This post brought to you after the deletion of my first post. I decided to scrap my first effort and start from scratch. There are a couple points I want to make.
First, I don't believe that President Bush's actions would ever earn him a conviction as a war criminal in any court, ICC or otherwise. This is not to say I condone any of his stances or beliefs, but after examining the generally slippery definition of "war crimes," it seems to me that the term "war criminal" (and any prosecution that might arise from it) is reserved almost entirely for those men and women who perpetrate nothing less than systematic genocide against another people. The international community, in the rare cases that it does launch a military intervention, almost always waits for evidence of such persistent persecution before doing so.
This does not settle the issue of whether or not George Bush is a war criminal on some absolute moral level, but I do not believe he would be found as such in any court of law. I'd like to draw one additional points from the "war crime" question.
You state: Getting Bush on trial is going to be a task for the American people alone. As an American, I'd like to note that I would be categorically, absolutely, and entirely against any attempt to bring Bush to trial, not because I believe his actions were right or just, but because the last thing I want to see my nation do is spend the next four years dissecting the actions, beliefs, and motivations of the President who spent the previous eight years running the country. There are far bigger fish to fry, and far more important matters to attend to. Even if I believed that allowing Bush to go free constituted some type of fundamental sin, I believe it would be a far greater sin to focus on Bush at the cost of paying attention to the innumerable environmental, political, and social issues that badly need attending to. Bush's actions will inevitably be debated as certain policies are hopefully rolled back, but the debate over Bush, the man, should be kept to a minimum.
Finally, I'd like to note that condemning the invasion of Iraq as "illegal" as never made much sense to me. I won't go into this in great detail, because my views on the topic are fairly straightforward. I consider nations (the democratic ones, at least) to be the ultimate repositories of political power. International organizations (including the UN), are bodies that nations form to conduct business, negotiate treaties, etc. While these are useful structures, membership within them is voluntary, and the international body cannot, in my opinion, claim any true authority over member nations. This is a fine hair to split, so let me try to make it clear.
Any organization, international or otherwise, is free to set rules that an applicant country must agree to obey if they wish to join. It therefore follows that an international organization is free to penalize a member, should that member break one or more rules. In such cases, however, the nation is free to withdraw from the international organization and its judgement. As an individual, I cannot settle a dispute with the federal government simply by withdrawing from the country and renouncing my American citizenship. Nations, however, are free to remove themselves from any organization whose rules they no longer wish to be bound by. This fact, in my opinion, makes the "illegal" argument rather silly.
no subject
First, I don't believe that President Bush's actions would ever earn him a conviction as a war criminal in any court, ICC or otherwise. This is not to say I condone any of his stances or beliefs, but after examining the generally slippery definition of "war crimes," it seems to me that the term "war criminal" (and any prosecution that might arise from it) is reserved almost entirely for those men and women who perpetrate nothing less than systematic genocide against another people. The international community, in the rare cases that it does launch a military intervention, almost always waits for evidence of such persistent persecution before doing so.
This does not settle the issue of whether or not George Bush is a war criminal on some absolute moral level, but I do not believe he would be found as such in any court of law. I'd like to draw one additional points from the "war crime" question.
You state: Getting Bush on trial is going to be a task for the American people alone. As an American, I'd like to note that I would be categorically, absolutely, and entirely against any attempt to bring
Bush to trial, not because I believe his actions were right or just, but because the last thing I want to see my nation do is spend the next four years dissecting the actions, beliefs, and motivations of the President who spent the previous eight years running the country. There are far bigger fish to fry, and far more important matters to attend to. Even if I believed that allowing Bush to go free constituted some type of fundamental sin, I believe it would be a far greater sin to focus on Bush at the cost of paying attention to the innumerable environmental, political, and social issues that badly need attending to. Bush's actions will inevitably be debated as certain policies are hopefully rolled back, but the debate over Bush, the man, should be kept to a minimum.
Finally, I'd like to note that condemning the invasion of Iraq as "illegal" as never made much sense to me. I won't go into this in great detail, because my views on the topic are fairly straightforward. I consider nations (the democratic ones, at least) to be the ultimate repositories of political power. International organizations (including the UN), are bodies that nations form to conduct business, negotiate treaties, etc. While these are useful structures, membership within them is voluntary, and the international body cannot, in my opinion, claim any true authority over member nations. This is a fine hair to split, so let me try to make it clear.
Any organization, international or otherwise, is free to set rules that an applicant country must agree to obey if they wish to join. It therefore follows that an international organization is free to penalize a member, should that member break one or more rules. In such cases, however, the nation is free to withdraw from the international organization and its judgement. As an individual, I cannot settle a dispute with the federal government simply by withdrawing from the country and renouncing my American citizenship. Nations, however, are free to remove themselves from any organization whose rules they no longer wish to be bound by. This fact, in my opinion, makes the "illegal" argument rather silly.