bad LP!

Looking forward to it.... hope your pain goes down!

OK I am feeling better.

Now to work this out

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The international legal rules governing the use of force take as their starting point Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter, which prohibits any nation from using force against another. The charter allows for only two exceptions to this rule: when force is required in self-defense (Article 51) or when the Security Council authorizes the use of force to protect international peace and security (Chapter VII).

However my opponent claims this was a militia and therefore was something that could be declared war upon. He ignores however hundreds of years of history where nations used police or police type forces against well armed thugs, brigands, and even militias.

In fact a quick look at US history comes up with:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/03/28/arrests-alleged-militia-activity-midwest/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/28/hutaree-christian-militia_n_516533.html
http://www.fbi.gov/knoxville/press-releases/2011/militia-extremist-convicted-of-attempting-to-cause-a-civil-disturbance-while-armed
http://www.adn.com/2012/02/10/2310317/judge-rules-that-fbi-searches.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-20128766/fbi-arrests-4-georgia-militia-members/

and this just the top five results from Google.

In fact I lived next to a group that was well armed, and even was the first to use a WMD in the United States... They were known as the Rajneeshee's. THen there was David Koresh... And the list goes on. In Europe we have the IRA (though soldiers were used, they never went on a military strike, all actions against the IRA were specifically under the control of the Constabuls and other police agencies), the group in Spain, and the list goes on. In Asia the Japanese did a police action against a group responsible for mass usage of WMD's in subways, and though the group was well armed it was not confronted by the military...

So the argument that a police force will not take on a militia is just incorrect.

Now the war on Afghanistan was illegal, so says a man who is running for President, Ron Paul.

A website holds the following (excerpt)

A speech by a president does not make a war legal. The Afghan War that began in 2001 was supported by a Congressional resolution premised on the Taliban harboring Al Qaeda. When Al Qaeda moved to Pakistan, as stated by General David Petraeus in May, the war lost its legitimacy. Under President Barack Obama, the Pentagon claims the right to engage in preemptive war (no different from the Iraq War) because the Taliban might take over Afghanistan and might reinvite Al Qaeda to set up camp.

The illegality also extends to the way the Afghan War is currently being fought. Although General Tommy Franks ordered troops to follow the Geneva Conventions when the war began in 2001, his orders were later countermanded by Bush. Since taking office, Obama has not reinstituted the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to Afghanistan . Meanwhile, International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo announced in early September 2009 that he was investigating war crimes by American and NATO forces as well as the Taliban in Afghanistan .

Accordingly, some 37 types of war crimes were committed while Bush was in office. Today, several provisions of the Geneva and Hague Conventions are being violated by ongoing combat in actions that are clearly war crimes:

The most deadly war crimes involve the use of aircraft to bomb targets. On August 5, for example, a wedding party was bombed in Helmand Province, killing 5 in attendance. On September 4, 2009, some 70 civilians were killed by a NATO airstrike in Kunduz Province. In addition, journalist Nancy Youssef reported on September 11 that schools have been destroyed. The attacks constitute several war crimes:

    destruction of undefended targets (violating Article 25 of the Second Hague  Convention of 1899)
    excessive and indiscriminate attacks on civilians (violating Article 51 of  the 1st Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1949)
    excessive military force (violating Article 57 of the 1st Protocol to the  Geneva Conventions
    death by bombing is a form of extrajudicial execution (violating Article 6 of the  Covenant on  Civil and Political Rights of 1967)
    failure to warn the authorities before bombardments (violating Article 26  of the Second Hague Convention of 1899)
    failure to compensate for unjustified attacks on persons and property (violating Article 3 of the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907).

On September 7, 2009, troops of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division went to a hospital in Wardak Province of Afghanistan, kicked in the doors, tied up four hospital employees and two family members of patients, and forced patients out of beds during a fruitless search for members of the Taliban. The incident constituted two more war crimes:

    Failure to observe the neutrality of a hospital (violating Article 1 of the  Red Cross Convention of 1864)
    Failure to observe the neutrality of hospital employees (violating Article  9 of the 1929 Geneva Convention).

Journalist Jeremy Scahill reports that the Afghan War is being fought by mercenaries, who outnumber American troops. One use of mercenaries, according to journalist James Risen, is to put bombs on pilotless aircraft that have killed civilians. Another use is to shoot to kill on a public street, as in Kabul on May 5. The very use of mercenaries constitutes two more war crimes:

    funding war mercenaries (violating Article 5 of the International Convention Against the Recruitment, Use, Financing, and Training of Mercenaries of 1993)
    allowing mercenaries to engage in combat (violating Article 3 of the Convention on Mercenaries of 1993).

http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php/organizers-mainmenu-223/writer-staff-mainmenu-291/5855-an-illegal-war-fought-illegally-in-afghanistan

Then we have this:

The UN Charter prohibits the use and threatened use of any force in member states

Forgot to post here to say i had seen this... I had planned to post my reply today, but life has gotten in the way, mostly due to the insane long waiting queues at the Department of Internal Affairs....

