See here for a case made that a number of figures in the Bush administration are criminals for having started wars with Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is a somewhat lower chance that a war will be either irrational or criminal if it’s declared by Congress, preceded by an open debate. A body of people voting may incorporate more information, take longer, and be subject to less personal bias in making such a decision. Congress is also closer to the people via voting, which is every two years for the House. That is supposed to make Congress more responsible.
Congress has largely thrown away this course of action and mostly defers to the Executive’s decision. The Constitution once again has failed us (or we, the Constitution) by permitting its own corruption and allowing a concentration of undue power in one person. The irrationality of one person, one president, can incinerate almost everyone on earth.
Thomas Jefferson unilaterally made an attack on Barbary pirates, not actually a war but an action that used forces delegated to war. Defense was his justification. However, from Jefferson onwards, the power of the Executive has grown as other instances occurred (see here for many examples) from President Polk making unilateral war with Mexico in 1846 over territory to the occupation of Nicaragua (1926-1933).
Bush et al had not even threadbare justifications for their wars. They found lawyers who even penned new justifications for an Executive to start wars, even “preemptive” wars. The Constitution has enough language and there are enough precedents that clever people looking for excuses for Executive powers to make wars can construct them. These legal rationales were not enough for them to carry their war program out. They conducted a propaganda campaign through dutiful and irresponsible media, so dutiful that one may even suppose that they are controlled in hidden and subtle ways by the powers-that-be, by members of the elite establishment. During 2002 and early 2003, Bush et al inundated the country with specious and false contrivances and stories to justify the war they were preparing.
Neither precedents of executive power nor warmongering lawyerly argument nor a propaganda campaign nor a press pandering to politicians prevent us from using common sense and pointing out both the irrationality and criminality of such actions as attacking Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, of intervening in Syria, of intervening in Ukraine, and of supplying weapons, refueling of bombers and intelligence to Saudi Arabia in their warring against Yemen and Syria, directly and through proxy terrorist forces.
The single most important and key element in deciding criminality is whether or not the war-making is in self-defense. This element is what is lacking in the spate of American aggressions for the past 25 years, which is why criminality has been present.
Criminality may stem or arise from irrationality too; that is, a lack of self-defense is not the only way to assess the justice of a war. A failure to carry out the minimum considerations of reason necessary to accomplish justice becomes at some point a criminal failure. A war cannot properly be made unless there is consideration of all the many questions outlined here in order to identify who is supposed to have done what to whom and for what reasons, to identify the war’s scope, and to identify alternative and proportional means for dealing with affronts and injuries. When this is not done by responsible officials or when it is done irresponsibly or when it is done through propaganda campaigns and lies, all of which occurred in the case of Bush, then a line is crossed that makes the failure a criminal failure.
8:03 am on December 22, 2016
