Posted on 07/25/2005 9:03:15 PM PDT by CHARLITE
International law is not a suicide pact. Fashioned to ensure the survival of states in a world still lacking global government, these binding rules emphasize the right of national self-defense. This right may be exercised not only after an attack has already been suffered, but also in advance, if the defensive first strike can meet certain essential conditions.
Consider Iran. President Bush has assuredly authorized the Pentagon to prepare plans for the pre-emptive destruction of that country's developing nuclear installations. Leaving aside the difficult tactical side of such an operation, a prior question arises: Would this particular pre-emption be permissible under international law? Although similar legal questions have been raised about the current war in Iraq, a defensive first-strike against Iran would have far narrower strategic goals. Here, with no obvious humanitarian intention of regime change, America's only verifiable target objectives would be specific nuclear industries and infrastructures.
Pre-emption, of course, is already a codified part of Mr. Bush's military doctrine. Operation Iraqi Freedom is rooted conceptually in "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America" (Sept. 20, 2002), a document which recognizes explicitly the customary right of "anticipatory self-defense" under international law and which expands this right under American legal practice. But what do we really know about anticipatory self-defense? International law has multiple authoritative sources, including international custom.
There can never be any stable balance of terror in the Middle East. Functioning under certain Islamic leadership elites, Iran could conceivably consider using its nuclear weapons against "infidels" despite the reasoned expectation of massive nuclear retaliations. In such cases, deterrence would be immobilized and Iran could even become a suicide-bomber writ large -- a state willing to "die" to achieve certain presumed religious obligations.
Let President Bush take heed.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Forget Iran for now... nail Saudi Arabia first.
WE ALL AGREE!
Too late for a 1st strike, by about 26 years.
This is the part I totally disagree with.
Any attack on the nuclear infrastructure of Iran would also have to decapitate the leadership and Islamic government to be effective.
This is the humanitarian, regime changing aspect.
I keep wondering why we didn't go to Iran BEFORE Iraq.
Bush quoted bin Laden by referring to WWIII--the islamic agression against our western nations and cultures.
The big question is when it is openly stated and recognized that islam has started a BIG war?
Tancredo may be something of a fringe character, but his remarks brought things into the open and mainstream discussions.
Interesting turn of words. If we had Global Government, by the very definition, all States would have been destroyed, along with mankinds freedom. Global Government has been the wet dream of Mao, Stalin, Hitler and every other tin pot dictator for all time, and is the very thing warned about in the Bible for thousands of years as the tool of the Anti-Christ.
Disagree. Iran is the viper's pit opened by Jimmy Carter's stupidity, the root of evil and terrorism in the mid-east, and the kingmaker pulling the strings that have killed many Americans these past 3 decades... including our Marines in the Beirut tragedy.
I say we hit the tree trunk, chop it down... the branches cannot survive on their own afterwards.
in a word, "strategery".
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