Saturday, 11 July 2020

No Evidence Of ‘Self-Defense’ In Soleimani’s Killing


It was an illegal assassination by the U.S. and an attack on international law, according to a new report.

The U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions has said in a new report that the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani earlier this year was in violation of international law, and noted that the U.S. had provided no evidence that it had acted in self-defense:
The attack violated the U.N. Charter, Callamard wrote in a report calling for accountability for targeted killings by armed drones and for greater regulation of the weapons.
Callamard’s judgment is correct, but then we didn’t need a U.N. official to tell us what was right in front of us six months ago. The U.N. Charter prohibits the use of force except for the purpose of self-defense. The U.S. was clearly not engaged in self-defense when it launched an attack to kill a senior member of a foreign government’s military on the territory of a third country. The U.S. not only committed an act of aggression against Iran, but it trampled on Iraq’s sovereignty as well. Everything that the Trump administration told the public about this attack back in January was untrue or misleading, and its claim that the president had authority to launch this attack because of the 2002 Iraq war AUMF was spurious nonsense.\
This was another instance in which the U.S. engaged in aggressive and flagrantly illegal behavior and then retroactively claimed to be acting in self-defense to cover up the lawbreaking. There was no “imminent attack” to be thwarted, so the president was not defending U.S. forces when he ordered the assassination. On the contrary, he invited a retaliatory strike on U.S. forces that resulted in scores of traumatic brain injuries. Six months later, we are fortunate that this illegal and reckless act did not lead to a larger conflict. It was little more than luck that there were no U.S. fatalities from the ensuing missile attack. The hundreds of victims on the downed Ukrainian airliner destroyed by Iranian missiles were not so lucky. We should reflect on how close the U.S. came to a new, illegal war of choice because the president happened to order an attack that he had no legal authority to launch.
When it comes to the use of force, the U.S. has acted on many occasions like a rogue state. The U.S. uses international law as a bludgeon and as a pretext for its interventions abroad. Instead of abiding by the restrictions of international law, it will often cast the law aside without regard for the consequences or the precedents created. This is not just a question of great power hypocrisy and double standards. Direct assaults on international law by the leading state in the international system have corrosive effects over time, and they invite imitation from clients and adversaries alike. Today the U.S. can “get away” with its illegal actions, but one day we will regret cutting down the law to strike at targets of opportunity.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC, where he also keeps a solo blog. He has been published in the New York Times Book ReviewDallas Morning NewsWorld Politics ReviewPolitico MagazineOrthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

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