Um, Somalia was an official UN operation. Not that the US integrated in that operation, but technically, it was fully legitimate.
Obviously you’re neither capable of reading the UN charter, nor do you have an idea about European politics. The answer to your question should be plain obvious if you did the former, and if you did the latter, you would realize that your labels are plain silly.
Is that all you want?
Me no reader, me writer.
Gee, thanks for explaining your view with such eloquence. :rolleyes:
If that’s all you can find in the Charter to argue that Congress no longer has the right to declare war, that’s a pretty shaky argument. Surely a treaty that affects one of the most basic functions of any sovereign government would have some stronger or clearer language than simply “fulfill in good faith?”
By that logic, Bush I must have violated the UN Charter when he proclaimed after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait that “this aggression will not stand,” bearing in mind that bit about refraining from threats of force. I guess a loophole has been written into the First Amendment as well?
And per your earlier point about a state “voluntarily restricting the freedom of its legislature,” surely if this was done at some point, one would write it down somewhere in clear language what powers exactly were being surrendered, it being a rather major issue and all. I’d like to see that, if you know where it is stated, since I sincerely doubt that anyone conceived that the U.S. was actually crossing out portions of Article I Section 8 when it ratified the Charter.
To answer a debate which may have already been definitively answered, the United States Supreme Court has weighed in on the issue of which has preeminence – the U.S. Constitution or international treaties.
In Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957), the Supreme Court ruled that constitutional guarantees cannot be abolished by either treaty or statute, stating: “no agreement with a foreign nation can confer power on Congress, or on any other branch of Government, which is free from the restraints of the Constitution.”
So when there is a conflict between the Constitution and a treaty, the Constitution prevails.
See also:
It would be a strange situation indeed if it were otherwise. Congress could ratify a treaty with, say, Saudi Arabia that required the US to abolish trial by jury, to install Bush as the President for Life, and forbid women to drive cars. It sure would be a great way to do an end run around that pesky ol’ Constitution, though!
Why, no, now that you ask.
I’d kinda like GeeDubya to go nationwide with an address to the people and give his soon-to-be-famous “I really screwed the pooch this time!” speech. It could reflect the famous words of another foreign policy visionary :“I will not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination of my party…” An act of seppuku, while tempting, is probably too extreme.
Colin Powell recreates his UN jeremiad, but this time annotated, carefully detailing how little of his presentation bore even the remotest resembalance to fact. He might end up with a heartfelt homily to the youth of the world, a cautionary tale of integrity undermined by ambition.
Then a pony.
Thanks for caring!
New Iskander:
I object to the way you sneaked “Bush (Satan)” into your question; I don’t equate Bush with Satan, even though I admit that as time has gone on I’ve become less and less willing to give him (Bush) the benefit of the doubt.
In answer to your question, had the use of force been authorized by the majority of the UNSC, then yes, I would be much more inclined to consider the action legitimate. There are even ways around that; the support of a majority of the General Assembly in a vote, for example, might have helped legitimize the use of force should the SC decision be blocked by the veto of a single permanent member.
Of course, in addition to the above, legitimacy would also be based on there being some truth/substance to the accusations leveled against Iraq regarding it’s “threat to world peace.” Were those accusation as feeble as the ones leveled by the neocons, I would still have trouble supporting the invasion, even if for some reason the majority of the SC/UN was behind it.
If the invasion had broad international support, and was explicitly justified on the basis of Iraq’s human rights violations, I would also probably have supported it. But this brings up a delicate issue: how much leeway does the international community have to intervene in the internal affairs of a state? Many of the states in the General Assembly, and even on the SC, have human rights records as bad, or nearly as bad, as Iraq under the Hussein regime. The international system is based on the concept of sovereignty, and though it’s a deeply flawed system in many ways, I don’t know how one might go about improving it.
Then it’s all about Bush & Powell humiliation for you and the issue of legality secondary to that, isn’t it?
Not even secondary. First, it was wrong. Second, it was stupid. Third and last, it was illegal. If it were stupid, wrong, and legal than would be a sprinkling of sugar on a spoonful of cyanide.
That concept went by the wayside when NATO invaded Serbia and took over Kosovo province (to prevent Serbo-Albanian war, presumably).
Well, so much for that.
How about if he just recreates his own spontaneous, honest reaction to first reading the UN script he was given by the White House.
Ladies and gentlemen of the United Nations:
I’m not reading this. This is bullshit!
Am I right to discern a glimmer of hope there? Could it be that someday we can debate such mature old-fart issues as right and wrong, wise and stupid, and in global context? Could we leave lies and truths to high school students, and leave legal and illegal to lawyers? Bah, humbug…
Gee, Is, do you think you could be just a little more condescending? I’m not sure the quote above really communicates fully the intellectual and moral heights from which you look down up us “tiny liberals,” yet.
Well, I share your hope that that really was his reaction. But he went and delivered the speech anyway. Perhaps he felt he had to in order to preserve what little hold reality had on the administration, or perhaps he got caught up in the cycle of self-delusion that the rest of them did. But he’s not talking, and until he does, he’s not entitled to the benefit of any doubt, either.
Very good point. No one here can invoke Powell as being “on my side and not really in favor in the war, since we all know what he really thought.” It’s an intersting theory, but has no basis in fact. Bush led the charge for this war, but he had plenty of co-conspirators, if you will. Not only Powell, but many prominent Democrats (including all the serious presidential candidates in Congress and HRC herself) as well as Tony Blair.
I watched much of Powell’s speach in front of the UNSC, and was thoroughly underwhelmed. The evidence for weapons was thin, at best, although it did seem pretty clear that S.H. was giving the UN Inspectors the run-around. Anyone who voted for the war did so based on their own evalutation of the evidence. “Bush made me do it” doesn’t cut it.
I still have this little fantasy where Colin Powell tends his resignation from the Bush Cabinet in January 2004, then comes out with a tell-all book about the inner workings of the Bush Administration in July 2004. Chapter titles would include “Yes, we lied about Iraqi WMDs,” “What Bush needed to learn from Bill Clinton,” and “Secrets of the 2000 election hijack revealed.”
Of course, he’d instantly be on the hit-list of every Republican zealot out there, but he’d make so much money from the book deal that he could move to a private island in the Carribean and live the rest of his life in luxury. 
rjung: An interesting hypothetical. If it were to come true, of whom would have the lower opinion: Bush or Powell? From my side it would be Powell. Bush, presumubly, had some reason for invading Iraq but felt he needed to lie about it in order to ensure he could actually procede with the invasion. Powell would have gone along with something he thought was morally reprehensible for the sole purpose, it would seem, of preserving his own position of power.
Interesting that you would mention the post-World War II trials. You may recall that they also held a bunch of them in Nuremburg. The Nazi officers held for trial there tried to mount a defense based on the idea that they were only following orders, ie that they were only obeying the law. This defense was definitively rejected, thus establishing the principle that, in at least some instances, it is unnacceptable to ignore a higher moral principle in favor of merely “obeying the law”.
Whether or not the invasion of Iraq was truly in obedience to a higher moral principle can of course be debated (or more likely, given where I am posting this, dismissed with a sneer), but simply asserting, or even proving, that the war was illegal ought not to be the end of debate about the war itself.