Hopefully by the end of sunday my time I will have responded...

My opponent makes some glaring holes in his argument, of which the biggest is saying that there was no resolution in the UN Security Council allowing for military action in Afghanistan, when in fact there was, as stated in my first post on the matter, UNSC Resolution 1383 allowed for the creation of a peacekeeper force to enter Afghanistan and "to cooperate with the international community to put an end to the use of Afghanistan as a base for terrorism," which at the time was the US lead forces in Afghanistan. Before UNSC Resolution 1383 there had been three others, all condemning the attacks on Sep 11, all calling for Afghanistan to stop harbouring terrorists and none condemning the initial retaliation by the US led forces.  My opponent further states that the US should not have undertaken such action because there was no further threat to security, which is something we know now, but not something that was known in 2001, and as it turned out only true because of the vigilance of internal police forces and other such security agencies once the threat was known. At the time of the initial attacks however none of this was known and could not be known, and the International Community identified that al-Qaeda was a real threat, that the attacks could happen again and that action needed to happen to limit the threat. The attacks were seen as just that, as attacks by an outside force on a sovereign nation, and that sovereign nation then took the appropriate steps to counter the threat, and no international court or legislative body has ever found the actions of the US to be illegal or wrong. There were  three resolutions quoted in my opening statement and mentioned again above, in which all the UNSC confirms the risk and threat of those responsible for the Sept 11 attacks and that appropriate action should be taken against them, going almost as far as supporting the current action by the US in Afghanistan. Of course as mentioned above the fourth resolution on the matter did support the US actions and furthered them by giving them UN backing, by creating a peacekeeper force, which was managed by NATO.

My opponent is also incorrect about the applicability of Article 51 of the UN Charter, which in fact relates directly to the ability of the US to do exactly what they in fact did, which was take a collective self-defense action with allies against a hostile force whilst the UNSC decided what action to take. Once the UNSC had decided and released a resolution (the previously mentioned UNSC Resolution 1383) then the US complied with said resolution.

Furthermore his comments that there have been actions in Afghanistan since the invasion that have been illegal have no bearing on this debate, as the debate is on the legality of the war, which is to say that the US had a legal basis to go to war in the first place, as stated in my opening post. The fact that they did illegal things after they arrived in Afghanistan is moot, and is similar to the fact that a shoplifter steals an item in a shop after entering the shop. The illegal action is the shoplifting, not the entering of the shop itself. My opponent even states himself that the US originally had the intention of acting under the required laws (i.e. Geneva Convection) but then that order got over-ruled once the action was underway.

As to following police action rather than military action, his examples he gives are misleading as they are all to do with militias acting within the boundaries of the state that took the action; so much so that the British Army was not allowed to pursue IRA members back into the Republic of Ireland because they were acting as police not military. In this case that we are debating however, an international militia performed an act of aggression and terrorism on US soil and then ran back to their hiding holes in the mountains of Afghanistan, safe in the knowledge that the rulers of Afghanistan would do their best to mislead or misdirect the world if required to protect them, as the two groups were very ideologically aligned. In this it was very suitable that military force was used instead of executive/police force. INTERPOL would not have been equipped to arrest members of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, not conduct the correct procedures, esp since in 2001 Afghanistan was not a member of INTERPOL, and thus the work of INTERPOL would of been restricted or impossible to carry out. Thus the US was correct in it's authorisation of the use of military force to track international terrorists into a country that would be inaccessible to normal police forces, even international forces. 

So therefore, my argument is that the US war on Afghanistan had legality because it was legal in the eyes of the US legal system due to a piece of legislation being passed by the government, that the UN Charter gives the US the right to any actions of self-defense, there was a clear and present threat, there was no other appropriate body to carry out the actions required and that there was been no successful legal challenges to the decision to go to war in Afghanistan.

/me pokes wormstrum

Yes, yes it is...will discuss with the judges to get a result :-)

/bump is bad

but have you forgotten?

To close to call?

Ok, Walking_Corpse still is missing (I think his wife got him)...I have read through both arguments again, and will have to give it to You_Fool...

Primo voted for You_Fool, only slightly 51% to 49%. The reasons being, Einstein presented the weakest 2 posts of the debate, whilst also presenting the strongest.

I voted for You_fool, also not by much...your second post Flint was well constructed, but I felt that your final post lost momentum.

(sorry for the delay in my decision...started uni and such and have been flat out studying for an exam...if I do well I get to knock a year off my degree...so kind of worth studying my ass off at the moment)

Nice debate actually Congratulations to You_Fool

I actually should have slowed down and thought about the first post, oh well. Gj