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Originally Posted by loquitur
I found it. And the article wasn't by Fred Kagan, it's by Edward Luttwack. He has a few things to say, but what I was focussing on was this sentence: "It is not hard to defeat Arab countries, but it is mostly useless. Violence can work to destroy dangerous weapons but not to induce desired changes in behavior." BTW, he views diplomacy and concessions as equally delusional. His solution is to stop thinking so much about the Middle East: buy their oil (they have no other economy for most intents and purposes, so they HAVE to sell to us) and let them deal with their own problems.
Here is the name and link: The Middle of Nowhere by Edward Luttwak, Prospect Magazine, May 2007
Host, I don't get into the details on a lot of this stuff because for the most part it involves two people talking past each other. I wrote a blog post on methods of discourse and analysis, and the limitations of logic, that you might find interesting - it's here. Logic ain't all it's cracked up to be, at least outside mathematics...... |
Thank you, loquitur, I'll take a look at your blog post and the Edward Luttwack piece.
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Originally Posted by loquitur
actually, willravel, without going through the rigmarole of the legalisms, arguably it wasn't necessary to get UN approval because the 1991 resolutions that suspended the war already authorized the use of force for noncompliance. That doesn't tell you anything about whether the politics dictated a new resolution, or the optics, or whether getting another resolution was a good idea. I can think of good arguments either way.......
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I found <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/search.php?searchid=854098">14 posts</a> that I've done since october that contain references to and quotes from Ben Ferencz. Loquitur, you are probably familiar with Ferencz's opinion of UN Res. 1441 and what it authorizes the US to do...as well as his overall opinion of the legality of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq:
This is from my <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpost.php?p=2237692&postcount=7">next to latest post</a> on the subject:
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http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/38604/
.....Interviewed from his home in New York, Ferencz laid out a simple summary of the case:
"The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United States formulated by the United States in fact, after World War II. Its says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the permission of the U.N. Security Council. They can use force in connection with self-defense, but a country can't use force in anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council resolution essentially said, 'Look, send the weapons inspectors out to Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they've found -- then we'll figure out what we're going to do. The U.S. was impatient, and decided to invade Iraq -- which was all pre-arranged of course. So, the United States went to war, in violation of the charter."
It's that simple. Ferencz called the invasion a "clear breach of law," and dismissed the Bush administration's legal defense that previous U.N. Security Council resolutions dating back to the first Gulf War justified an invasion in 2003.
Ferencz notes that the first Bush president believed that the United States didn't have a U.N. mandate to go into Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein; that authorization was simply to eject Hussein from Kuwait. Ferencz asked, "So how do we get authorization more than a decade later to finish the job? The arguments made to defend this are not persuasive."
Writing for the United Kingdom's Guardian, shortly before the 2003 invasion, international law expert Mark Littman echoed Ferencz: "The threatened war against Iraq will be a breach of the United Nations Charter and hence of international law unless it is authorized by a new and unambiguous resolution of the Security Council. The Charter is clear. No such war is permitted unless it is in self-defense or authorized by the Security Council.".....
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In my latest post, I shared this illuminating UK reporting on the behind the scenes process that the UK cabinet engaged in to achieve a needed legal opinion concerning Res. 1441:
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http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...92&postcount=7
http://foisa.blogspot.com/2005_04_01_archive.html
http://www.channel4.com/news/article...cuments/107545
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Attorney General's Advice Published: Full text of leaked document
Channel 4 has obtained a copy of the summary of the Attorney General's advice that was presented to Tony Blair on 7 March 2003, two weeks before the invasion of Iraq.
* Update - 28 April 2005: full 13-page text of legal advice - 693kb (pdf)
The summary extract reads as follows:
EXTRACT FROM MINUTE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
TO THE BRITISH PRIME MINISTER, 7 MARCH 2003
"Summary
26. To sum up, the language of resolution 1441 leaves the position unclear and the statements made on adoption of the resolution suggest that there were differences of view within the Council as to the legal effect of the resolution. Arguments can be made on both sides. A key question is whether there is in truth a need for an assessment of whether Iraq's conduct constitutes a failure to take the final opportunity or has constituted a failure fully to cooperate within the meaning of OP4 such that the basis of the cease-fire is destroyed. If an assessment is needed of that situation, it would be for the Council to make it. A narrow textual reading of the resolution suggests that sort of assessment is not needed, because the Council has predetermined the issue. Public statements, on the other hand, say otherwise.
27. In these circumstances, I remain of the opinion that the safest legal course would be to secure the adoption of a further resolution to authorise the use of force. [...] The key point is that it should establish that the Council has concluded that Iraq has failed to take the final opportunity offered by resolution 1441, as in the draft which has already been tabled......
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1474337,00.html
Iraq, the secret US visit, and an angry military chief
The legality of the Iraq war exploded on to the agenda last week, causing chaos to Labour strategy. Here we reveal the key US officials who persuaded Britain that invasion was legal - and the astonishing reaction from our military chiefs
Antony Barnett, Gaby Hinsliff and Martin Bright
Sunday May 1, 2005
........ The US connection
On the sixth floor of the State Department in Foggy Bottom sits the recently vacated office of William Taft IV. Despite the peculiarity of his name, few in Britain will have heard of him or his distinguished Republican pedigree.
Yet The Observer can reveal that this great-grandson of a former Republican president played a critical role in persuading Goldsmith's that the war against Iraq was legal. Taft was one of five powerful lawyers in the Bush administration who met the Attorney General in Washington in February 2003 to push their view that a second UN resolution was superfluous.
Goldsmith, who had been expressing doubts about the legality of any proposed war, was sent to Washington by the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, to 'put some steel in his spine', as one official has said.....
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I don't understand how you can entertain the idea, loquitur, that Res. 1441 provided the US with authority to invade Iraq unilaterally.
I have posted, a number of times....that US and UK warplanes had been heavily bombing Iraqi targets for at least 5 months before march, 2003 invasion, including targets outside the northern and southern "no fly" zones. Certainly the bombing of areas of Iraq outside of the "no fly zones" was illegal aggression, yet it was still not enough to satisfy those who wanted to invade Iraq.
If you examine some of the 1600 letters Gertrude Bell wrote from Iraq in the late teens and early 1920's, it seems obvious that democracy in Iraq is an ill conceived notion in such an artifically assembled nation of 3 historically adversarial groups, sunni, shi'a and kurds, within borders abutting much larger adversarial regional military powers (Iran and Turkey.)
I've traded stock and options, some years as a full time sole proprietor, since 1998. I've learned that logic is often an impediment to success....much smarter people than I predict the reactions of logical traders, and they crush them by squeezing whatever position that "logic" dictates one should take. "Squeezing the shorts" or flushing out the long stock positions of those who are at work druing market hours, setting "stops" on their positions to trigger automatic sell transactions, before taking the stock back up in price, is SOP....a game for the deep pocketed "hedgies".
That is the game that they play, and they are very good at it.....but this isn't a game. It's premeditated, elective war. It's a life or death matter, and logic needs to play a role in decision making, as well as consensus from the Secrataries of defense, state, and the director of central intelligence.