Assad is a war criminal, but an attack will do nothing for the people of Syria

[rug]

The west needs to concentrate on formally criminalising the Assad regime and turning its members into international pariahs

Nabila Ramdani
Saturday 31 August 2013 13.15 EDT

Infant corpses pulverised by military ordnance have always been part and parcel of total war. You seldom saw the photographs, but there were plenty – especially of boys and girls whose lives were ended by second world war aerial bombing. Many died in the London Blitz, while thousands more children across Europe perished during Allied raids leading up to the defeat of the Nazis.

It has been the same in almost every other post-war conflict, and especially the Iran-Iraq war. On 16 March 1988, Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons to wipe out 5,000 civilians, many of them infants, in just one day. The gruesome pictures from Halabja, in southern Kurdistan, had only limited impact, however. They certainly did little to rally international opposition to a dictator who was to remain in power for a full 15 years after the atrocity.

The difference nowadays is that horrifying images showing the extremes of industrial conflict are readily available in an instant. Almost exactly a year ago, I was provided with scores from the besieged Syrian city of Houla, including one of a four-month-old baby girl whose throat had been cut by militiamen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. A week ago my contacts in the country, where I used to spend a great deal of time, sent me almost contemporaneous video film of children dying from the effects of nerve agents. Even the most sanitised were considered unpublishable to a wider audience.

David Cameron rightly referred to such footage in the House of Commons last week. He correctly pointed to it highlighting the absolute barbarity of the Assad regime, and its willingness to resort to near-genocide to maintain its grip on power. Like Saddam before him, Assad has proved himself to be the most evil kind of dictator – one who believes that the excruciatingly painful deaths of his own people are somehow justified because they enable him to remain in charge.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/31/syria-assad-war-criminal

[dkf]

1. Exactly. This is why we have the ICC.

[mike_c]

2. a unilateral attack would itself be a war crime....

Bombing for peace is like, well..., you know the rest I'm sure.

[arely staircase]

3. that makes no sense

I am not advocating involvement but simplistic pacifist bumper sticker slogans are unenlightening at best.

[mike_c]

6. I'll clarify....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_aggression

A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense, usually for territorial gain and subjugation. The phrase is distinctly modern and diametrically opposed to the prior legal international standard of "might makes right", under the medieval and pre-historic beliefs of right of conquest. Since the Korean War of the early 1950s, waging such a war of aggression is a crime under the customary international law.

(snip)

The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, which followed World War II, called the waging of aggressive war "essentially an evil thing...to initiate a war of aggression...is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."[2] Article 39 of the United Nations Charter provides that the UN Security Council shall determine the existence of any act of aggression and "shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security".

The Convention for the Definition of Aggression

(snip)

The convention defined an act of aggression as follows:

Declaration of war upon another State.
Invasion by its armed forces, with or without a declaration of war, of the territory of another State.
Attack by its land, naval or air forces, with or without a declaration of war, on the territory, vessels or aircraft of another State.
Naval blockade of the coasts or ports of another State.
Provision of support to armed bands formed in its territory which have invaded the territory of another State, or refusal, notwithstanding the request of the invaded State, to take, in its own territory, all the measures in its power to deprive those bands of all assistance or protection.

Emphasis added. Does this help?

[arely staircase]

8. much better

though recognizing th rebels as the government of Syria would get you around the "notwithstanding the request of the invaded state." and airstrikes technically aren't an invasion anyway. sorry if my post was kind of dickish. I'm not advocating US intervention. I just have never bought the whole fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity slogan. Sometimes certain kinds of violence do indeed bring ongoing violence to an end. If I thought the US the wherewithall to do that in Syria I would be for it.

[arely staircase]

4. this whole thing has been the hardest recent event for me to form decision on

when I see the picture of those kids I literally cry. I can't look at them anymore. They look just like the kids I teach every day. I could kill the people who did that with my bare hands.

[gulliver]

5. Is there a quote from a Syrian in there?

Not seeing it. If I were a Syrian who fit the profile of the attacked civilians, I would feel a lot better.

[GeorgeGist]

7. Why not a drone strike on Assad?

Is it morally obscene?
Is it illegal?
Is it bad form to target heads of state instead of the people?

[L0oniX]

9. We don't go after war criminals anymore. n/t