> So you don't buy the UN resolutions?
[From a talk by Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.]
"...the Bush administration went to the United Nations Security Counsel to get a resolution authorizing the use of military force and they failed ... what the Bush administration tried to do on September 12 was to get a resolution along the lines of what Bush Sr. got in the run-up to the Gulf War in November of 1990 ... a resolution from the Security Counsel authorizing member states to use "all necessary means" to expel Iraq from Kuwait. (They originally wanted language in there expressly authorizing the use of military force. The Chinese objected -- so they used the euphemism "All necessary means." But everyone knew what that meant.) If you take a look at the resolution of September 12 that language is not in there. There was no authority to use military force at all. They never got any.
"Having failed to do that the Bush administration then went to the United States Congress and using the emotions of the moment tried to ram through some authorization to go to war under the circumstances. We do not know exactly what their original proposal was ... it appears that they wanted a formal declaration of war along the lines of what President Roosevelt got on December 8, 1941 after Pearl Harbor. And Congress refused to give them that ... Instead, Congress gave President Bush Jr. what is called a War Powers Resolution Authorization. Under the War Powers Resolution of 1973 that was passed over President Nixon's veto ... and designed to prevent another Tonkin Gulf Resolution and another Vietnam war. ... This resolution, although it is not as bad as a formal declaration of war, is even worse than the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. It basically gives President Bush a blank check to use military force against any individual organization or state that he alleges ... was somehow involved in the attacks on September 11 or else sheltered, harbored, or assisted individuals involved in the attacks on September 11 ... pretty much to wage war against any state he wants to ... And it was then followed-up by Congress with a $40 billion appropriation as a down payment for waging this de facto war ... Again, let's compare and contrast this resolution with the one gotten by Bush Sr. in the Gulf Crisis. Bush Sr. got his security counsel resolution. He then took it to Congress for authorization under the War Powers Resolution and they gave him a very precise authorization to use military force for the purpose of carrying out the security counsel resolution -- that is only for the purpose of expelling Iraq from Kuwait...
"The new U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, sent a letter to the Security Counsel asserting ... that the United States reserves its right to use force in self-defense against any state that we feel is necessary in order to fight our war against international terrorism. So in other words, they failed ... to get formal authority from the Security Counsel and now the best they could do is fall back on another alleged right of self-defense as determined by themselves. ... is there any precedent for the position here being asserted by Negroponte that we are reserving the right to go to war in self-defense against a large number of other states as determined by ourselves? ... yes, there is one very unfortunate precedent. That's the Nuremberg Tribunal of 1946 where there the lawyers for the Nazi defendants took the position that they had reserved the right of self-defense under the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 ... the Nuremberg Tribunal rejected that argument and said [that] what is self-defense can only be determined by reference to international law. That has to be determined by an international tribunal. No state has a right to decide this for themselves.
"Clearly what is going on now in Afghanistan is not self-defense. Let's be honest. We all know it. At best this is reprisal, retaliation, vengeance, catharsis -- call it what you want -- it is not self-defense. And retaliation is never self-defense ... Since none of these justifications and pretexts hold up, as a matter of law, then, what the United States government today is doing against Afghanistan constitutes armed aggression. It is illegal..."