Then why did President Bush go to such lengths to avoid saying “imminent threat?” What was all that hokey about “grave and growing threats,” and other verbal contortions?
There is little doubt now that any threat was mostly non-existant.
However, let me give you this following hypothetical. There is a convicted Felon. He is known for Assault with a dealy weapon, and several attempted murders. After his last arrest (and conviction), they found a huge cache of illegal weapons in his home. The searchers really thought they didn’t get them all, but there was so much, it was hard to tell. Later on he commits several parole violations- refusing to let the police search his home. He is known to have asked around about buying more weapons. A rather doubtful informant insists that the felon is well armed and has a new & dangerous weapon cache. Then they try to arrest him. When doing so, he strikes one, then runs. When cornered- he whirls around and says “You’ll never take me alive coppers” and reaches into his coat. The police shoot him down. When they get to him, they find nothing other than a pocketknife- which is legal. When they search his home & such- they again find no illegal weapons- just a few gun catalogs.
Were the police justified in shooting him- even though it turned out later that he wasn’t armed with anything dangerous to them?
Of course- because they had a real & justified fear that he was reaching for a gun- even though he wasn’t.
I meant no as in we don’t all agree that the invasion of Iraq served no defensive pruposes. I do, in fact, think that it served a defensive purpose.
There are several flaws in your analogy. Two of the most obvious ones are that a.) Saddam was allowing inspections in Iraq and it was Bush who made the inspectors leave. b.) Saddam was not “reaching” for anything. He made no threat whatever, either direct or implied, against the US or any other country.
But the most glaring problem with your analogy is that the US is not the “police.” The “police” in this case would be the UN. The US is just a group of civilian assholes off the street, with no legal authority of any sort, who were not being threatened or harrassed, and who had already been told by the cops to stay away from that house.
It’s more like this. A self-appointed neighborhood watch group wants to get rid of a crackhouse in their neighborhood. They know it was a crackhouse ten years ago when it got raided and busted by the cops. There is no longer any evidence taht it’s still a crackhouse. The cops have searched it several times and not found any crack. The cops tell the neighborhood vigilantes to stay away from that house and if any evidence arises that it’s become a crackhouse again, the cops (not the vigilantes) will bust the house.
The yahoo vigilantes don’t like this. They’ve been spoiling for a fight. So they decide to go raid the house themselves. They do so. They kill a bunch of people in the house. They shoot the joint up. They set it on fire.
Only thing is, there isn’t any crack.
What did it defend us from?
Fair 'nuff. But I believe DtC’s point is that there never was an imminent threat from Iraq.
Deth, your analogies with criminal law simply do not shine any light on this debate. The UNSC is not a judge or a jury. The body of international law, with basically one small exception, does not carry remedies relating to imprisonment. There is no concept of presumption of innocence, no prosecutors, and no public defenders.
Your hypothetical cases of police officers and mayors killing people have about as much relevence to this discussion as me comparing the US Army advancing on Baghdad to a Kansas City Chiefs game in which Priest Holmes runs for 200 yards. In fact, I’d argue that football has more in common with war than criminal prosecutions do with the UN Charter.
All I have to add to the debate is this:
Breeches are archaic trousers that extend to the upper calf, and have a tight closure around the leg there.
Breach means to transgress, violate, or flout, as a treaty.
Learn it, know it, live it.
A danger that many thought existed in the Saddam Husein regime.
Yea, I know he meant something more subtle than he posted. But since he did not think the question required any more thought than he put into it, I decided to respond in kind. I don’t know why I enjoy teasing him that way. It’s almost certainly something wrong with me. 
You start out correct in this paragraph, and then steadily drift away. That the United States should not be considered the police is correct. That the UN should is not. There are no police in international law. Only agreements amongst the members. Finally, far from being told to stay away from the house, America had been told by the UN to keep anyone in the house from being a danger to others.
In other words, nothing. It defended us from nothing. It served no defensive purpose.
What else was there to think about? There was no threat, immiment or otherwise. Bush was lying. End of story.
Putting aside the questions of how binding that charter is, either de jure or de facto, (Do you seriously believe that any member of the UN is going to forego a conflict they think is in their long-term interest solely because it’s “illegal”?), and also leaving aside the obvious problem that the UNSC does not remotely resemble an impartial body, but is a collection of unelected and self-interested nations, the problem with invoking this doctrine is that it is sorely anachronistic.
The UN charter really only addresses one model of warfare; namely, the uniformed armies of one nation-state invading the physical territory of another. This has never been the only model, and in the 21st century it’s not even the dominant one. Enforcing constraints on it amounts to constraining only certain kinds of warfare (and certain nations) and in fact ends up encouraging other kinds.
Terrorism, of course is unaffected by it; if Syria deployed a thousand suicide bombers against Israel in one month, by any sensible interpretation, this would be casus belli. But does this count as “an armed attack,” especially if Syria maintains plausible deniability of any official, governmental approval? How exactly is Israel allowed to respond in your world?
That is only the most obvious contemporary kind of asymmetrical warfare; there have always been others. Assasination of political leaders and war-by-proxy are old standbys. Biological weapons aren’t new, but they are improved; start an epidemic across the border, or cause a famine by setting loose a bug that kills their staple crop. Much more modern, consider the effect a massive denial-of-service attack could have on one of those small island nations that make a chunk of their economies on selling domain names. If that seems implausible, how about one nation hacking into the stock market of another and causing a crash?
The reason these sorts of things don’t happen more often is simple: anyone who tried them risks starting a war. And that is more or less why civilizations developed standing armies to begin with: they act as deterrents to conflict, and when conflict does come (as seems inherent in the human species), they ensure it is channelled into a specific form governed by rules and customs, is conducted by specific, identifiable individuals, and can be ended promptly by either or both sides. It acts as a relative protection, rather than a threat to civilians, and when you effectively prohibit only that kind of conflict, you are not moving forward, but backward to the bad old days when war was waged by every member of the tribe against every member of the other tribe by any means necessary.
And I should hasten to add this: if you think that this is an effective check on US power, you are again mistaken. If you prevent any nation from pursuing its ends by one means, it will simply pursue them by another. The US is quite capable of waging war with much uglier weapons than M1 tanks and smart bombs; it has in the past, and quite arguably still does. If you succeeded in convincing the US Supreme Court to rule in your favor, and US administrations were prevented from using force without UNSC approval, you would simply be guaranteeing that future US administrations would instead rely on less-obvious, less-accountable means.
John Mace quoted this opinion from a court case:
Would that mean that for the United States to go to war in violation of the rules set forth in the UN Charter, the USA has “render(ed) the treaty null” therefore the USA has to withraw from the UN to prosecute an illegal war?
No. Only the part which is in conflict is rendered null.
I believe the moon is made out of cheese. Lets be friends!