International Law; just words?

[Die Rote Fahne]

International law has been around for quite some time, supported and developed by many first world nations, and have been agreed upon by these nations. However, almost any time a first world government is responsible for breaking international law, be it crimes against humanity or war crimes, they are never confronted on the world scope by other first world nations, and they are never confronted at home. It seems that the only time International law is referenced, is by the minority who know about international law, and think those who break it should be punished. To me, it seems the term 'International Law' has became a voluntary code of conduct for those with money. The bourgeois governments of the first world can ignore them, get away with breaking them, but when third world governments commit them, and when convenient for the first world governments, they are punished or brought out into the open.

It's absolutely ridiculous, and is further evidence of the bourgeois nature of capitalist government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law_and_Israeli_settlements

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0715-07.htm

http://warisacrime.org/content/targeted-assassination-osama-bin-laden

Obama, Netinyahu, Bush, and Cheney...neither of them even went to a trial, they were never investigated, and the accusations are turned itno some extreme anti-(insert term here) and baseless, when in fact, all of the claims should be taken seriously and investigated by an international body.

[RebelDog]

Justice is all about power. If you are a power like the US then you need not worry about anyone stopping your illegal actions around the globe and you can demand others obey the laws that you do not yourself. The White House cares for 'international law' when they use it as a pretext for military action. Palestine and Nicaraqua are 2 of many examples that show their real contempt for any idea that their criminal actions might be stopped by any international court.

[manic expression]

For the most part, you're right. However, in some areas international law can be held as a standard. Since the 60's and 70's the laws against taking historical artifacts (art, etc.) across borders have been upheld pretty well. Greece and Italy have gotten back truckloads of priceless objects that were stolen away from those countries. The Getty Museum in LA has practically been emptied out in some sections. Before those laws came into effect, there was no recourse to get back stolen art...which is why the Elgin Marbles will not be going back to Athens any time soon.

But yeah, I agree with you...international law is usually an exercise in abject bourgeois hypocrisy.

[RedSonRising]

I agree that it's obviously a construction made by the hands of bourgeois states, with little real value to working class empowerment, but in many court cases concerning human rights and working class abuses, international law has served to highlight some of these issues and occasionally bring a few perpetrators of justice to give the system credence. It's not designed to functionally protect people inherently, but it can be used under the right circumstances to defend an oppressed population successfully.

[Zukunftsmusik]

I'm recently reading Power and Terror by Noam Chomsky, a collection of post 9/11 talks and interviews. In one talk on U.S. state terror he exposes how the U.S has participated in terror without getting 'caught'. Of course, they were sometimes exposed, but with a veto right in the security council they are untouchable. Also, during the end of WWII, the British bombed civilians on purpose to create fear. That's not terror, because 'we' did it. Chomsky says the British' actions were more than enough to get them judged in the Nuremberg process. But because it was committed by the British and not the Germans, it wasn't worth mentioning.

[Rjevan]

I'm recently reading Power and Terror by Noam Chomsky, a collection of post 9/11 talks and interviews.
If you like Chomsky's book you might also be interested in War Crimes, Genocide and the West by Adam Jones. It's a collection of essays by a variety of mostly progressive anti-capitalist authors. They deal with "First World" disregard for internationally agreed upon laws and definitions against "crimes against humanity" and their selective application on " Third World rogue states" whenever most beneficial for imperialism, while on the other hand "it's not terror/war crime/genocide if we do it" like Allied WWII terror bombing, colonialist genocide, settler state crimes, Cold War US support for fascism and reactionary military dictatorships, the latest imperialist tactic of "humanitarian interventionism", etc.

Some articles are from a liberal anti-communist point of view but overall the book is really worth reading and quite eye opening for those who might think international law is internationally binding.

[Cencus]

International Law = Might is Right, and at present the U.S. specificly and the west in general are the heavy hitters so what passes for International Law follows their intertests.

There is no way on this earth you will ever see a Brittish or French or American soldier or politician in the Hague no matter how henious their transgressions. The closest you will ever get is when an ex-client head of state goes off message and that usually ends with them facing "justice" in new client state courts e.g. Saddam.

[Iraultzaile Ezkerreko]

I'm going to make this real easy for you guys. If there is one class that will actually teach you something in a bourgeois university, it's international politics. And the first thing you learn in any international politics class is that relations between states function in a state of anarchy, meaning that there is NOT one world government which can regulate any state or bring two states to the bargaining table and force them to be nice. The most important thing about international law you can learn, is that most of what people think is international law is NOT actually written down enumerated ratified and enacted legal structure. Most of the time they are just suggestions, like international manners, if you violate them then other states might not like you as much as they used to but they have no real legal recourse.

[Foreigner]

"[At a time when Solon of Athens was involved in politics and drawing up his laws.] When Anacharsis discovered this, he laughed at Solon for supposing that his countrymen's injustice and greed could be kept within bounds by means of written laws, which were more like spiders' webs than anything else; he said that they would hold the weak and the small fry who might get entangled, but would be torn to pieces by the rich and powerful." *

A great ancient quote. We may infer which stratum he considers "countrymen" likely to indulge in greed and unjustice.

Bourgeois law has a lengthy pedigree, for sure.

I think it can only be used by the weak in the current international system when there is nothing too serious at stake, or when dominant players stand to benefit. I don't think it's reliable at all, though, because, it's not like you're going to shame countries for not abiding by it; the big players play to nativism and nationalism, while the weak players already know it's hypocritical.

In other words, it's a massively unreliable thing that I suspect won't do much for genuine resistance, though it was more so at a time when the U.S.'s power was still tenuous enough that it cared what was thought about it elsewhere and wasn't sure that it could manipulate foreign opinion with regularity.

* Taken from Plutarch's account in The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives, 1960 Penguin Classics edition, but the quote is famous enough you can find it everywhere online.