War Law
In the years before 11th September, wealthier governments seemed slowly to be moving towards a stable global order of international laws. General Pinochet had been arrested; the Kyoto protocol had been signed; and Slobodan Milosevic was on trial in the Hague. Now the US is committed to attacking Iraq, a recognised autonomous state, without specific authorisation from the UN Security Council or a specific prior act of aggression.
For thinkers as diverse as Noam Chomsky, the military historian Michael Howard and political analyst Stanley Hoffman, the US response to 11th September should be to treat it like a crime and its perpetrators as criminals. They should, in this view, be delivered before an international court, rather than treated as combatants in a war. The same analysis, law not war, now extends to the imminent crises in Iraq.
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