My bad. I should have reported your post rather than play witty moderator (poorly).
On what grounds?
I used the term “stupid” to refer to a post in which someone compared Tony Blair to Hitler.
I’m dropping the subject because I don’t want to continue this hijack, but if you want feel free to report it. I’d actually forgotten about this thread.
This doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense whatsoever. England and France had guaranteed the territorial integrity of Poland; it was not some convenient excuse to go to war with Germany. Had Germany not invaded Poland on Sep 1 1939 England and France would not have gone to war with it. Had Germany removed its troops from Poland within 48 hours of launching the invasion it would not have had declarations of war handed to it by England and France. The very definition of a military ally is one whom one has pledged to go to the aid of if they are attacked. I realize Pat Buchannan wants to recast WW2 as having been started by Churchill with Hitler being the poor innocent only driven to commit the holocaust by the wickedness of Churchill and the British, but the man is a fucking moron.
In any event, regarding the OP, people have been using the phrase offensive war, which isn’t a war crime. Conducting a war offensively is ultimately the only way a war is going to be won, regardless of who started the war or why. Wars are not won by staying on the defensive indefinitely. The proper phrase under international law is waging a war of aggression, which is what the Nazis were charged with at Nuremburg. They were charged with the crime ex post facto, waging a war of aggression wasn’t a crime at the time it was committed.
Also, just because the error’s been repeated in this thread multiple times but not corrected, but Churchill wasn’t PM in 1939. If anybody’s a war criminal for guaranteeing the territorial integrity of Poland, it’s Chamberlain.
If W and Blair had the brains that nature bestowed to the lowly creatures that feed upon the garbage of smarter humans than there would have been no war that involved the US and Britain.
Rest assured, however, that there was going to be a war. Saddam was a despot in every sense of the word, and that shit would not have stood.
But declaring war was not a war crime under international law in 1939.
I’ll grant you, the American and British leaders could have been charged with war crimes for the bombing campaigns during the war.
The legal argument is that current international law allows a nation to defend itself if it is attacked by another country. And other countries are legally allowed to assist a nation in defending itself.
Now granted these laws weren’t in effect in 1939 but the principle would distinguish between Britain and Germany. Germany attacked Poland so Germany could be charged with aggression. Poland was innocent because it was fighting in self-defense. And when Britain declared war on Germany, it wasn’t acting aggressively because it was assisting Poland in its self-defense.
Or to use your example, Jordan wasn’t an aggressor when it declared war on Israel because it was assisting Egypt.
The Israelis would certainly strongly disagree with your argument.
I’m guessing the Israelis weren’t overly concerned about the legal aspects. It’s not like anyone was prepared to make an issue out of whether or not Jordan’s declaration of war was legal under international law.
But it can be an important point in international relations. It’s the reason the United States was able to legally intervene when South Korea and Kuwait were invaded. Even in Vietnam, the claim that we were assisting South Vietnam in its defense against North Vietnam gave us diplomatic cover.
And it’s one reason why our 2003 invasion of Iraq was so controversial. We couldn’t make any plausible claim that we were defending some third party by attacking Iraq.
Well, ostensibly the war was launched to remove/destroy Saddam’s WMD so a case could be that it was justified on the basis of defending other nations and other peoples from their use. So pretty much the rest of the world could be viewed as “some third party (being defended)”. The key word being, of course, ‘ostensibly’.
So is Obama a war criminal for having continued the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and for the countless civilians killed in drone attacks and bombings? It makes as much sense as Blair/Bush being war criminals, to wit none.
Answering aldiboronti’s question first: NO. First off the invasion of Afghanistan was justified under an international principle of law that any nation has the inherent right of self-defense which includes retaliation for being attacked such as the USA was attacked on September 11, 2001. And secondly Bush and Blair are war criminals because of their decisions to launch a full scale invasion and topple the existing government of Iraq when they was not threat to the world’s national security and peace in the region or was they any genocide taking place inside Iraq at the time.
KarlGauss is correct to note that “ostensibly the war was launched to remove/destroy Saddam’s WMD” and is also correct “that a case could be that it was justified”. on that basis. Bush and Blair should be convicted as war criminals however because they started the war in Iraq and they have left a trail of evidence that they both had to know that the WMD intelligence from March 7 2003 and after that they claim to have was wrong and insufficient or non-existent.
As I have pointed out in my post from yesterday at 11:22 am, both gung-ho leaders for war offered to allow Saddam Hussein to stay in power while they supposedly were in possession of intelligence that ‘left no doubt’ that Saddam Hussein was concealing his WMD stockpiles from the UN Inspectors. It is not possible that Blair and Bush had intelligence that ‘left no doubt’ about the existence of WMD stockpiles in Iraq during the first three weeks of March 2003 because they were required to share it with the UNSC so the inspectors could investigate it and confirm it. Had they shared the intelligence they claim to possess with UN inspectors there would have been no ‘ostensible’ justification for the war because the inspectors would have found nothing as we learned about a year after the war was already started.
