Your point, that Bush was careful to observe all the legal niceties, is true.
Nevertheless, I am not a fan of the idea that the International Court in the Hague had any jurisdiction in this case. The calls for an “investigation” of Khadaffi’s killing are hypocrites. Where were they during his reign of terror? They were silent. And had they spoken, they had no power to enforce their view of “international law” in any case, that required men with guns.
Their war was not with any particular country, their war was with a specific individual. Capturing him was not enough; he would be a threat as long as he was alive. Summary execution was necessary to prevent any chance of rescue, or any chance that his supporters would go on fighting. He’s gone, he isn’t coming back, and thats the end of it.
War is not the extension of peacetime law, war is the state of affairs you find yourself in when peacetime rule of law no longer functions. War is the means by which you redesign the facts on the ground in order to allow a return to rule of law. It is the space between the collapse of the rule of law on the one hand, and the reestablishment of rule of law having pulled the weeds that needed pulling.
The way we treated Saddam was admirable, but had there been any chance that he might have been found innocent in that court we would have been fools to allow such a trial. And a trial with a foregone conclusion is not a proper trial under peace-time rules, though it is proper as a war-trial where you simply document the reasons you are going to hang the man. And then you hang him.
International relations are more than legal niceties. Vattel’s Law of Nations is a good work to learn about international law.
I certainly did not refer to the Hague.
I’m simply saying that Obama is Condoning the Murder Without Trial of a leader of a nation who was being overthrown.
Not saying anyone in America or Obama has any right to intervene, simply saying that NO American President has EVER condoned such an action - not even in the case of Adolph Hitler and his henchmen. If Hitler would not have committed suicide he would have stood trial with the others.
Western civilization has a history of thousands of years of state-inflicted death sentences requiring a trial and conviction, going back to the ancient Greeks and Romans.
If he brandished a weapon upon capture, that’s an entirely different situation. But he surrendered; he had no weapon in the video, he had been taken alive and completely subdued.
When I think of American GI’s who were executed as prisoners it makes me sick. Well, I can’t condone summary execution for anyone else then either.
I don’t consider trials admirable, but a necessity. It is a sad, sad day when the President of the United States does not as well, especially when he made it so abundantly clear that he thought that terrorist attackers should have civilian trials and NOT military tribunals, which is what they should have if they are part of an organized force whose purpose it is to destroy America and either kill or subjugate all Americans.
The operative point is really the kind of actions we are seeing in the “Arab spring” - barbarism, the rise of a group of nations united in blood lust on a par with the most evil empires of history, and many politicians in the United States not even bothering to publicly acknowledge it.