Illegal War?

Jonathon Martin reminds me that I have the unwelcome duty of defending George W. Bush from Kofi Annan's claim that the Iraq War was illegal. Clearly, the coalition of the willing lacked the second UN resolution that would have made the legal basis of the invasion crystal clear. By the same token, however, Saddam Hussein really was in violation of Resolution 1441 and by the terms of 1441 under the circumstances either no second resolution was necessary to make invasion legal, or else the factual situation obligated the Security Council to pass the necessary second resolution. As there isn't a great deal of (or necessarily any) precedent existing in this realm, the war had, if not the firmest legal basis imaginable, a pretty darn firm one as far as these things go. The reason no second resolution was passed, of course, is that the Security Council is not really a legal body like a court, but rather a policymaking body, and a majority of the council believed (correctly) that war was a bad policy under the circumstances.

Quibbles aside, two further points. One is that the nature of Kofi Annan's office is such that this is probably an inappropriate thing for him to be offering his opinion on. As Secretary-General of the United Nations, his remarks on this subject are, unlike mine, not going to be taken as simply one man's view on a murky subject. At the same time, his office does not, in fact, empower him to make authoritative pronouncements on this question. It's just a further mucking up of whatever sort of law could be said to govern these things. More important, though, pursuing this whole line of attack against Bush, Blair, et. al. has the unfortunate effect of turning criticism of the war into a vehicle for complaint about unjust treatment of Saddam Hussein since insofar as we're talking about international law here he and his regime are the prospective wronged parties. Now it's true, of course, that odious regimes do have their rights under international law just as much as, say, Canada does (though one might think that this is the essence of the problem) but given the full gravity of the circumstances, wrongs done to Saddam and his cronies are hardly the thing to be focused on.