Annan says Iraq war illegal

[fromtheright]

I NEVER thought I would find myself agreeing with KenH against Joe Botwinick. I am generally skeptical of international institutions, mostly because they're rooted in part of the liberal worldview which is internationalism, and their hostility to nationalism and its perceived obstacle to human perfection. Somehow, nation-states are deviations from their Rousseau-ian state of nature but international bodies are not, probably due to their misguided fawning over the "brotherhood of man".

However, nation-states because they are guided by evil men, should govern themselves in their conduct toward each other according to mutually agreeable standards of proper conduct. I do agree that the Geneva Convention, and to some extent the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (though the latter is idealism rooted in an acceptance of statism, and its concepts of rights are rooted in humanism) provide a reference point by which civilized countries can hold, not only themselves accountable, but also uncivilized nations (the transnationalism of terrorism presents a complication that I believe can be overcome, and largely is by the present structure).

It would be easy to say that because we are a moral country our conduct should guide that of that of the rest of the world. There is much in that that appeals to me, but I think it is a prideful approach. It is obvious that the rest of the world looks up to our standards, however much they decry our success, but evil leaders and nations should be judged by standards of behavior that are widely held. No, widely held doesn't make them right, but we can know that they are widely held because they are right. If those standards deteriorate so will the consensus, I believe.

 

[Pennsylvania Jim]

Originally posted by church mouse guy:
All of that is beside the point. The point is that the UN Secretary General, the Communist Party and the Constitution Party all three denouce the war in Iraq as illegal.

Birds of a feather flock together.

Here's another one:

Neither Adolph Hitler, Nero, Judas, Idi Amin, Pennsylvania JIm, or Church Mouse Guy desire(d) to die from a brain tumor. We must be "peas in a pod", as they say.

 

[Pennsylvania Jim]

BTW, Church Mouse, another fallacy in your original point is that you lumped Peroutka together with Annan inthir opinions of the war...

But Annan was talking about "international law" (the UN) and Peroutka was talking about US law.

Once again, you man Bush is far more in line with the UN than is Peroutka, who thinks we should kick them out.

 

[church mouse guy]

No, all three groups are extreme and all three groups hold far-out opinions. Peroutka would have to hold his fire against his helpers if he ever got more than one-tenth of one percent of the votes (98,000).

There is no way that you can consider Peroutka's opinion as respectable. The President has the right to wage war and the Congress has the right to declare war and both are independent of each other. Peroutka is supported in his opinion that the war in Iraq is illegal--actually it is just one front in the global war on Islamic terrorism--supported by only the UN Secretary General and the Communist Party USA.

Your analogy about brain tumor does not work because all rational people do not wish brain tumor. However, most rational people believe that the war in Irag is legal by both US law and by international law, whatever international law may be. The reasoning behind the final point in all three cases may be different but the final point in all three cases is the same. Peroutka is guilty of holding an extreme left-wing position even though he may have reached that position by far-out right-wing logic.

Constitution Party members, wake up! Only the Communists and the UN agree with you!

 

[Pennsylvania Jim]

Wow, a powerful argument...anyone who disagrees with you is simply irrational, and their opinion is not respectable. You are a deep thinker, CMG...brilliant.

 

[church mouse guy]

You like personal attacks more than you like debating the issues, which makes debate with you tedious. One can judge the Constitution Party by their fruits, one of which is an illogical platform that says that the war in Iraq is illegal, as do Annan and the Communists.

 

[Pennsylvania Jim]

Yeah, sure. You equate CP members with Communists, then accuse me of personal attacks. Go down to Walmart and pick up a mirror.

 

[Daisy]

Originally posted by church mouse guy:
However, most rational people believe that the war in Irag is legal by both US law and by international law, whatever international law may be.

By US law, yes. This is the first one in a long while where Congressional approval was sought ahead of the fact.

But as for international law? Most people in the US & UK, perhaps (fewer & fewer & fewer), but not most rational people and, I doubt, not most people in the world (which includes, after all, France, Germany, Scandanavia, South American and the Mid East).

What is the sentiment in Australia these days?

 

[JGrubbs]

Originally posted by church mouse guy:
You like personal attacks more than you like debating the issues, which makes debate with you tedious...

For a second there I thought you were talking to yourself. You have a very strang logic, to try to say that the Constitution Party, that calls for kicking the U.N. out of the country, and the U.N. are "birds of a feather". You seem to forget that there are also some Republicans and Democrats in Congress who voted against the war that agree with Micahel Peroutka as well.

