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International law. The US itself pushed to establish aggressive war as a crime at the Nuremburg Trials. War is only allowed in two circumstances: * Self-defen

International law. The US itself pushed to establish aggressive war as a crime at the Nuremburg Trials. War is only allowed in two circumstances: * Self-defense against an imminent threat (for example, a pre-emptive strike against a clearly hostile army gathering on your border for an invasion). * With UN Security Council authorization. The US did not fight the Iraq War in self-defense. It was a war of choice on the other side of the world. The US specifically avoided asking for UNSC authorization, because it was aware that it would be denied.

eru 5y ago
Thanks. Yes, I thought of that possibility of International Laws, but left them out for simplicity. Keep in mind that the US did not declare their invasion of Iraq to be a war. I did a bit of Googling on the legality of the Iraq War. Not so much to figure out whether it was legal in some objective sense, but in what the various parties involved see as the legal underpinnings of their doings. See eg https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1097&context=ils https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
- DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
  > the US did not declare their invasion of Iraq to be a war. That's a purely domestic issue within US law. The full-scale invasion of another country constitutes "war" for the purposes of international law. The Iraq War is one of the clearest examples of an illegal war of aggression in modern times. The US faced no serious threat from Iraq. Even if one were to believe all the claims about WMD (which were made in bad faith), Iraq would still not be an imminent threat to the US. Defensive wars have to be in response to an imminent, concrete threat, like an enemy force massing on the border. The mere fact that a hostile country possesses weapons does not justify a pre-emptive strike. If it did, the ban on aggressive war would be meaningless. Of course, as is now known from leaked memos, the entire WMD issue was viewed by the Bush administration as a convenient pretext for invading Iraq.[0] Many people (myself included) already saw through the WMD propaganda back in 2002-2003, despite it being relentlessly hyped by major media (from the New York Times on down). I personally was surprised, however, by just how cynical the WMD claims of the Bush administration later turned out to be: for every claim they confidently made in public, they knew the evidence was thin to non-existent. If the invasion of Iraq - a non-defensive war, sold using a dishonest media campaign, waged without UNSC authorization by the world's most powerful country against a comparatively tiny country - isn't an illegal war of aggression, then nothing is. 0. Downing Street Memo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_memo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_memo

eru 5y ago

Thanks. Yes, I thought of that possibility of International Laws, but left them out for simplicity. Keep in mind that the US did not declare their invasion of Iraq to be a war. I did a bit of Googling on the legality of the Iraq War. Not so much to figure out whether it was legal in some objective sense, but in what the various parties involved see as the legal underpinnings of their doings. See eg https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1097&context=ils https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...

DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
> the US did not declare their invasion of Iraq to be a war. That's a purely domestic issue within US law. The full-scale invasion of another country constitutes "war" for the purposes of international law. The Iraq War is one of the clearest examples of an illegal war of aggression in modern times. The US faced no serious threat from Iraq. Even if one were to believe all the claims about WMD (which were made in bad faith), Iraq would still not be an imminent threat to the US. Defensive wars have to be in response to an imminent, concrete threat, like an enemy force massing on the border. The mere fact that a hostile country possesses weapons does not justify a pre-emptive strike. If it did, the ban on aggressive war would be meaningless. Of course, as is now known from leaked memos, the entire WMD issue was viewed by the Bush administration as a convenient pretext for invading Iraq.[0] Many people (myself included) already saw through the WMD propaganda back in 2002-2003, despite it being relentlessly hyped by major media (from the New York Times on down). I personally was surprised, however, by just how cynical the WMD claims of the Bush administration later turned out to be: for every claim they confidently made in public, they knew the evidence was thin to non-existent. If the invasion of Iraq - a non-defensive war, sold using a dishonest media campaign, waged without UNSC authorization by the world's most powerful country against a comparatively tiny country - isn't an illegal war of aggression, then nothing is. 0. Downing Street Memo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_memo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_memo