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You Can’t Threaten Force–We’re The Ones Who Threaten Force, Get It?

There is a good legal basis for such action. Ahmadinejad’s words clearly violate Article 2.4 of the U.N. Charter. This provision, to which Iran has agreed, requires all U.N. member states to “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Ahmadinejad’s […]

There is a good legal basis for such action. Ahmadinejad’s words clearly violate Article 2.4 of the U.N. Charter. This provision, to which Iran has agreed, requires all U.N. member states to “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Ahmadinejad’s specific formulation — wiping Israel off the map and prophesying a coming nuclear conflagration in which much of humanity would expire — also clearly entails a threat of committing genocide, which member nations are obliged, under the Genocide Convention, to prevent. ~David Rivkin and Lee Casey, The Washington Post

Messrs. Rivkin and Casey are long-time servitors of Empire and experts at “finding” pathetic legal justifications for the illegal and unconscionable. In the last five years, they have made more convenient, Washington and executive-empowering discoveries in the nuances of interpreting international and constitutional law than most activist jurists can hope to accomplish in a career.

To catch everyone up to speed: Iran cannot threaten force against anyone, because that violates the U.N. Charter, but presumably we can initiate unprovoked hostilities and trample on other nations’ sovereignty and territorial integrity and we can make threats against Iran’s territorial integrity and these are not violations of the U.N. Charter, at least not in Rivkin-Caseyworld. Further, because Iran has made those threats, we and the “international community” (that most deceitful euphemism) are now obliged to do actual harm–not just threaten it–to Iran. See? Doesn’t that make sense?

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