A new 'Coalition of the Willing'? posted by Richard Seymour

Via HP Sauce . The Telegraph has produced an unusually stupid leader on Iraq and 'international law':

The truth is that the war was probably not legal under international law. Those who believe that is a fact of cardinal moral importance have not yet had the courage to admit the inevitable conclusion of their position. It is that there now needs to be a "coalition of the willing" to restore the legal government of Saddam Hussein to its rightful position as the sovereign authority in Iraq. Tony Blair must be arrested and tried by the ICC, and Saddam should be the primary witness against him. That is the inescapable logic of the champions of international law. It should make every-one realise how unreal is the world in which they live.

I don't want to keep beating the same drum all the time, but general ignorance of the case obliges me to have another bash. Law is a process, not simply a set of rules, or a structure. It is a negotiation process replete with loopholes and torsions. There are usually two or more sets of interpretations which are not reconciled. The spurious determinacy that is imposed on law at the level of the nation-state (by the judge, backed by the legitimate monopoly of violence) is absent in international law. Therefore, as Marx once had it, "between equal rights, force decides". International law is the precise form that modern imperialism takes, and the huge expenditure of time and energy making the legal case for imperial subventions demonstrates that this is the case. Need anyone remind themselves of the grotesque crimes perpetrated under the rubric of international law, with the backing of the UN? Or of the fact that the UN has now, ex post facto, legitimised the war on Iraq?

That said, there is no reason for anyone who maintains that the war was illegal to accept the Telegraph's stupid attempt at a reductio ad absurdum. Never mind the fact that the Telegraph is only taking one crime into account when one would prefer to reverse decades of criminal intervention in Iraq if that were possible. If it is true that the war on Iraq was illegal, there need be no coalition of the willing to restore Hussein to power. His sovereignty is not what has been violated. It is Iraq's sovereignty that has been violated, and there is a "coalition of the willing" currently acting to evict the occupiers. It is known as the Iraqi resistance. They are legally guaranteed as well, because the UN :

Affirms once again its recognition of the legitimacy of the struggle of the peoples under colonial and alien domination to exercise their right to self-determination and independence by all the necessary means at their disposal. [Emphasis added].

That is, if the Telegraph now accepts that the invasion of Iraq was illegal, the legitimacy of the resistance follows.