h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Or is it?

The president and the politicians of this country (along with plenty of presenters such as Rush Limbaugh and his like) have consistently stated since 9/11 that America is a nation at war. President Bush has called himself 'a war predident'. TV news channels often use the tagline 'America at war'. But I want to know once and for all how does that statement stand with regard to US and international law?

Or is it just propaganda?

"President Bush has called himself 'a war predident'"

Sounds about in line with his literary skills.

Sorry. Serious forum. Carry on.

B

What is 'war'?

As I understand it, the U.S. constitution says that only Congress can 'Declare War'. Has the U.S. Congress done that?

According to the UN Charter, the use of armed force by a state against a sovereign state without an order from the UN Security Council, unless it is in defensive response to an attack by another state is not allowed. As a signatory to the UN Charter, the U.S. in invading Iraq is in violation of both international and domestic law if it can be demonstrated a) that there was no order from the security council or b) that Iraq did not attack the U.S. This says nothing about the period between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.

Didnt Bush declare the war over last year?

He probably called it the combat phase or somesuch. War could well be used in a vernacular sense here rather than an international law sense.

Apparently I beat, flog and use force on people around here

one love

I posted that last bit quickly because I've been having connection troubles. Now I'll try to continue.

I wouldn't think that anyone could argue that since U.S. soldiers set foot in Afghanistan the U.S. has been engaged in a de facto 'war'. The legal questions are very simple to frame, although the answers are not so easy. The U.S. has argued that the invasion of Iraq was authorised by a ten year old Security Council resolution. Since there is not much of a court to pass judgement on the intent of Security Council resolutions, I doubt that the International Law question will ever be finally decided in any sort of legally binding way (although International public opinion and the judgement of history will likely come to a consensus).

The question of U.S. legality, however, is mildly more clear: I honestly don't know if Congress has gotten around to 'declaring war' but it is easy enough for the Administration to fudge things by calling it a 'police action', 'enforcement', or some such euphemism and avoid the constitutional rule. And, of course, if news programmes trumpet 'America at War' it has no more legal implication than shouting 'America is the Great Satan'. And Bush calling himself a 'war President' is rhetoric, not a statement of legal role.

We all know, of course, that the U.S. is at war in reality (since the invasion of Afghanistan) but that doesn't mean that the U.S. is legally at war.

As for the period between 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan, I don't think anybody with any sort of legal sense would argue that 14 people acting fairly independently to commit an act which is indictable under ordinary domestic and international criminal law could be construed as constituting the opening act of a 'war' in the legal sense. While Gavrilo Princip's act in Sarajevo precipitated WW I, few would argue that the act itself immediately put Bosnia or Serbia or whoever at war with Austro-Hungary. If such acts by individuals acting independently of states were construed to constitute declarations of war, then the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City would constitute the beginning of a civil war.

"A war against terrorism".
When the right wing conservatives got power, they first didn't exactly
know what to do with it.
Osama came, and they created their "mission".

It's a Hollywood imitation of Churchill in the 2e World War, but it works to get re-elected this way.

The whole thing is a cover for the shady, conservative, goal (Chaney and Weinberger) of USA-World intervention, instead of world-dominance they already had (and ány country would be tempted to do likewise if it was that rich).

And now it is an excuse for any homeland problem.
But it is a comforting thought to realize that 49 % of it's voters
does NOT want this strategy, etc.


Greetings from Amsterdam.(which is more "conservative" than the outside world believes. But it's image attracts many tourists.
We get the tourists, Bush his voters.
We understand each other very well

It's not a war, it's a police action!

Then I wish the hell people (like President Bush) would stop saying "We're at war"

<>

Time magazine always calls him a "war-time President".

As I mentioned (in slightly more words), the present state of the U.S. is de facto war, but whether it is de lege war is still an open question.

He called himself a war president Apple, and sounded just a bit too proud of it. But not half as proud as he sounded when he announced that the US was about to embark on the first war of 21st Century...

Says it all really.

He's obviously very proud of his success in the 'war on terror' as well. Did you see this, Oojakapiv? http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11407689.htm

(I posted it already to my links page, but I'm not sure if you wander by there.)

I thought that was going to be a thread at the Forum, and then I forgot all about it Subscribed now

As you can see, it's a multitude of threads.

Oh, I've no doubt Bush is proud of it! It's IMO, what Baldrick would call a 'cunning plan'... after all, is it not true that *every* 'war-time President' has been re-elected?

I've been quite amazed that from what I see of the American media, they encourage the average American to believe that they're a "country at war"

Though no doubt it's not a war 'de jure'...

