Why do you repeatedly confuse Bush's position with my position?
Actually I wasn't... I pointed out that your position was not that of the US - at least, of the current US leaders...
Do you think Saddam has committed crimes against humanity?
No. he's committed vile acts against certain humans in the country he rules. I don't term these 'crimes against humanity' as I think this term is over-used and generally applied to 'someone "we" hate'. They're not so resoundingly awful as to merit historical notice in ~100 years time, unlike the acts of Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot.
If you do, don't you think that the UN is the appropriate venue for action?
Partly. That's what the ICC was set up to do. HOwever, at the insistence of the US and USSR (as was) the UN should not and cannot interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign state, and nor does anyone else have the right to do so.
That's what international law says, and this is among the laws that Bush broke - using the (precisely) Hitlerian excuses of preventing future opposition, intervening on behalf of some group of citizens in the countries he invaded, and claiming the best of motives... no matter how specious they were.
If he's really so good-hearted, we'd see a lot more concern for intervention in Zimbabwe and Burma; two regimes far more malevolent in 2003 than Saddam, if less strategically positioned and with sadly less oil...
But I don't expect this, obviously. And, because of the precedent it sets, I'm reluctantly OK with that. I don't want to set a precedent for "preventitive intervention" in a few years time by India, in Pakistan: or China, in Japan... how about you? |