It was President Bush who signed the bill that gave more of your tax dollars to the U.N., and it is President Bush who is requesting even more of your tax dollars to pay for a standing U.N. Army in Africa.

 

[church mouse guy]

Originally posted by Pennsylvania Jim:
Yeah, sure. You equate CP members with Communists, then accuse me of personal attacks. Go down to Walmart and pick up a mirror.

What are you saying? The Communists, the UN Secretary General Annan, and Michael Anthony Peroutka all say that the war against terror in Iraq is illegal. This is a serious charge and the members of the Constitution Party should wake up and realize where their wild accusations against the USA have led them politically. The Constitution Party is a far-out rightist party with some of the same ideas as hard-hearted leftists. Since the Communists are wrong on this issue, so are Annan and Peroutka, who say the same thing--unless someone here on the Baptist Board thinks that the Communists are Godly on this point and that Annan is Godly on this point, to put it in the theological terms that the Constitution Party uses as a shield as though this were a religious doctrinal debate instead of a political issue.

 

[church mouse guy]

Originally posted by JGrubbs:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by church mouse guy:
You like personal attacks more than you like debating the issues, which makes debate with you tedious...

For a second there I thought you were talking to yourself. You have a very strang logic, to try to say that the Constitution Party, that calls for kicking the U.N. out of the country, and the U.N. are "birds of a feather". You seem to forget that there are also some Republicans and Democrats in Congress who voted against the war that agree with Micahel Peroutka as well.

It was President Bush who signed the bill that gave more of your tax dollars to the U.N., and it is President Bush who is requesting even more of your tax dollars to pay for a standing U.N. Army in Africa. </font>[/QUOTE]Let's talk sense to the American people. To have voted against the war is not the same thing as saying that the war is illegal. Most of the people who go so far as to say that the war is illegal are the street people who demonstrated against the Republicans during the GOP convention in New York City. That a war is illegal has historically been a charge of the hard-hearted leftists. Now the left has been joined by the isolationists on the far right.

As far as I know the three main groups that call the war illegal are the UN, the Communists, and the Constitution Party. To that we could add the unorganized, unbathed street people that demonstrate for the Democrats.

 

[The Galatian]

I think Bush made a serious mistake justifying the war "because of UN resolutions."

Even partially basing our foreign policy at the direction of others is a mistake. It's apparent that he was not sincere about that, and just using it as a pretext, but it still creates a precedent.

We should attack countries that pose an immediate and serious threat to us. Those that don't need to be handled in other ways.

 

[church mouse guy]

Originally posted by Daisy:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by church mouse guy:
However, most rational people believe that the war in Irag is legal by both US law and by international law, whatever international law may be.

By US law, yes. This is the first one in a long while where Congressional approval was sought ahead of the fact.

But as for international law? Most people in the US & UK, perhaps (fewer & fewer & fewer), but not most rational people and, I doubt, not most people in the world (which includes, after all, France, Germany, Scandanavia, South American and the Mid East).

What is the sentiment in Australia these days? </font>[/QUOTE]Daisy, you make an important point that all Democrats and Republicans agree upon when you write, "By US law, yes. This is the first one in a long while where Congressional approval was sought ahead of the fact."! That is exactly the point that divides the highway from the gutters on either side of the highway!

 

[Pennsylvania Jim]

Daisy, I would disagree that both sides agree that the war was legal from the perspective of US law.

I understand that from your rather leftist perspective, that may be your opinion, and the same goes for Church Mouse. But those who have not given up on conservative values, it looks otherwise.

 

[Daisy]

Australian PM John Howard stands firmly with the US & UK.

Indolink
Earlier, US allies including the UK, Australia and Poland also said the war was backed by international law.
&lt;snip&gt;

Authorities in the UK, Australia, Poland, Bulgaria and Japan also rebuffed Annan's claims.
&lt;snip&gt;
Japan's top government spokesman, Hiroyuki Hosoda, told a news conference that he would be seeking clarification about the exact significance of Annan's words.

New Zealand has a small force of reconstruction engineers & workers, but they haven't been able to do much lately because of the insurgency. New Zealand is going to pull its force out of Iraq and concentrate on Afghanistan (who?).

In other parts of the world:

Barbados Daily Nation
OUR CARIBBEAN: Annan’s feared word on Iraq
- Friday 17, September-2004
by RICKEY SINGH

Annan, the world’s pre-eminent diplomat, used a word that the President of the United States of America and allies such as the Prime Ministers of Britain (Tony Blair) and Australia (John Howard), certainly did not ever wish to hear from him in public in relation to the war unleashed on Iraq in March, 2003 – “illegal”..

