delete
The UN(SC), by means of a resolution and the power of it’s member states, enforces international law. Perhaps the ICC or ICJ does qualify, too. Further international law is codified, at least in parts, here: un.org/law/lindex.htm
And if you still insist there isn’t such a thing then why did your former president mention it:
[quote]“To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us, and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero. It would have taken us way beyond the imprimatur of the international law bestowed by the resolutions of the Security Council, assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator, and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerrilla war.”
-George H. W. Bush[/quote]
I guess Bush jr. has still something to learn:
[quote]“International law? I better call my lawyer. I don’t know what you’re talking about, about international law.”
- George W. Bush[/quote]
:help:
quoting bush to support your point, rascal? scandalous. 
first of all, an un-elected government known to engage in human rights abuses has veto power over anything the un(sc) does. yes, that gives international law so much legitimacy.
as for enforcement, please list 5 instances of the un forcibly enforcing international law without total reliance on the us military. 5 examples in 50 years of existence shouldn’t be hard, right?
Apparently Bremer hasn’t gotten the official word yet that there’s no such thing as international law:
"U.S. Officials Fashion Legal Basis to Keep Force in Iraq
By JOHN F. BURNS and THOM SHANKER
AGHDAD, Iraq, March 25
Well, never had much of an issue with the senior. 
First the argument is there is not international law. Then the argument is that i.l. is never enforced without the US - I really don’t see how the latter would possibly show there isn’t any international law!? :s
Needless to say the US is member of the UN/UNSC and thus part of the enforcement.
so international law is pretty much whatever the us feels like enforcing. 
i’ll accept that answer.
The recent assassination of Sheik Saruman raises among some Americans the question
Good post Fred. Excellent.
Fred,
You’re advocating nothing less than the elimination of the modern arab culture. 
[quote=“Shin-Gua”]Fred,
You’re advocating nothing less than the elimination of the modern Arab culture. [/quote]
"modern Arab culture. Now there’s a concept.
And speaking of “modern Arab culture”…
Falluja descends into barbarism
A crowd of cheering Iraqis dragged the charred and mutilated bodies of four contractors working for the US-led coalition, including a woman and one American man, through the streets of Falluja yesterday after they died in an ambush.
Television pictures showed one incinerated body being kicked and stamped on by a member of the jubilant crowd, while others dragged a blackened body down the road by its feet. TV footage showed one American passport near a body and a US Department of Defense identification card belonging to another man.
As one body lay burning on the ground, an Iraqi came and doused it with gasoline, sending flames soaring.
At least two bodies were tied to cars and pulled through the streets, witnesses said.
“This is the fate of all Americans who come to Falluja,” said Mohammad Nafik, one of the crowd surrounding the bodies.
Some body parts were pulled off and left hanging from a telephone cable, while two incinerated bodies were later strung from a bridge and left dangling there.
As the victims lay burning, a crowd of around 150 men chanted “Long live Islam” and Allahu Akbar (“God is Greatest”) while flashing victory signs.
taipeitimes.com/News/front/a … 2003116190
Hmmm most disturbing Blueface:
Since America is going to be blamed for everything anyway, I suppose it would not hurt to use a little Saddam Hussein style tough love on Fallujah. We could just surround it with tanks and bomb it into the Stone Age, killing every last man, woman and child to solve this problem once and for all. We must ask ourselves… What would Saddam do? Perhaps gas the remains? Send in the rape squads first? Capture everyone and run them through a wood chipper? What would Saddam do? And how can we blame the Americans for it?
http://www.deoxy.org/wc/warcrime.htm
The choice now is between escalating the cycle of incineration and death until we morph into little Saddam Husseins with self-righteous visions of genocide – or finding our way back to some kind of sanity.
First of all Spook:
My comments were made with supreme irony. We should look at the action in Iraq as one similar to policing. Do the police stop fighting criminals to keep the violence from escalating? Perhaps when dealing with gangs but they do not stop fighting. Look at the problems in LA that still exist with gangs. This is what we have to deal with in Fallujah and what the new government will have to deal with as well. The former rulers of Iraq who benefited from the uneven distribution of the spoils are not ready to admit that they are not in the driver’s seat any more. We will have to convince them to think differently gently if possible, stringently if necessary.
Fred,
Maybe the ultimate irony though is that you weren’t entirely kidding – and maybe the real solution to the problem of ending attacks on Americans is to stop occupying their countries and their lands and stop repeatedly trying to install puppet governments over them.
Could be. You should at least consider it.
[quote=“blueface666”]And speaking of “modern Arab culture”…
Falluja descends into barbarism
A crowd of cheering Iraqis dragged the charred and mutilated bodies of four contractors working for the US-led coalition, including a woman and one American man, through the streets of Falluja yesterday after they died in an ambush.
Television pictures showed one incinerated body being kicked and stamped on by a member of the jubilant crowd, while others dragged a blackened body down the road by its feet. TV footage showed one American passport near a body and a US Department of Defense identification card belonging to another man.
As one body lay burning on the ground, an Iraqi came and doused it with gasoline, sending flames soaring.
At least two bodies were tied to cars and pulled through the streets, witnesses said.
“This is the fate of all Americans who come to Falluja,” said Mohammad Nafik, one of the crowd surrounding the bodies.
