I mean he hovered an AV-8B for like 30 minutes in downtown Miami and fired a Sidewinder with a terrorist attached through a high rise to take down a helo... so shoulder firing a SA-6 or SA-9 shouldn't be beyond the realm...?
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War in Israel
- Thread starter Mirage
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Our justification for Iraq in 1990 was rule of law... Our justification in 2003 was that we don't have to give a shit about rule of law and will do what we want. Like so many other times in our history.
We will see how much our gov cares about Israel following the rule of law. My money is on quite a few blind eyes being turned and a lot of double standards being applied. I doubt Israel will be taking many prisoners, and I doubt we will be trying to send many Israelis to the Hague.
Was WMDs, which we went to great lengths to convince the keepers of the rules based order were present in Iraq.
The UN did not bless our invasion, nor is there an "international law" that says a country can invade another because they don't like the capabilities they think the might have. Not to mention, we were wrong about them having nukes.
Hindsight is always 20/20. That was a combination of Iraqi dissidents bullshitting the Bush administration so we would put them in power, the Bush administration’s wishful thinking, Iraqi WMD scientists bullshitting Saddam to save their necks, and Saddam’s wishful thinking about his WMD program.
None of that affects my point in any way. My point is that we don't obey international law when said laws get in the way of an act we consider necessary, just like every other country (and Israel currently). Our invasion of Iraq would have been "illegal" per international law even if they had WMDs.
One thing, but unto itself, that the UN didn't support the invasion I wouldn't say means much.
UNSCR 1441, while not explicitly calling for an invasion, provided ample legitimacy for our actions there. We did not claim they had nukes, per se. That was never the argument. The claim was that broad chem, bio and nuclear research programs had been reconstituted, contrary to previous UNSCRs. All of this to say, that our entire legal approach to hostilities in that region was based upon about a dozen UNSCRs. Article 51 of the UN charter, provides a basis for self defense if a member nation is under threat of imminent attack. Whether this includes preemptive action based on an assessment of capabilities and intent, remains a matter of debate.
Let me be very clear…WMDs and tools used produced WMDs were found. Thousands of chemical shells and aircraft bombs were found, uranium “yellowcake” (known to exist but thought to have been shipped out of the country) was found, even a mobile chemical lab was found. Also there was the discovery of payments to the families of suicide bombers outside Iraq and massed graves far larger than anything ever found in the Balkans. Far too many people decided that since we didn’t find Fat Man or Little Boy in Saddam’s closet the entire war was illegitimate…just ignorant.
Dude, you've found the holy grail of international relations. The US also acts hypocritically in its own interests. Your Navy Achievement Medal will be sent in the mail.
Weird, I read through it and saw nothing that hinted at saying the US could invade. I did find that we signed off on that saying that we were "Reaffirming the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq". So, we promised to not impede their territorial integrity, and then invaded them, and that's your proof that it was "legal"?
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic because you believe it's obvious that we act hypocritically, or if you think that we don't. Unfortunately, the stereotype of Americans thinking our shit don't stink or being completely unwilling to view ourselves from an impartial perspective is far too accurate... which is what started us down this tangent.
Because it's absolutely obvious and I don't understand why you keep harping on this as though everyone (or nearly everyone) in the US military doesn't understand this. And yes, quite often our hypocrisy leads to getting what we want in the short term but causes long-term damage and distrust.
But ya know what? Next time Lung stands up at some dumb security forum in Singapore reading words about the "rules-based international order," everyone will applaud although we've shown time and time again that we don't apply the same standard to Israel. NATO will send weapons to Ukraine talking about the inviolability of territorial integrity while the US supports Israel's conquest of the West and Gaza. You know why? At the core, it's because the US is a more generous occupier/patron than China or Russia.
Big boys and girls understand that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must (Melian dialogue)--and we (the US) don't make the weak suffer very much. So Germany and Slovenia and Poland and the Philippines and S. Korea, etc...they want us to be in the driver's seat. Hell, we pummeled Vietnam for 15 years and they still would prefer us to China.
So yes, there's hypocrisy. But it's a bit less often and a bit less severe than the other guys, and much of the time we actually do some approximation of the "right" thing. If you needed the validation that the US is at times hypocritical, yep, you got it.
That's a bit disingenuous. We weren't looking for a nuclear bomb, but the things we did eventually find (that you've noted) weren't evidence of an active program. At the end of the day, what the Bush admin claimed was there wasn't. That's just not debatable.
Yes, that's exactly what I said in my own post.
Not really. We were indeed looking for evidence of an active WMD program and we found a small amount to support that. But at the same time we found significant evidence that while the Saddam government wasn’t actively developing programs they also weren’t in compliance with the U.N. sanctions. Moreover, that wasn’t my full point (and I used nuclear weapons as a bit of snark). What is disingenuous is professional military officers supporting the myth that we found “nothing.” I fully recognize you didn’t state as much, but others here have.
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