International Law

When, in 1979, the revolutionary Islamic regime in Iran took hostage the entire staff of the American Embassy in Tehran, it was a violation of a precept of international û- "the sanctity of the harald" û- that could be traced back to the dawn of recorded history. The United States government brought this gross violation of international law before the World Court, got a favorable ruling, and called for sanctions. These actions had no effect, and the hostages were held until Khomeini either grew tired of humiliating outgoing President Jimmy Carter, or feared what Ronald Reagan (whose bark was laud and whose bite was yet untested) might do in response.

A few years later, the shoe was on the other foot. The U.S. covertly mined harbors in Nicaragua, a nation whose government we recognized and with which we were formally at peace. This time, it was the Nicaraguans who protested under international law and took their case to the World Court. The Reagan administration's haughty response was to deny that the

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orm, he did so with a high public approval rating. There hasn't been a president in office since Vietnam, who would want to relive the Johnson, Nixon era with a high public disapproval against a full-scale war. We all learned from the Vietnam War, and no president would want to repeat the disgrace of leaving a war without a victory, with tremendous loss of life, and with the mistrust of the administration by the American public, as was the outcome of the Vietnam War. The Persian Gulf War illustrates how public opinion influences the enforcement of international law by the Super powers. President Bush knew that the American public would only support Desert Storm if it was a short war, with little loss of life to our soldiers, and most of all, if we came out victoriously. The war had to be seen publicly and presented by the administration as a 'fair and just war,' with a clear villain, and without pictures of innocent children and civilians being killed in crossfire, as occurred in Vietnam. And as a 'fair and just war' other countries needed to send their men to fight along side ours as a unitied front against a power-hungry dictator, who changed the balance of power by invading Kuwait. This picture of war the majority of Am
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Approximate Word count = 3035
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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