HOT AIR: “Responsibility to Protect”: It May Not be Our Call”
EMPORER’S CLOTHES: Against the Western attack on Libya
“Responsibility To Protect,” Not Remotely New
Omri Ceren, Contentions
Nothing’s better than when the UN shoehorns “new security and human rights norms” into Chapter VII resolutions:
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U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon also said on Thursday that the justification for the use of force was based on humanitarian grounds, and referred to the principle known as Responsibility to Protect (R2P), “a new international security and human rights norm to address the international community’s failure to prevent and stop genocides, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”
R2P isn’t really a new idea, and it’s not even particularly new to the United Nations. It just hasn’t been used this way before. In the past it’s been applied mainly to African contexts, as an argument for why humanitarian concerns justified intervention. It was more or less formalized by the UN in a 2006 resolution, and then Ban pushed it again in a 2009 report called Implementing the Responsibility to Protect. In 2009, we also saw the creation of the International Coalition For The Responsibility To Protect, a group of NGO’s brought together to extend and institutionalize R2P.
Some might be suspicious of the ICRtoP because its funding comes from organizations that provide backing for Israel-demonizing NGO’s. The coalition’s government donors include the governments of Sweden and Britain (NGO Monitor writeups here and here) and it gets part of its foundation money from the Oak Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (NGO Monitor shoutouts here and here). But that would be mere guilt by donor association. Here is a less ambiguous sample of ICRtoP thinking from 2009, during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza:
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The recent escalation of violence in Gaza has raised serious questions about the use of the Responsibility to Protect to urge international action to protect civilians in the conflict. The Responsibility to Protect has been referred to, notably by Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, but also others who claim that crimes committed in Gaza by Israeli forces have reached the threshold of R2P crimes.
This is part and parcel of the statements that the ICRtoP has been publishing since it was established in the immediate aftermath of Cast Lead. They published a petition absurdly insisting that “the rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas deplorable as they are, do not… amount to an armed attack entitling Israel to rely on self-defence.” They passed along Richard Falk’s “Israelis could be charged with war crimes” lawfare spin on the Goldstone Report. They reprinted other articles accusing Israelis of war crimes here and here and here and here and here. All of this was under the umbrella of “evaluating” whether R2P should be brought to bear against Israel’s self-defense campaigns.
The Responsibility To Protect, in other words, is an international norm that has been incubated with eyes on Israel at least since Cast Lead. Now it’s being used as the basis for UN resolutions backed by French warplanes and American Tomahawks. How did that get in there?
Who said I had any?
dweller: what exactly are your credentials?
Yamit,
I agree that the Republicans, including our own Laura, have really been suckered in here. The leading candidates seem to be in a contest to out-hawk one another in what may go down in history as America’s “Lemming War”.
I surely hope Israel’s leaders have taken enough time out from rape and corruption, to fill their Dolphins with nukes.
Good observation. Most of society lives and dies on credentials.
So it’s only logical that these “notable,” “expert” dingalings would expect us to confuse their “credentials” with credibility. (After all, THEY do.)
The truth is that the two “creds” are not only not synonymous, but that they rarely even arrive on the same bus.
We send kids to the university not to learn to understand their own thinking process, and to develop awareness — but to sally forth with “degrees” which say,
“I am qualified, you can trust me; I put up with 4 years (or 6, or 7, or 10) of mind-bending and regurgitation of poppycock, so I now no longer trust my own good judgment, but only what I’m told —
“And what’s trendy.
“The schooling took: I’m clueless when it comes to thinking outside the box. This degree that I wave like a flag is your assurance of that. It’s official, I’m certified.
“I’ve been educated out of all the common sense I was ever born with.
“So I’m safe.
“Hire me.”
The Rise of Samantha Power and the risks for the American- Israel relationship
Ed Lasky
As stories leak out regarding who was responsible for Barack Obama’s sudden pivot from passivity regarding Libya towards military engagement (albeit with England and France being in the lead) one name has emerged as playing a key role in persuading him to push the button: Samantha Power.
Her influence might cause qualms among supporters of the American-Israel relationship. As has been covered by American Thinker and others (notably Noah Pollak in Commentary Contentions, among them), Power has been critical of the strength of this friendship and alliance. This concern should be now be heightened. Not only has she emerged as a key player in foreign policy but the rationale that was used to justify American actions towards Libya can be used by other nations – if not the United States – to justify more active involvement in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Read All Here
This goes to show that vagueness and muddled thinking are not the exclusive domains of “the man in the street”. Never trust the person who waves his credentials in front of your face in order to prove his point.
