O Intermitente
(So long, farewell, auf weidersehen, good-bye)

quarta-feira, março 26, 2003

When it eventually emerges that the Iraqi people wanted this war, will the anti-war movement recant?

Confronted with the evidence of Iraqis' feelings, many of the anti-war critics will, I fear, change the subject. They will say that, whatever the Iraqi people desired, the damage to international law was too great. In offering this argument, they fail to acknowledge a key flaw with international law as it now stands. The foundations for the present system were built in 1945, when the greatest threat to human life and dignity was war between nations. Its structures are designed solely to prevent conflict between states and to secure peace in the international arena – and in this respect, they have been phenomenally successful.

What international law cannot do, however, is secure peace within nations. The governments of, say, Burma, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe may be judged "peaceful"under international law, while they are butchering and terrorising their populations. There is no peace for people living under tyranny. International law must be changed to allow democracies to act where there are reasonable grounds (as in Iraq) for believing that the people of a country wish it, and where the regime is systematically breaching human rights on a massive scale

Quod Erat Demonstrandum...
posted by Miguel Noronha 11:54 da manhã