For my reasons for believing that it was against the spirit and letter of the law, listen to the
mock trial set up by the BBC, or at least to the court's judgement at the end.
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It defied the UN, which was obviously (to me) a bunch of bickering politicians, all looking at their own agendas, and all interested in maintaining the status-quo, which was not acceptable to the US.
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Erm, hello? Are you trying to say that the US is not a bunch of politicians trying to maintain the status-quo? Are you really saying that its wasn't "appectable to the US" so you can just trample over the obvious general will of the UN and its member states?
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The policeman: if the US is not the policeman, who is? The UN? They have shown themselves to be a policeman unable to deal with any criminals at all. They aren't the police either. Someone has to stand up and *do* something once in a while, because the UN certainly wasn't doing anything in this instance. Let's say there is *no* policeman at all, and we're all at the mercy of other countries, some of which are on our side, while others are not.
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No, lets not say that.
The UN Security Council (or those they appoint) are the policeman/sherif of the world. It is elected (with the exception of the permenant five) to act as sherif by the rest of the international community. It runs the international court (ICJ) and is the only organisation with the power to legitimately use state level force in conditions other than self defence.
And yes the five permenant members have the right to veto action. That safeguard is put in their to prevent conflict between the 'big five'. In fact since the mid-80s the US has used its veto more than any of them - and mostly over issues relating to the Middle East.
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I could explain the whole oil issue, with Iraq right in the middle of one of the most volatile regions on earth, on top of one of the largest stockpiles of essential resources in the world... But I'll just point at the millions of Iraqis that will now be able to lead their lives in the knowledge they won't be executed by Saddam's thugs; isn't that worth dying for? Are you so egotistical that you'd deny these people their freedom over technicalities? That line of reasoning would have prevented you from joining in the two world wars, and would have left the Korean people at the mercy of the communists... gee, thanks.
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This seems to say it all. The security threat was oil (or something similar), but the cover was humanitarian intervention. And that is precisely why we have the UN and the UN Charter. To prevent states using humanitarian intervention (which could be used as an excuse to go to war in dozens of states) as a cover for less acceptable motives (fuelling their SUVs).
BUT there *are* real humanitarion disasters in the world. So what do you do about those? Well, it is set out in the UN Charter: Any state can bring a case to the UN and then they will vote on whether it is a genuine case that deserves intervention or not. Then if it is, they will intervene. What you do not do is charge straight on in there, only to find that you are in the midst of a messy regime change that you don't have the mandate or skills to handle.
My line of reasoning would not have led to two world wars and the Communist take over of south Korea. In fact I might argue that
yours would. Why? Because the UN and its Charter were created
precisely to prevent another world war ever occuing again. Its guiding principle - the true spirit of the law, which the US broke - is that war is a disaster that must be averted at any cost and must only be waged (a) as a *very last* resort and (b) with the agreement of the international community (through the Security Council). The US seems to think that its military is so strong and its moral compass so true, that it can ignore the part about *very last resort* and make war and the threat of it, one of its main foreign policy tools.
And then we have Korea. Have you fogotten that intevention in Korea was done under a UN mandate and under the UN flag?
Now lets try and think of an Asian war that wasn't conducted under a UN flag. Hmm, Vietnam?