Better to trust those who have actually faced imminent death, rather than a bunch of office-bound, comfortable, self-important, pompous “thinkers”. My choice is the Japanese warrior Miyamoto Musashi who wrote “The Book of Five Rings”. In it he says:
Western forces fire missile at Gadhafi’s Tripoli compound
Administrative building knocked down; Gadhafi’s whereabouts at time unknown, but some 300 of his supporters were in compound when missile hit.
Obama pleads innocence but allows french and British to do the dirty work. The Arab street will turn virile against the West.
Watch the flood of illegals from Africa and the ME into Europe as a planned backlash. Libya was key in blocking much of that immigration.
Clueless Republicns have lost 2012
Read and Weep obama haters!
****Keep in mind some 70% of Americans are against American involvement
Statement by Speaker Boehner on Libya
WASHINGTON, DC (Mar 20)
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) issued the following statement on the situation in Libya:
“The United States has a moral obligation to stand with those who seek freedom from oppression and self-government for their people. It’s unacceptable and outrageous for Qadhafi to attack his own people, and the violence must stop.
“The President is the commander-in-chief, but the Administration has a responsibility to define for the American people, the Congress, and our troops what the mission in Libya is, better explain what America’s role is in achieving that mission, and make clear how it will be accomplished. Before any further military commitments are made, the Administration must do a better job of communicating to the American people and to Congress about our mission in Libya and how it will be achieved.”
Arab League Now Criticizes Libyan Action, Russia Too!
No One Could Have Predicted Any of This in January PJM
March 20, 2011 – 12:23 am – by Michael J. Totten
We should all resist trying to predict what will happen next in the Middle East because so much of what happens makes no sense at all in advance of it actually happening.
Who would have thought two months ago that France would lead a Western military coalition, that the United Nations would pass a Chapter VII resolution authorizing the use of force against a country that was elected to its own Human Rights Commission, that Barack Obama would fire missiles at an Arab country when less than thirty percent of Americans approve, and that Qaddafi loyalists would burn Lebanese rather than American or Israeli flags in the capital?
No one could have predicted any of this. It’s too weird. Don’t ask me what happens next. I give up.
UPDATE: So Qaddafi writes a letter to Barack Obama. It opens thusly:
To our son, his excellency, Mr Barack Hussein Obama. I have said to you before, that even if Libya and the United States of America enter into a war, god forbid, you will always remain a son. Your picture will not be changed.
Like I said. Weird.
ICRtoP
Israels Bombardment of Gaza is not Self-Defencets a war Crime
The Sunday Times
11 January 2009
The following letter is signed by many notable professors and international law experts.
ISRAEL has sought to justify its military attacks on Gaza by stating that it amounts to an act of elf-defence as recognised by Article 51, United Nations Charter. We categorically reject this contention.
The rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas deplorable as they are, do not, in terms of scale and effect amount to an armed attack entitling Israel to rely on self-defence. Under international law self-defence is an act of last resort and is subject to the customary rules of proportionality and necessity.
The killing of almost 800 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and more than 3,000 injuries, accompanied by the destruction of schools, mosques, houses, UN compounds and government buildings, which Israel has a responsibility to protect under the Fourth Geneva Convention, is not commensurate to the deaths caused by Hamas rocket fire.
For 18 months Israel had imposed an unlawful blockade on the coastal strip that brought Gazan society to the brink of collapse. In the three years after Israels redeployment from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. And yet in 2005-8, according to the UN, the Israeli army killed about 1,250 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children. Throughout this time the Gaza Strip remained occupied territory under international law because Israel maintained effective control over it.
Israels actions amount to aggression, not self-defence, not least because its assault on Gaza was unnecessary. Israel could have agreed to renew the truce with Hamas. Instead it killed 225 Palestinians on the first day of its attack. As things stand, its invasion and bombardment of Gaza amounts to collective punishment of Gazas 1.5m inhabitants contrary to international humanitarian and human rights law. In addition, the blockade of humanitarian relief, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and preventing access to basic necessities such as food and fuel, are prima facie war crimes.
We condemn the firing of rockets by Hamas into Israel and suicide bombings which are also contrary to international humanitarian law and are war crimes. Israel has a right to take reasonable and proportionate means to protect its civilian population from such attacks. However, the manner and scale of its operations in Gaza amount to an act of aggression and is contrary to international law, notwithstanding the rocket attacks by Hamas. Read More
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article5488380.ece
How Obama turned on a dime toward war