The Guardian does offer marvelous spin.

Perle says that "international law stood in the way of doing the right thing" and Burkeman and Borger thus conclude that Perle admits the invasion was illegal, that it was against the law.

Sorry fellas, but there's another way to interpret it. Though they're so used to seeing things their way, I doubt they'd notice.

Barry is right, of course, but that was still pretty sloppy of Perle. Try substituting "constitutional law" for international law and imagine how that would play.

True, but he did say "international law." (And how is that amended? Moreover, did it even require amending in this particular case?)

For it is not as though the US (with its international allies) did not attempt to gain international approval for deposing a regime whose own respect for and allegiance to international law was non-existent, a regime that moreover hid behind the shield of "international law" (and the UN) for protection.

Such that it is not difficult to visualize Saddam as reasoning that the US could never attack him; after all, to do so would be "against international law," and grace a France, without the approval of the UN.

So just why might anyone writing for the Guardian deploy arguments used by Saddam and his apologists?

International law and international approval are not the same thing. Nor is international law what European academics and NGO's pronounce it to be. And it certainly isn't whatever the UN spouts on a given day.

At least, I would like to think so. Maybe this ship has sailed too.

Peter --

I think this ship is still in the harbor, as most people in the US couldn't care less about international law if it doesn't let us do what we want. Of course, if the administration can tie Iraq to AQ, then, presto, the war becomes unquestionably legal.

David:

AQ?

I remember my dry and dusty legal heart skipping an excited beat when I heard the President refer to "rogue states". I thought it might be the first step in the reversal of the international legal madness that started with the Kellog-Briand Pact. Hey, let an old man dream, ok?

Seriously, do you believe the GOP would win, lose or tie by arguing publically that international law is an adversary of the US. Short to medium term, I mean.

Al Qaida.

I think that for the American public international law is a complete irrelevancy. If you look at the things that animate the European left -- Kyoto, the ICC, the ABM treaty, Guantanomo, going to war in Iraq without one, last, final, we really mean it this time, UN resolution -- none of those are blips on the American electorate's radar screen. A small group of fringe lefties scream about them, to be sure, but that's only because it's Bush doing it. If Clinton were doing these things, and he might have done any of them (Kyoto, in particular, would never have been implemented by any US administration under any circumstances), you wouldn't hear a peep out of them.

Illegal?

Hmmm. Wasn't Rosa Parks sitting on that bus illegal? Wasn't the occupation of Columbia University illegal? Wern't and aren't numerous and repeated activities of so-called "activists" illegal? Isn't "justice" to be acheived by any means necessary, etc.?

Interesting arguments in favor of "law", coming from that crowd.

FYI, all:

I'm working on an anthology of essays on national sovereignty and these porecise issues--how international law threatens our capacity to govern ourselves and represents an attempt to endrun our democracy. If anyone can think of any essays that deal with such topics that are especially good, I'd greatly appreciate it if you forward them to me.

Thanks.

"Try substituting "constitutional law" for international law"

The difference that there is no such thing as international law:

Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan Chapter XIII

Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man. For war consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of time is to be considered in the nature of war, as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of rain, but in an inclination thereto of many days together: so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is peace.

* * *

But though there had never been any time wherein particular men were in a condition of war one against another, yet in all times kings and persons of sovereign authority, because of their independency, are in continual jealousies, and in the state and posture of gladiators, having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another; that is, their forts, garrisons, and guns upon the frontiers of their kingdoms, and continual spies upon their neighbours, which is a posture of war. But because they uphold thereby the industry of their subjects, there does not follow from it that misery which accompanies the liberty of particular men.

To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justice and injustice are none of the faculties neither of the body nor mind. If they were, they might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well as his senses and passions. They are qualities that relate to men in society, not in solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition that there be no propriety, no dominion, no mine and thine distinct; but only that to be every man's that he can get, and for so long as he can keep it. And thus much for the ill condition which man by mere nature is actually placed in; though with a possibility to come out of it, consisting partly in the passions, partly in his reason.

Why a quote from a spokeswoman for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament ?

In the first place, membership in such an organization automatically revokes one's status as an adult.