would be a shocking experience for many but it also would make a great number among those who applaud and support this criminal president and government a lot more realistic.
Salaam. A