Was the Iraq War legal or illegal?

An international law expert weighs the consensus of opinion and finds the White House case wanting

by Evan Augustine Peterson III, J.D., Executive Director, American Center for International Law

"Advantage is a better soldier than rashness." -Montjoy in Wm. Shakespeare's Henry V, 3.6.120

During a BBC radio interview two weeks ago, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan created a controversy by reiterating his long-held position that the Iraq War was illegal because it breached the United Nations Charter. Later, the imperial leaders of the "Coalition of the Willing" retaliated by vehemently arguing that their Iraq War was, to the contrary, legal.

Obviously, this dispute raises a legal question: "Whose opinion is correct, and whose is incorrect?" Additionally, we should be asking ourselves: "Who decides?”

It seems eminently reasonable —even for the disputants—to conclude that the optimal source of guidance on this question of international law would have to be the world's foremost experts in the field of international law. Hence, the UN's chief and the coalition's leaders need to know how the world's top international law experts would resolve their dispute. And we, the people, need to know who's right and who's wrong here.

Among the world's foremost experts in the field of international law, the overwhelming jurisprudential consensus is that the Anglo-American invasion, conquest, and occupation of Iraq constitute three phases of one illegal war of aggression.

Moreover, these experts in the international law of war deem both preventive wars and preemptive strikes to be euphemistic subcategories of outlawed wars of aggression.

And the experts' answer would hold true regardless of whether their governing legal authority was the UN Security Council Resolutions that were passed to implement the conflict-resolution provisions of the UN Charter; or prior treaties and juridical holdings which have long since become general international law.

Readers who need to "trust but verify" for themselves that the experts' overwhelming opinion is exactly as stated above should read http://www.eurolegal.org/useur/bbiraqwar.htm

A document there entitled “15 January 2003” was drafted and signed by the world's foremost international law experts—the prestigious International Commission of International Law Jurists—to provide ultimate proof of their authoritative opinion concerning the legal status of war against Iraq.

Furthermore, this large body of eminent international law experts explicitly stated that they'd drafted their legal document in order to advise Messrs Bush and Blair prior to the invasion that it would be blatantly illegal under international law for the Anglo-American belligerents to invade Iraq; and that their joint decision as Commanders-in-Chief to commence hostilities would constitute prosecutable war crimes.

Skeptical readers who don't regard this highly-authoritative conclusion as an adequate answer are invited to undertake the legal reasoning for themselves at the Eurolegal website. Note that every applicable Article in the UN Charter, and every relevant UN Security Council Resolution, is cited and analyzed therein. And readers who continue to scroll down the ES website will find a succession of articles which summarize the opinions of noteworthy individual experts on international law. These, too, strongly confirm that the invasion of Iraq constituted an illegal war of aggression under international law.

It is the overwhelming consensus of the world's foremost international law experts that UN Secretary General Annan's opinion is correct because the Iraq War was, indeed, illegal; and the opinion of the "Coalition of the Willing's" leaders is incorrect because their Iraq War was not legal.

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