I think the American definition of 'at war' is very different from a most people's definition of the phrase, after Australia/Oceania North America is the world's most peaceful continent, with only a couple of international wars in the last century (and all of those were in Central America) It has been such a long time since the Americans saw fighting within or near their borders that I think the horror is somewhat lost on them. For Europeans and many others, war is much more vivid and especially for the continental nations it means having your territory invaded and people dying in your fields, also war is a more regular occurence, the violence accompanying the disintegration of Yugoslavia ended the most peaceful period of European history and that wasn't even 50 years long.
I suppose that in the technical sense that their soldiers aren't fighting the soldiers of another government, the USA is in peacetime, but regardless the fact that Bush attacked two 3rd world nations without provocation does not make him a wartime president.

I certainly agree with what you're saying, HonestIago, in that Americans have not fought a war on home territory since the American Civil War, if I'm not mistaken, unless you count the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbour, which wasn't quite a full war. Though they have, of course, been involved in several other wars in this century: both World Wars, for instance, and Korea and Vietnam, in addition to the 'interventions' in Central America and that sort of thing. While not having your home ground invaded must alter your perception of war a bit, it is also undeniable that, in WWI and especially in WWII, the Americans did their part for the war effort. They fought and died same as the Europeans, and same as the Canadians and Australians and New Zealanders and Indians. I would not say that North America is the world's most peaceful continent - it's true that it hasn't been invaded in quite a long time, but Mexico and Central America have been wrought by civil war, Canada has come to the aid of the Commonwealth in WWI, WWII and the Korean War, and the USA has involved itself in every conflict possible, no matter how unpopular it is. I'd say that, discounting the first half of the century when the World Wars hit Europe hard, the USA is in fact more affected by war because it seems to be always at war. If they aren't attacked and there aren't atrocities being committed that make a war necessary, they'll find a way to get into one! Determined little animals, Americans.

"It has been such a long time since the Americans saw fighting within or near their borders that I think the horror is somewhat lost on them."

I have to agree. We see some of the human wreckage that comes home after a war, but, in my opinion, most Americans who have not been in war zones and seen the reality of war for themselves don't really have a hint about what it's really like. Despite the "cold war" hysteria and bomb shelter craze of the 1950s and 1960s, we haven't really had to spend a significant portion of our lives wondering when the bombs would drop next or what the "foreign invader" would do next.

That doesn't mean that American military forces haven't been used, with enthusiasm, over the years. For a country that hasn't offically declared war on any other nation since World War II (Korea and Viet Nam were "police actions") the US military has found a lot of ways to keep busy.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/coldwar-ops.htm

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/recent-ops.htm

Sorry, I really should clarify. I'm not taking anything away from the contributions and sacrifices of US (or Canadian) troops in either World War or conflicts since, without which I doubt I'd live in a free democracy and for which I shall be eternally grateful. However I do feel that sending troops over to die on some foreign battlefield doesn't have the same potency as knowing they're dying on their home soil, defending or regaining your liberty. I think the UK falls into this category too, although we have been under extreme threat of invasion a number of times, it has been a *very* long time since Britain itself was invaded. I think this may partially explain why many continental European nations are reluctant to commit their armies to anything other than a fully justifiable war, many of these countries have seen the real horrors of war in living memory
Iago

Just a brief aside: HonestIago's observation chimes with something I've wondered about. Having had it pointed out to me that in popular Japanese entertainment from Godzilla to Akira there is a recurring theme of massive localised destruction, the person in question proposed that this may stem from the destruction visted on Japan in WWI - no other nation, barring perhaps Germany and Dresden, can claim the distinction of having entire cities destroyed in conflict.

So consider the popular imagination of the US: What does their entertainment say about their popular imagination?
(I will never forget the episode of star trek with Kirk and Spock realising in horror that a civilisation had developed an entirely bloodless war, run via computer, The computer decided randomly which bits of the city had been levelled by rockets. Citizens where then duty bound to report to disintigration chambers as they had been 'killed'.)

How often has America been invaded on film? How often has the nuclear bomb resolved the conflict? (a theme subverted during the cold war where nuclear war was again a threat and then inverted in say Independence Day (where it was not the nuke that saved Humanity but the next order of threat prior to the Millenium - a computer virus.)

How often has Hollywood fulfilled the role of showing an awed public what destruction on the streets would be like? (Armageddon for instance, wiped out whole skyscrapers in the opening barrage - back in the day when knocking over buildings was still the stuff of pure fantasy) Other popular films such as Die hard 2 ('lets crash planes') or True Lies ('aren't middle-eastern terrorists funny?') would find it very difficult to find an audience (let alone attract funding) in the current cultural climate which has been altered from its former malaise **because they were attacked**

If I were a cultural anthropologist I would be fascinated to find out more about how a society expresses and reconciles its experiences through it's cultural entertainment, and how in the absence of real conflict, the conflict has instead been transferred to screen to be played out there, where cultural virtues such as sacrifice, the readiness to fight and so on, can be shown but are not experienced in anything as visceral as real fighting and real conflict.

America as a nation without war has dreamt about war for a long time.
Kirk would be horrified.

(Okay so that was slightly longer than brief )