Leaving Iraq, Self-Determination of Nations, Adventures!

[tcpip]

Australia is leaving Iraq, after costing 2.3 billion in public funds. A legal brief has been sent to the International Criminal Court claiming John Howard committed war crimes in authorising the invasion. Kevin Rudd's comments lend credibility to the claim, saying that the invasion was conducted "without a full and proper assessment". I am glad we are washing our hands of this tawdry affair. The invasion was without ethical or legal justification and the only reason a similar writ hasn't been served on George W. Bush is because the United States is a rogue nation in its failiure to join the International Criminal Court. Getting Bush on trial is going to be a task for the American people alone.

On a related matter I have recently ended up in a bit of a debate with my religious colleagues concerning the self-determination of the Tibetan people. In the last two issues of the Beacon they have published an article by Michael Parenti who rejects a utopian potrayal of Tibet as an independent regime. My criticism of the article (last page, second issue) is that none of this deals with the basic principle of self-determination of nationalities. The lengthy response by the editors utterly fails to address this basic matter. As a result of their failure, I've joined the Australia-Tibet Council.

Went to see the latest Indianna Jones film on Saturday. It's a significant step down from the eighties classics; not a disaster, but if I'd known beforehand what it was like I wouldn't have bothered to see it at the cinema. Gaming has been good with an excellent session of RuneQuest: River of Cradles (example story in lin) last Sunday (and with a new player, Sam) and with good developments in the two PBeM games that I'm running. I also have another RPG-related annoucement to make, but that's going to have to wait until the next post ;-)

Comments

[dputiger.livejournal.com]

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.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

OK, in response...

Basically I disagree with the suggestion that the actions of the Bush presidency should be ignored in favour of a forward-looking agenda, because I disagree that the two are mutually exclusive.

Secondly, all works between signatories of the UN Charter are "illegal" under the agreements of that charter. The only body which can legally authorise military force between inter-state disputes is the UN Security Council.

[dputiger.livejournal.com]

Since the Security Council's construction virtually guarantees a null vote save in cases of unanimous consent, I view such "laws" as trivial inconveniences at best, backed neither by practical enforcement nor moral judgment. (It would be one thing, if, for example, one could trust the permanent members of the Security Council to *only* intervene on moral/ethical grounds.)

To be fair, however, my view is not US-centric and applies equally to all countries. I am, in fact, a general fan of international community, coalition building, and the use of international fora to find alternative conflict resolutions that do not involve the use of force. I do not see these entities as exercising legitimate supra-legal authority over any nation in absolute terms, but I do not dismiss their improtance.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ahem. Typo is my previous comment.

"Secondly, all workswars between signatories of the UN Charter are "illegal" under the agreements of that charter."

Since the Security Council's construction virtually guarantees a null vote save in cases of unanimous consent

Not only do I consider that a good thing, I also reiterate that all signatories to the UN Charter are bound by their agreement to abide by this. To engage in an act of war against another state contrary to the approval of the UN Security council is a breach of international law and, in a natural law framework, a breach of contract.