Passing the Global Test? Preemption is the Big Lie

I know that perception matters more than the truth, but anyone interested in the facts and long-term historical record might be interested to know that the war in a Iraq was technically not a "Preemptive Strike."

This issue of preemption produced Kerry’s most memorable comment of "But if and when you do it [preemptive action], Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test..."

Even Jim Lehrer got this fact wrong by asking Bush, "Does the Iraq experience make it more likely or less likely that you would take the United States into another preemptive military action?"

International Lawyers Ruth Wedgwood (conservative) and Sean Murphy (moderate) both agree on this point that Iraq was not a preemptive strike. I interviewed both of them for this project. I do not have the interviews transcribed yet, but when I asked both lawyers if attacking Iraq was in the name of self-defense, then they both said "No."

By digging deep into the question of whether or not Iraq was a preemptive war, I was surprised to discover that even Bush's State Department never attempted to argue that the war Iraq was for the sake of imminent self-defense. It was fought based upon previous UN resolutions and therefore was not a preemptive war.

Bush implied to Congress from August 26th to October 11th that Iraq was an "Urgent Threat" that needed to be preempted. But after Bush got his authority to go to war, he never even attempted to prove to the UN that Iraq was a threat.

He did this because his legal theorists were falsely claiming that they already had authority to go to war. So while the Administration didn't feel compelled seriously to convince the International Community of the threat that Iraq posed or proof of links to Al Qaeda, Bush continued to tell the American public and US media that Iraq was a threat up to the brink of war and on to this very day.

It would seem to me that No WMD + No Collaborative Links to Al Qaeda + UN Inspections + No-Fly Zones + Sanctions would seem to equal NO THREAT.

But this logic seems to escape both Bush and Kerry for their own short-term political reasons.

My sense is that the Big Lie of Preemption is so much of a wide-spread false assumption that it is too complicated to set the record straight for the masses, and therefore the subject is completely avoided.

This alleged "revival" authority to go to war was never challenged by the US media in a prominent or timely manner, and the legality of the war always has been largely dismissed by most in the scholarly legal community.

This is why Kofi Annan recently told the BBC, "Yes, I have indicated it is not in conformity with the UN Charter, from our point of view and from the Charter point of view [the war in Iraq] was illegal."

I see the issue of preemption as one of the biggest misperceptions by the media, and the lack of pre-war investigations into the legality of the war as one of the biggest pre-war oversights.

Thankfully we have George Washington International Law Professor Sean Murphy to set the record straight and systematically obliterate the gory details of the US legal theory.

More details on the PR campaign to sell the war can be found in this overview.