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Aggression and the ICC

By jimstaro - Posted on 29 July 2010

The Chilcot Inquiry, Aggression and the International Criminal Court

29 July 2010 The 2003 U.S. led invasion of Iraq was a crime--a profound and catastrophic violation of international law.

The crime was aggression: the waging of unprovoked war on a sovereign state.

A growing international consensus says that not only was the invasion illegal, but in the future such crimes will result in direct and severe personal consequences for leaders who organize the killing and give the orders to start.

Two recent developments, in London and in Kampala, Uganda, highlight this movement away from impunity and towards personal responsibility for aggression--referred to in the judgement of the first Nuremberg trial in 1946 as “…the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

In London, the British inquiry into the Iraq war--the Chilcot inquiry--has produced powerful testimony from leading ex-government figures that Operation Iraqi Freedom was illegal. Continued

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They need to do the same with the war on Afghanistan

Submitted by mikecorbeil on Thu, 07/29/2010 - 7:50pm.

It always was and always will have been a criminally launched war that had no legal justifications whatsoever.

But people who believe that the ICC is going to do any good are people who understand awfully little about the real ICC, which is dominated by the imperialist west's leaders and elites. The ICC itself should be required to stand trial.

Anyone who knows about the real ICC would understand.

Another "but" matter is that the so-called British inquiry is apparently not a serious one; seeming to be more of a stage put-on to please or quiet (or distract?) the public. The following is a recent article illustrating this viewpoint.

"Hans Blix finds ‘no evidence’ of Iraq Inquiry"

posted by Ludicity, July 28, 2010

http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2010/07/28/hans-blix-finds-no-evidence-of-ira...

I got the headline from www.globalresearch.ca, which has oddly begun to post only article titles with links to only the home pages of the originating websites. GR oddly began to exclude article text.

And I'll excerpt a little from the article.

Former UN Weapons Inspector Dr Hans Blix says that following a visit to the UK he has found ‘no evidence’ that Britain is harbouring an inquiry into the Iraq War.

‘I have searched the length and breadth of the country,’ said Dr Blix ‘and I cannot find anything resembling an inquiry. I did stumble across a committee room with a few retired civil servants and historians sitting behind a desk, but nothing that might pose a serious threat to the British state.’

During this meeting Dr Blix said that he had asked the committee members to provide some tangible evidence that an inquiry was taking place. ‘Everyone was all very polite, they gave me tea and biscuits and we had a nice little chat,’ he said, ‘but throughout, I remained unconvinced that any of them were in possession of questions of mass destruction.’

Dr Blix added that his inspection had been continually obstructed by high levels of bureaucracy, red tape and secrecy. ‘So many of the key documents that might prove the existence of an inquiry are not being made public,’ he explained, ‘if they are up to anything then they must be doing it behind closed doors.’

The rest of the article is very short and good, as well as hilarious, in a [dark] way.

Submitted by mikecorbeil on Thu, 07/29/2010 - 9:44pm.

The article excerpted from by jimstaro, that is.

Only the United Nations Security Council can legally use or authorize armed force across borders (U.N. Charter Article 41) unless a country has been attacked or an attack is imminent (Article 51).

The U.N. Security Council did not authorize the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Neither the U.S. nor the U.K. had been attacked by Iraq. Neither was there anything remotely resembling an imminent threat of Iraqi armed attack on the U.S. or the U.K.

The very same thing is true about the war on Afghanistan.

The scoop.co.nz article then says:

"By the numbers the invasion was a monstrous crime, generating massive trauma."

Again, the very same thing is true about the war on Afghanistan.

Re. the ICC in Uganada, recently:

This perspective was dramatically affirmed recently at the International Criminal Court Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda. On June 11, the ICC reached agreement to amend the ICC Charter, subject to a vote in 2017, to include a definition of the crime of aggression.

Anyone who thinks that that is really good news is dreaming. It's more political bs.

The ICC is never going to indict or put on trial western leaders for war crimes or any other extreme crimes against humanity, so it's also going to let western elites get away with wars of aggression. Like the UNSC, the ICC is dominated by the west's imperialist leaders and elites, and we cannot have hope in the ICC developing real integrity with respect to law, justice, either; not until the UNSC is drastically reformed anyway.

If the ICC could be trusted with just law, then it would not postpone or delay this additional law until 2017. The change in or addition to the ICC's jurisdiction would be made effectively law immediately or certainly very soon.

The ICC supposedly had difficulty in deciding what constitutes war of aggression, yet all they had to do is to rely on the following.

Only the United Nations Security Council can legally use or authorize armed force across borders (U.N. Charter Article 41) unless a country has been attacked or an attack is imminent (Article 51).

If the UNSC refuses to authorize a war and conditions permitting legal use of Article 51 aren't present when a war is launched, then it is automatically a war of aggression. It's not the sole case in which a war of aggression could occur, for the UNSC potentially could authorize a war or recourse to war that would really be a war of aggression; but this is a hypothetical possibility. As far as I'm aware or recall, the UNSC has not authorized any wars of aggression; but maybe it has and I'm just not aware of it or not recalling any examples. It has criminally acted many times though.

The ICC has also acted criminally for the imperialist elites of the west plenty of times already and this won't change until the UNSC is drastically reformed, which is clearly (enough) not going to happen anytime soon.

The ICC is a western imperialists' court of their double-standard ways of law.

www.globalresearch.ca is not loading for me right now, but people who go to the author's index for Denis or Dennis Halliday or Haliday there will find a video for a presentation by him on the UNSC and it was posted I believe last January, maybe January 6th. He therein strongly speaks in critical terms about the reality that is the UNSC and also adds critique or criticism of the imperialists' ICC.

Neither of those "bodies of law" has improved since he gave that talk late last Fall, perhaps early December. The video was posted in January though.

Aggression and the ICC

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