Wars & War Crimes
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surrounding events are recent, and were heavily covered in the Western press, including both the original assault on Kuwait and the later wartime Iraqi actions directed against Saudi Arabia and Israel. The beginning and conduct of the Iran Iraq war are also well reported.19 Both episodes are strikingly free of murky surroundings; there were no series of escalating incidents, no staged provocations, no "revolutions" or insurgencies promoted by the invading powers, to present complications of fact. They were in both cases straightforward, unabashed military invasions. There are questions of law that can be raised about these actions regarding, for example, the origin and legitimacy of the predominantly British drawn international baundaries in the region20 but hardly any at all about the facts of invasion. It is in the area of secondary and consequent offenses that the question of evidence becomes much more complicated. These offenses are, in general, crimes committed against individuals or groups by Iraqi military, security, or intelligence personnel. The historical basis of these offenses are the "recognized rules of land ware," often called the Holland rules after the compiler of a classic summation of them.21 These rules include limitations on the methods of war (e.g., the prohibition of certain types of munitions, such as chemical munitions); on the treatment of military prisoners of war; and on outrages committed _________
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The point of law raised by charges of genocide against Iraqis is that represents a form of outside interference in the internal affairs of Iraq. This is a return to the argument of sovereignty, which was made and rejected against all war crimes charges, including that of aggressive war and consequences stemming from aggressive war. In attacking Kuwait (or Iran), the more restricted sovereignty argument holds, Iraq was committing an act of aggressive war, which justified the coalition going to war to eject it. But no treatment, however bad, of Iraqi Kurds or Shiites would in itself constitute an act of aggressive war justifying a military response.
Here we come to the difficult point of the distinction between the law and the authority to enforce it. Genocide is an "offense against the peace and security of mankind," and legally punishable wherever it occurs.26 (Were Saddam so unwise as to enter the United States, for example, there would be no question of its right to hold him on these charges. But forcibly going to Baghdad to get him is a different matter. Setting right an internal abuse abroad is not generally regarded as a justification for going to war in part because it would furnish too convenient a pre
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Approximate Word count = 2856
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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