Some body parts were pulled off and left hanging from a telephone cable, while two incinerated bodies were later strung from a bridge and left dangling there.
As the victims lay burning, a crowd of around 150 men chanted “Long live Islam” and Allahu Akbar (“God is Greatest”) while flashing victory signs.…[/quote]
Speaking even further of culture - or the lack thereof: the American wing of the Likud party (Douglas Feith, Michael Rubin, David Schenker, Michael Makovsky, other members of the Bush administration).
You gotta love 'em.
Likudniks the world over seem to share the same tin ear for intercultural “dialogue” (Feith* is simply deaf to intracultural dialogue, at least within American political culture), or so it would seem.
[quote=“Juan Cole”]Deaths of Americans in Fallujah: In revenge for Sharon’s Murder of Sheikh Yassin?
There is increasing evidence that the brutal attack on the American security guards in Fallujah, and the desecration of their bodies, was the work of Islamists seeking vengeance for the Israeli murder of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Leaflets found at the scene said the operation was in the name of Yassin. al-Hayat reports in its Friday edition that responsibility for the attack has been taken by a group called Phalanges of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. The group said the deaths were a “gift to the Palestinian people.”
You put yourself in the shoes of an American military commander in Fallujah. He treats with the local clan leaders and Sunni clergy. He tries to get them on the side of the US. He faces hostility, but he is making some progress. And then Ariel Sharon sends US-made helicopter gunships to Gaza and has them fire missiles at people coming out of a mosque, killing 8 and wounding 24. One of the dead is a half-blind paraplegic Islamist named Sheikh Yassin. He could have easily been arrested, and had been in the 1990s. But he was incinerated in a piece of state terror instead. And all of a sudden the people of Fallujah in Iraq are pointing their fingers at the American troops and saying, ‘you did this. You gave Sharon the green light.’ And all the commander’s hard work in building bridges collapses over night. And four US security personnel are dead, and 5 US troops are dead, and the fighting flares up. [color=red]Thanks, Prime Minister Sharon. Thank you very much.[/color]
juancole.com/2004_04_01_juan … 2260193265[/quote]
*- The “F” in F and Z (the link is to www.fandz.com) is Feith, of course, although he’s no longer practicing law privately.
Gee Spook:
You’re right. We should never have installed that government in Germany, or the one in Japan, or the one in South Korea or aided the ones in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, Taiwan, etc. Much better to leave them alone to continue as tinpot dictatorships that do not support human rights. Gotcha.
And for all the talk about the US support of the shah, look what came after. For all the talk about the US action in Vietnam, look what came after. For all the talk about the US actions in Latin America (Cuba, Nicaragua) look what came after. Yup gotcha. I think I will stick with the US intervening and removing dictators and restoring order.
By the way, did you support any of the following pet causes with the Left?
Haiti
Kosovo
Bosnia
Just curious as to how those would be different. I mean Slobodan Milosevic was in no way a threat to his neighbors nor was he threatening anyone with wmds, yet pre-emptive action was taken against him with the FULL support of Europe and the Left. No? Or did I miss something here? Please mindless lefties try I know it is difficult to have some consistency. Perhaps you could take classes like I don’t know Logic 101 or Moral Consistency: Why it Makes me a more sensible person? Something like that?
Fred,
There’s a difference between invading and occupying countries that have attacked you versus invading and occupying countries that haven’t attacked you.
There’s also a difference between facilitating the people of a defeated country in choosing and setting up their own freely chosen government versus rigging the process to set up a puppet government which really doesn’t represent the will of the people.
Fanatics throughout time haven’t been able to tell the difference and fanatics – of both left and right – are the perennial problem.
I support any action in which the U.S. acts in true self-defense. I also support any action in which the U.S. truly helps any people throw off oppression and dictatorship in order to establish their own free, just, democratic government.
Consequently I would have supported any honest, targeted action to have removed Saddam Hussein and help the people of Iraq establish a freely chosen, representative government in its place.
I won’t support an action though based on bogus claims of self-defense, indiscriminantly destructive, by a biased party with no credibility in the eyes of the majority of Muslim people, with an ulterior aim to manipulate and control the establishment of government in Iraq.
This pretty much describes the Soviet Union’s invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Israel’s invasion and occupation of Iraq via its proxy, the U.S.
Aside from being wrong, it’s also stupid and destined to failure.
Spook:
You hand wringers have been wrong about everything except not finding wmds. Iraq is getting a constitution, Iraq’s economy is going to grow 35 percent to 40 percent this year. The security situation is bad because of terrorists and insurgents not US actions and MOST Iraqis want the US to stay and help because it is a small minority that is bent on messing things up. Terrorism is also present where the US is not active. So damned if you do, damned if you do not.
How do you know that the US government is held in low esteem in Muslim nations? Given the political oppression and certainly control in most of these nations, just how would you find that out? I have traveled repeatedly in the Arab World and I don’t see that. In fact, I would challenge you to head to the most oppressed country of all today: Iran and see how much low esteem you find for Americans there. Or in Syria for that matter. Don’t believe everything you read Spook. You know given the Jewish domination of the media, it is all a conspiracy. A Zionist plot to control you and your fate. Get off the Jews already. This has very little to do with Israel and everything to do with fighting terrorism post911 (but did you know spook that the Jews all got a call not to go to work that day…)