On the Right Side of the Law.(United States and international law)

Uday and Qusay Hussein died in a hail of bullets worthy of the Wild West. The administration proclaimed a great victory. Iraqis were more ambivalent. Said one, talking to the BBC: "I would have been happy if they were captured alive and brought to justice before the Iraqi people."

Perhaps in the best of worlds, this would be so. But in Iraq these days, the best is often the enemy of the good. America is still at war; its soldiers die every day. And in war, you shoot first and ask questions later.

Still, it's tempting to consider how much easier America's job would be, if only it were seen to be more on the right side of international law. Over just the past week, for instance, the United States has called for the international community to contribute more troops to stabilize Iraq. Those likely to be most willing (France, Germany, India) all said that would require another U.N. Security Council resolution--legal validation, in other words, reflected in a sharing of reconstruction and administrative authority in Iraq. Similarly, big U.S. oil companies told the administration that they could not invest heavily to restore Iraq's oil production. Reason: the lack of politically legitimate authority in Iraq, coupled with concerns that any contracts signed would not have the force of international law.

Closer to home, the administration yielded to British and Australian demands regarding legal guarantees for trials of their citizens held in Guantanamo. After declaring that the Geneva Conventions did not apply-- not to mention the protections of the U.S. Constitution or the Uniform Code of Military Justice--the White House assured its allies that their citizens would not face the death penalty and will be allowed access to an independent lawyer. That's welcome. But how to justify offering such safeguards for Britons and Australians but not Pakistanis or Kuwaitis?

Imagine, on the other hand, what could happen if the United States acted on the side of international law, rather than against it. Within Iraq, the United Nations could bring in international experts to set up a war-crimes tribunal very quickly--the same experts who have been through this process in East Timor and Bosnia, Argentina and South Africa. They could review the evidence against the men on the U.S. military's Most Wanted cards and indict the perpetrators, taking testimony from Iraqi victims along the way. The aim then would be to arrest them; if a shoot-out ensued, they would die resisting arrest for horrible crimes, rather than becoming Islamic martyrs who heroically resisted overwhelming American might, at least to some Iraqis. After all, in the Iraq we are trying to build, simply shooting "wanted" men is assassination, not justice.

And take the stalemate between the administration and the oil companies. Were the United Nations more fully engaged, Washington ...