Democratic Obama Administration's Planned Attack On Syria Would Violate UN Charter and International Law

According to a recent articles in some UK newspapers, UK Prime Minister Cameron and US President and Commander-in-Chief Obama agreed during a recent 40-minute telephone conversation to order their war machines to attack--without any United Nations authorization--people in Syria during the next two weeks. Yet according to Article 2(3) of the United Nations Charter:

"All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered."

And according to Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter:

"All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."

Principle VI:(a) of the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunals also states the following:

"Crimes Against peace: (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned in (i)."

In addition, Principle VII of the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunals states:

"Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against huanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law."

According to a 2005 article by Roger Normand and the Center for Economic and Social Rights:

"The U.S. and U.K. have also sought to justify war under the legally dubiious doctrine of humanitarian intervention, a new concept that has not gained the support of the international law community. This doctrine--recently advocated by several Western countries and human rights organizations--proposes that the international community has the right and duty to use military force for humanitarian purposes such as stopping egregious violations of human rights. This concept has aroused skepticism from most international lawyers, in part because it circumvents well-established procedures and principles of the U.N. Charter and international law...

"The obvious danger of humanitarian intervention is that it enables individual states to intervene wherever and whenever they perceive a compelling humanitarian necessity, unaccountable to established legal limits on the use of force. There is no safeguard to prevent states from manipulating this concept to serve narrow political interests rather than universal humanitarian concerns...

"By invoking the concept of humanitarian intervention to justify an otherwise unlawful use of force, the U.S. and U.K. would effectively overturn the established hierarchy of international law..."


So a military attack on people in Syria by the U.S. and UK war machines during the next two weeks would violate the UN Charter and international law--since no military attack on people in either the United States nor the United Kingdom by any Syrian government-controlled military unit has occurred.

Ironically, the U.S. president who recently authorized an illegal military attack to be launched on people in Syria apparently graduated from Harvard University Law School during the early 1990s.