Too many accept the *‘oooops my bad, but not really my bad because the intelligence agencies got the WMD threat all wrong’ *excuse from Bush and Blair as a decoy for not admitting the fact. The leaders of the US and UK in 2003 launched a war against Iraq when the UNSC was successfully conducting a peaceful and legitimate intelligence operation in Iraq at that point in time.
And to further verify that they are both war criminals there is the clear undeniable fact that neither leader accepted or even tested Saddam Hussein’s offer in December 2002 to allow the US and UK military and intelligence agents come into Iraq to search for the WMD stockpiles themselves.
Think about it. If Bush and Blair truly had some absolutely un-doubtable evidence that they knew without a doubt that stockpiles of wmd were being hidden - they would have to know exactly where they were being hidden and by whom and how much. So how could they have offered on March 8 to let Saddam Hussein stay in power knowing ‘without a doubt’ that he was hiding wmd from the inspectors which gave them their justification for war precisely at the moment the wmd intelligence was received.
But they said Saddam Hussein could stay in power if the UNSC declared his regime in compliance within ten days or by March 18, 2003.
So Bush and Blair either — had no evidence on March 7, 2003 but acquired it a few days later or they had no evidence on March 7, 2003 and did not receive any within the the next ten days.
The first option means they should have shared it with the UNSC.
The second option means they lied to the entire world that they had it.
I believe the second option is the case.
But even if the first option is the case… they are still war criminals for not sharing the ‘new’ intelligence with the UNSC as they were required to do a signatories to UNSC Resolution 1441.
Justification for hot pursuit into Afghanistan to take out the terrorist camps. No justification at all for toppling the legitimate Afghan government. And if it’s replied that the government was aiding the terrorists then presumably they could have invaded Pakistan too, which also nurtured and supported Al Qaida.
Which is a different argument altogether. Simply because the US did not go to war with Pakistan does not mean the US couldnt do so if it wished. It decided not to.
I don’t think current international law recognizes the legality of pre-emptive war.
No, the Afghan government was openly supporting Al Qaeda. It was offered an opportunity to repudiate that support and chose not to do so (at least not on terms the Bush administration considered acceptable).
As for the legitimacy of the Afghan government, it was pretty minimal even prior to 9/11. The Taliban had de facto control of most of Afghanistan but only three countries (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE) had recognized it as the legitimate government (and Saudi Arabia and the UAE withdrew recognition after 9/11). Most countries in the world, including the United States, recognized the United Front as the legitimate government of Afghanistan even though it only controlled about a tenth of the country.
To start, do you believe either of these two factors are not true:
Your first factor is astoundingly untrue. It’s no wonder you see everything as rosy over in Afghanistan if you can’t get basic facts like this right. The Northern Alliance, or more properly the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan had been fighting a losing war with the Taliban since 1996, and as Little Nemo noted was down to only controlling 10% of the country by 2001.
I am sure that it is astoundingly true that the fighting between the Talban and the Northern Alliance was never in fact a continuous every day fight.
Therefore this statement is not untrue. It is astoundingly true: September 22, 2001 - Fighting begins between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban.
Do you know what ‘intermittent fighting’ means?
Perhaps a little more detailed history than the Al-Jazeera timeline I cited will help you get through this.
The Taliban was one of the Mujahideen factions that formed during the Soviet occupation and the internal fighting in Afghanistan. The Taliban emerged as a powerful movement in late 1994 when Pakistan chose the Taliban to guard a convoy trying to open a trade route from Pakistan to Central Asia. With Pakistan providing weapons, military training, and financial support, the Taliban gained control over several Afghan cities and successfully captured Kabul in September 1996. The Taliban continued to control most of Afghan territories with **intermittent fighting **with Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, led by Ahmed Shah Massoud, the former defense minister under the coalition government led by President Burhanuddin Rabbani (Maley 1-9).
http://www-pub.naz.edu/~aamghar6/History%20of%20the%20Taliban.htm
So can you provide verification that the fighting between the Taliban and Northern Alliance was not ‘intermittent’? IF not Al Jazeera has it right. You have it wrong.
In case your dictionary is not handy…
alternately ceasing and beginning again
So if I may paraphrase Al Jazeera’s statement and my first point:
After years of intermittent fighting a major round of fighting begins between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban.
No, his claim was completely accurate
Anyone familiar with Afghanistan would agree with his statement.
You mean make a much more accurate statement than your statement which was, at best, extremely misleading.