No, I really haven't forgotten.
In order to persuade the American people and the United States Senate to support a pre-emptive war against a country which wasn't even thinking about attacking us first, the justification was that Saddam, a state sponsor of terrorism but NOT Islamist terrorism, either had or was too close to having WMD that he could pass on to Islamist terrorists who would be eager to use them against us, say, e.g., nuking DC or putting Sarin in the NY subway system, and the potential consequences of that were too dire to wait, so we had to strike first. It was existential.
The justification was that Iraq was in material breach of UN resolutions because it was still pursuing nuclear, chemical and biological warfare programs, which turned out to be incorrect.
You're studying law, next time you're in the law library take a peek at some books on the laws of war. It's a violation of the laws of war to attack another country that's just sitting there, not even thinking about attacking your country first.
Falls under the category of "unjust war".
Nothing other than existential war on behalf of ourselves or others can support a first strike. If the other country had already been the aggressor against another country, then a different set of rules apply.
There were lots of good reasons for wishing Saddam dead or gone, but none of them within the laws of war.
And we are, of course, a nation of laws. "Rules not men" as the saying goes. |
