This guy has summarized the legal case against the war. So I don’t have to. I tend to be more partial to the second half of the argument, which shows that we continue to wage the war illegally, than any claims about legal declarations (or non-declarations that involve the inception of active hostilities) of war. If we followed the law, no war would ever be legal. That was the point to all these international institutions in the first place. Sadly, however, humans seems unable to completely sublimate their aggression into professional sports.
However, by torturing war prisoners and acting with disregard for civilian casualties, we’ve satisfied minimum standards of immorality that should be sufficient for people like Malcolm Kendall-Smith to exercise their right to conscientiously object. He’s a doctor and obviously takes his Hippocratic oath seriously. I can only hope the anti-war left in Britain will celebrate his sacrifice with as much fervor as Americans devoted to Cindy Sheehan’s sweltering hot summer in Crawford, Texas.
Second Opinions