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Originally Posted by aceventura3
You read too much into the basis of my opinion. We obviously approach the evalution of complicated issues differently. My principles are the basis for my views. I do tend to ignore or discount information that is inconsistent with my principles (I am not suggesting my principles are better or worse than anyone elses, mine are mine and yours are yours). So before I can understand you or for you to understand me we have to understand each others guiding principles. That is why I ask general questions about responsibility, justice, consequences, etc......
.....To understand my point of view you have to understand that those who hold power determine what is legal or illegal. Legality is a relative term. So based on my view in general terms it is not possible for the US to conduct an illegal war of aggression. You are correct, your facts won't change my mind. We are currently the world's leader, and we define what is legal or not. When people like Sadaam lead the world they will determine what is legal. In the meantime, anytime we respond militarily in my view I justify it as defending our power, defending our children's right to power in the future.....
....If you don't think you/we are in a constant fight for power, I don't know how to converse with you..
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Last I looked, "we" had defined what was "legal" and what was not.....
Quote:
http://www.roberthjackson.org/Man/theman2-6-12/
<b>....President Truman approved the Jackson report,</b> and Jackson entered into negotiations with European officials and devised the London Charter of August 8, 1945, which established the doctrinal underpinnings of Nuremberg, introducing the procedure and substance that was to govern the trials of the Nazi leaders.
Jackson drafted the original charges against the Nazis, outlining three categories of crimes for which the defeated Germans would be called to account. The first category included in the draft was the crime of aggressive war (Crimes Against Peace). Jackson considered this to be the most heinous international crime. He set as a priority that German aggression would be subject to prosecution, and he intended that the crime of aggression’s ambit be as broad as possible.
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In Jackson's own words...at the Nuremberg trials:
Quote:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/jack02.htm
Statement by Justice Jackson on War Trials Agreement; August 12, 1945
........We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy.
I therefore want to make clear to the American people that we have taken an important step forward in this instrument in fixing individual responsibility of war-mongering, among whatever peoples, as an international crime.....
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I guess that I didn't get the memo that revised the basis of the principle crime that "we" defined to legitimize the prosecution of the Nazi "aggressors".
Bush's "policies" have reduced the international reputation of the U.S. to that of a pariah, a "laughing stock", and the spectacle of being the sole Superpower that has lost it's ability to inspire or to lead. Your advocacy for policies that no long seperate "us" from "them" (the evil doers), seems to isolate "us" from our former allies, and encourage or reduce us to more war of aggression. In reducing "us", Bush has reduced himself, and the minimum standard of conduct for engaging with each other individually and in realtions among sovereign entities. What are we fighting to uphold? With the criteria of the new "ground rules" that Bushco launched, and you embrace, why even bother fighting, if there is nothing to "uphold"? How can there be any legitimacy for trying Milosevic or former general <a href="http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1921493,00.html">Ratko Mladic</a> for war crimes?
Weren't they simply making their own rules because they were more powerful than their former Muslim countrymen?