Officer of Engineers

In terms of the UN Charter, the UNSC MUST state it so. This is the analogy. I don't care if the whole world saw you shot someone. Until a court of law says you're guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, you're innocent. That court of law for the Iraq War was and is the UNSC and they're not going to decide.

__________________
Chimo

Major Dad

WHO THE **** CARES?

Nobody, and I mean nobody pays the slightest attention to the UN, ICJ, or the ICC except when it suits their own purposes to do so. I see no reason why we should either.

__________________
The more I think about it, ol' Billy was right.
Lets kill all the lawyers, lets kill 'em tonight.
- The Eagles

Anon

Disinformation is worse than no information at all.

konkerer

Thanks for the link. FreeRepublic is not a good source, it caters to niche (Republican) market, kind of like Fox news, and thus not creditable.

Here is what you had written:

I'm not too smart on the UN, but I seem to recall that in meetings last year, a UN commission (it was one that was setup to recommend UN reforms in the wake of Iraq as well as the Oil for Food scandal) came to the conclusion that preemptive strikes were permissible and that the language correlated very close to the US-Iraq situation. Does anyone recall this and know the actual language used and how it would apply to Iraq in Mar 2003?


NOw if you read the first and the third links, it should become obvious to you that the main task of the committe was the lingering question of expansion of UN and not about premptive war.

I am sure you are aware that the committe recommended two models for UN expansions.

The comment about preemptive war is by no strech of imagination favorable to US.
If anything, it is quite negative towards US.

NOw only if you h ad taken the trouble to read my post with alittle bit more care, you woudn't have needed to post article 55.

My comment was article 55 or some such charter. You could have posted the right charter for everybody else to read and judge why war on Iraq was illegalsince it violated that particular charter.

I remembered to have read that by attacking Iraq US had violated 2 UN charters, one of them related to preemtive war.

When Kofi Annan said that war in Iraw was illegal he also based his argument on UN charters.

Bluesman

It is a legal precept that a law that is not enforced has no force in law.

So, either they enforce it, or it is NOT enforcable.

LEGAL.

__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell

Franco Lolan

Good point.

Shek

What about the other two links? Do they cater to the Republican market and are therefore not credible? You should research before you call something ficticious. You should also try expanding your horizon and realize that you should look at issues from both sides to ensure that you make an informed decision. While I am conservative, I can't stand straight ticket type politics. Positions like "Republicans are always wrong" and "Democrats are always wrong" are ignorant IMO. Now, in my book, statements like "Republicans are usually wrong" or "Democrats are usually wrong" are fine because it demonstrates that the person has actually done some analysis, however little, and not just accepted wholesale what they have been told/read/heard/etc.

Next, the main task was not expansion, but to deal with challenges to the UN based on today's environment according to these articles. Here's the lead in from the ultra-pro GW media source, the BBC:

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan says the United Nations must decide whether it should undergo radical changes to deal with the global threats of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and nuclear proliferation.

Here's the lead in to the CSN article:

A panel of prominent figures has recommended a range of reforms to reshape the United Nations for the way the world looks 60 years after the global body was established.

I'm not seeing that expansion was the main subject based on these two articles. Maybe you can provide a source that will show this, hopefully a little bit more solid than "this website had it, or some such website."

Also, the very fact that the committee tackled the pre-emptive strike issue and recommend amending the UN Charter demonstrates that as written, the UN Charter doesn't meet the needs of today. This proves that the US was right about bringing up the need for pre-emption as a casus bellus. Now, you can point out that their recommendation requires a Security Council resolution and therefore argue that while the US was right to bring up pre-emption but didn't meet the newly proposed standard, but that brings the argument back to Resolutions 678 and 687, something that lawyers get paid to argue about.

Next, so what if the main task of the committee was to expand the council and they developed two proposals. How does that pertain to this argument? Smoke and mirrors don't work here, most of us can see past them.

I did read your post, and my point obviously went straight over your head. The proper charter had been posted that can support your position. Read the thread, cut and paste the listed charters into Google, and gain knowledge. That's what I did, and I found your post to be lacking in factual correctness (1 out of 3, or a batting average of .333 - worth a major league contract in baseball but worthless in the academic arena except in earning a failing grade). Should I build your arguments for you? Don't throw a half-baked argument into the fray, aka "article 55 or some such charter."

smilingassassin

I like your neighbour.....

Sombra

Point is nobody can enforce anything against the US.

THe US permamently disabled the UN as respectable forum to handle conflicts.

Pity because even if if was mostly ineffective it was all that there was.

Legal, if you dared you could bring a case against the US sure.

Would you discuss with a bank robber while he has the pistol that he is a criminal?

But does this make bank robbery right? Aehmm better example the robber was taking the unjustly gathered money to give it to poor starving children.

Sure there are different legal views. Heck, even in a murder case there is always a defense lawyer mostly claiming his client is innocent etc.

The US simply does not recognise the authority of UNSC neither the interantional court in Den Haag. Nobody can force them.. Most countries simply will take the example to ignore the UN or if the US tires to do anything through the UN simply view it as another weapon of the US. IT is no longer regarded as impartial with any power to influence international behavior.

Shek

In an anarchic world, the best you can do is try to reach a consensus. Saddam had 17 resolutions passed against him by the UNSC (678, 686, 687, 688, 707, 715, 949, 1051, 1060, 1115, 1134, 1137, 1154, 1194, 1205, 1284, 1441 - over 1% of UNSC resolutions in nearly 60 years of existence are dedicated to a single man), and yet he continued to defy its resolutions. I believe the point that Bluesman was making is that if you don't enforce your own resolutions, then you delegitimize yourself. The oil for food scandal certaintly hasn't given the UN the moral high ground, either. Next, the ineffectiveness of the UNSC is nothing new - it was unable to pass a resolution authorizing force against North Korea when it invaded South Korea, which was clearly a violation of the UN Charter that doesn't require legal knowledge to understand.

Officer of Engineers

OF COURSE, THE US RECOGNIZE THE AUTHORITY OF THE UNSC, She's a VETO in that thing.

Sombra

THe US recognises the UNSC like they do with Ammnesty International when it suits them.

THe UN in its shape how it works today is uneffective. The best the US could have done is try to push for a reform of the workings of the UN. Unfortunatly the decided to discredit what was left of the reputation.

But the UN is not really the international law.


Once upon a time there was an american president with a dream .... (president Wilson?) about the building of an international body of nations.
I will see is as some kind justice that another american president decided to bury it.

Shek

Amnesty International is off the chart with comparing Gitmo to the gulag.

I agree that it is ineffective. If you pass a resolution, you should mean it. If you threaten force to ensure compliance, you should use force for compliance then. Proposed reforms have called for amending the charter to include pre-emption as a justifiable reason for force. How about electing Libya to chair the UN human rights commission? Oil for food. The UN has shot itself in the foot many times over.

Next, how would you explain Syria's compliance with the UNSCR 1559 calling for a full withdrawal? The US supported that in conjunction with France and now you don't have Syrian troops in Lebanon, a requirement from the 1990 peace treaty they signed. Maybe the presence of US troops next door along with a US president willing to use force along with French support on this issue? Shouldn't you blame, I mean credit, the US for that?

Correct - a dream. Then he came home from Versailles and had his own Senate vote down the League of Nations and Versailles Treaty. Oops! At least the UN has proved to be slight more effective than the League of Nations.

Officer of Engineers

Name me one UNSCR that the US does not recognize.

rotorooter

IMO, in this whole "preemptive war against Iraq" fiasco, US has lost far more credibility than UN has.

It is going to take years if not decades for US to repair the damage it has done to its image in the international community.