What have we learnt from the last 14 years.
Preventative War is acceptable.
By way of the sharpest contrast, a preventive war is a war of discretion. It differs from preemptive war both in its timing and in its motivation. The preemptor has no choice other than to strike back rapidly; it will probably be too late even to surrender. The preventor, however, chooses to wage war, at least to launch military action, because of its fears for the future should it fail to act now. In other words, the preventor strikes in order to prevent a predicted enemy from changing the balance of power or otherwise behaving in a manner that the preventor would judge to be intolerable
If it is not acceptable then who has been held accountable?
Torture is fine.
The Senate Intelligence Committee's five-year investigation into the CIA's torture of suspected terrorists just came out. There's plenty in there to shock -- for starters, just go to the document and search for "rectal feeding." The Post has compiled a list of 20 key takeaways from the report, which detail a regime of brutality, incompetence and deceit that have been damaging to the U.S.'s standing abroad.
Overall 25 percent of respondents said torture could "never" be justified.
Who has been held responsible? Crickets.
Targeted killing is fine anywhere in the world.
The letter cites the justification given by Downing Street for the killing, referring to Article 51 of the UN charter: “This airstrike was a necessary and proportionate exercise of the individual right of self-defence of the United Kingdom.”
When you kill the wrong group of people? Nada.
Bombing hospitals is normal.
What are medical workers from Afghanistan to Syria, Yemen and beyond to do if their protection is stripped from them? What does it mean for patients if their ability to access medical care is destroyed?
Sorry, but who really cares is the answer.
Collateral damage a viable excuse.
Always a vague area, how much is acceptable? Where do you draw the line? How do you know the intent when the wrong target was hit? I suppose it depends on who has caused the damage and who backs them up in the defense of the carnage caused.
Oops my bad is justifiable? Oh it's just war, fine?
Extraordinary rendition perfectly fine.
After the attacks against the United States of September 11, 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency conspired with dozens of governments to build a secret extraordinary rendition and detention program that spanned the globe. Extraordinary rendition is the transfer—without legal process—of a detainee to the custody of a foreign government for purposes of detention and interrogation.
Is the statement, but we don't do it anymore sufficient? Anyone held accountable?
I remember the statement that the countries we send them to don't torture? Was this found to be true? No. Who was held accountable? Nobody.
Destabilizing sovereign states not a problem.
Well this has been US foreign Policy for decades especially in Central and South America and the Middle East. The question is has this policy proved to be a success?
The US is facing a "Cold War 2.0" against Russia in places such as Ukraine, the Baltic states, and Syria as President Vladimir Putin’s government tries to establish an external security belt stretching from Iraq to the Mediterranean, a US-based expert told The Jerusalem Post.
Oh good, they are all talking to each other, what could go wrong?
Sending refugees seeking asylum back home is of no concern.
In the past two decades, US laws and policies have become less responsive to the risks faced by arriving migrants seeking asylum from persecution. In 1996, and subsequently in 2006, the US government severely undermined the system for identifying asylum seekers through the establishment and expansion of expedited removal. The flaws of that approach are readily apparent today at the US-Mexico border.
The US is far from being alone in this, Australia passed laws to expedite extradition.
The Geneva Conventions only seem to apply to those too weak to influence the UN via a Veto.
"An issue precedes the question of war crimes or violations of war — the question of whether you can prevent war or regulate war before it happens," she says. "The mechanism that we've put in place for that is the UN Security Council. It has trouble doing that when one if its five permanent members has a stake in what's going on."
Some say the UN is useless, well we can all have a pretty good argument that the reason it is useless is because it has been continually undermined by its five permanent members.