I am absolutely sick to death of hearing bleating appeals to “International Law” as if such a thing actually existed at all. You’ll hear – we’re already hearing – that our war for the liberation of Iraq is “illegal” that it is contrary to “international law” and that possibly we should be punished as war criminals for waging an aggressive war against another sovereign state.
Bollocks.
There is no such thing as “international law.” What’s more, there is no such thing as law at all without an understanding that it is to be obeyed and some fellow nearby willing to enforce it. We know this from our own founding. We were to be a nation of laws and not of men. Take the responsibility for rules away from fickle leaders and codify those rules into law. Now, set up an executive branch whose primary responsibility is to enforce those laws, combine that with a population that creates its own laws through its elected representatives and hey presto! You’ve got a peck of people willing to obey the law and a fellow with a damned big stick willing to enforce same.
How does this apply to the international arena? It doesn’t. Not even a little bit. There might be some things we can all agree on. Generally speaking Western Judeo-Christian civilization doesn’t think too highly of torture, etc. Hence, the Geneva convention which a goodly part of the world isn’t a party to. How about strictures against aggressive war. Well, we’ve got the UN but since nobody elected them and even the appointed members are seldom from nations with representative bodies leading them why should anyone in the world have any stake in the UN’s pronouncements of “law?” They shouldn’t. What’s more, the UN has absolutely no mechanism for enforcing its “laws” and so it falls to the hyperdynamopower supercop US of A to stand up for the flim-flam of contracts comprising “international law.”
Don’t be fooled. The only law is that which is moral and can be enforced. Do you mean to tell me that demanding the elimination of a tyrant who routinely kills his own people, has started two offensive wars and has attempted to assasinate former heads of state is illegal or immoral? Well then, piss on you.
We’re the world’s cop. Like it or not. Thankfully we’ve got a President who understands this and, despite his hamfisted good intentions of working within the community of thieves and liars know as the international community, is willing to go along in the end and get the job done.