&lt;snip&gt;

For those who may have forgotten, the United Nations Security Council had approved resolution 1441 on November 8, 2002, warning the Saddam Hussein regime of “serious consequences” if it failed to comply with demands over its suspected weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme.

In the thinking of the United Nations Secretary General, it was, therefore, necessary for a second resolution to be approved to determine the nature of the precise response, once failure to comply was established. The world has since come to learn that the war brought no discovery of WMDs, nor was the Saddam Hussein regime involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Annan said in his BBC interview: “I have indicated that the Iraq war was not in conformity with the United Nations Charter. From our point of view, from the Charter point of view, it was illegal.”

This was a diplomatic bombshell since it was the first time that the United Nations Secretary General had been so precise in deeming the war “illegal”, having previously declared that it was wrong for the United Nations Security Council to have been ignored in preference for a pre-emptive strike on Iraq. The military invasion was not in conformity with the United Nations Charter.

&lt;snip&gt;

To their credit, CARICOM leaders had made clear their own position at least five weeks before the war on Iraq. They had warned, in a joint statement, of the consequences for international peace and security in “the use of military force against Iraq without the endorsement of the United Nations Security Council and in the absence of a final conclusion by the United Nations weapons inspectors that Iraq is in material breach of Security Council resolution 1441”.

Deutsche Welle
European Press Review: Annan's Remarks on Iraq

&lt;snip&gt;

The UN Secretary General, who has a reputation for being cautious, came out to say he thinks it unlikely elections will be held in Iraq in January as planned, which the Spanish paper, El Pais called very unsurprising. The abduction of two Americans and a Briton in one of Baghdad’s affluent quarters, the previous kidnapping of around 100 foreigners, including two Italian aid workers and two French journalists, along with a rise in violence confirm that skepticism is justified, the paper wrote.


&lt;snip&gt;
Annan's comment put the future of the United Nations at risk, the Danish paper Jyllands Posten in Arhus criticized. Opening up the debate at this point in time was reckless and would be like pouring fuel on an already raging fire in Iraq, the paper argued.

&lt;snip&gt;
The Austrian paper Die Presse in Vienna, painted a graphic picture of the current situation in Iraq. Death, bloodshed, pain, loss, mourning and tears are part of the everyday life for those in the towns of Mosul, Baghdad or Fallujah, the paper pointed out. Not a day passes in Iraq without a new kidnapping, beheading, civilian causalities and attacks against insurgents. It's a far cry from the peaceful Iraq the US government promised a year and half ago, instead there are rebel insurgencies and an increase of violence the paper concluded.

France declined to comment, saying its position was well know and hasn't changed. China, also opposed, also declined to comment formally.

 

[Pennsylvania Jim]

Let's have a little fun with "Mouse logic".

GW Bush, Ted Kenedy, and Karl Marx agree that the national government should take a bigger role in education.

Therefore, all Republicans and Democrats are Marxists.


Arlen Specter, Hillary Clinton, and Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, all think that Planned Parenthood should be funded to provide abortions. Margaret Sanger was a leader in the "Eugenics" movement, upon which Nazi racist policies were based, and spoke of using abortion to limit the black race.

Therefore, the GOP, the Democrat party, and the German Nazi Party of 1940 all think that people should be killed or live based on their race.

WOW!!! Church Mouse Guy, the possibilities are endless. You may be on to something here.

BTW, CMG...do you agree, along with Satanists, that minus ten degrees is cold enough to need a coat?

 

[church mouse guy]

It is your logic which is stale and you have used that logic before.

My reference is to three specific groups that all have the same major point. In your examples, you have chosen three people. That was your debate with brain tumor a few posts ago. There is no debate that brain tumor is bad so there is no guilt by association on that issue.

Therefore you have posted an illogical position. What you cannot amend are the facts of where these groups stand against the USA. Your efforts are wasted because everyone knows that politics makes strange bedfellows. The strange bedfellows in this case are Annan, Peroutka, and the Communist Party. All three have launched an attack against the USA.

 

[Pennsylvania Jim]

Yeah, sure, CMG. I hope you get better soon.

 

[church mouse guy]

Sarcasm is the weapon of the weak. You can skip the insincerity--I already know how you are. Your motto is never give anyone the benefit of the doubt. Anyone who disagrees with you politically should be thrown out of your church.

If Annan has made an anti-American statement, then the statements of Peroutka and the Communist Party are also anti-American because they all three have made the same statement.

 

[The Galatian]

Mouse, you should quit while you're only way behind. Jim's got you on that one.