Everyone is entitled to believe whatever they wish.
But in the real world, "international law" which is not observed by all participants is a suicidal sham and a charade.
Please feel free to engage it on a personal level.
Senility?
“in the real world, ‘international law’ which is not observed by all participants is a suicidal sham and a charade”
Easy to say in a country that forces its kids to memorize a nonsensical speech about government by the people, etc., perishing from the earth written when nothing whatsoever of the kind was at stake. I can see the argument for, say, China, France, and Russia during WWII. But somehow the US would’ve died had ot we deliberately targeted civilians, forcibly transferred populations, and executed soldiers for the crime of being on the losing side? Is that a serious assertion? You might as well argue Obama should have unlimited dictatorial powers in an emergency to “save capitalism from itself” on the off chance communist revolutionaries beat us to the punch. (Don’t scoff; respected intellectuals have argued the exact same thing for FDR.)
We haven’t been in an existential war since 1812, and even that wasn’t purely defensively as it was halfway a war of conquest on our part.