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Us Invasion of Iraq

In: Other Topics

Submitted By cchitty
Words 4378
Pages 18
Prof. Weeramantry contends that the present hostilities are illegal under international law. It is curious that the one issue which never fails to be brought up in discussions about the US decision to attack Iraq is the question of legality and “international law”. Those who raise it contend that under “international law” the US did not have the “right” to attack Iraq because it had not satisfied the requirements of the law for doing so. The implication is that any discussions of potential danger Iraq represents to us are moot because it is illegal for us to do anything about it anyway.

The fact that Iraq's military and security services have been used to ethnically cleanse whole areas of Iraq does not seem to matter either.

When ethnic cleansing was at its height in Bosnia the same critics pointed out that the United States is signatory to a variety of conventions relating to human rights, national sovereignty, and cases of genocide that required it to intervene in force as a matter of “international law”.

Many who favored an attack tend to ignore the whole issue of international law, or directly claim that there isn't any such thing. I like many others do not believe in it, nor do I believe in an International Criminal Court.

What is law? It is the rules that a society sets and enforces on its members. What is its purpose? What should it accomplish? Ah! Therein lies the proverbial rub. There has been no consensus in history on that. Different societies in different places and times have had radically different opinions about that. Sometimes the purpose of the law is to enforce religious dicta. Sometimes the primary purpose of the law is to keep the current rulers in power. The question of who makes the law, how they decide what law to make, what the law should perform, and how it should be enforced is the largest and most important question in

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