Killing Iraqi Children--Jacob Hornberger

Tweet "Such claims, however, miss an important point: U.S. military forces have no right, legal or moral, even to be in Iraq killing anyone. Why? Because neither the Iraqi people nor their government ever attacked the United States. The Iraqi people had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington. Thus, this was an optional war against Iraq, one that President Bush and his military forces did not have to wage."

"The attack on Iraq was akin to, say, attacking Bolivia or Uruguay or Mongolia, after 9/11. Those countries also had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks and so it would have been illegal and immoral for President Bush to have ordered an invasion and occupation of those countries as well. To belabor the obvious, the fact that some people attacked the United States on 9/11 didn’t give the United States the right to attack countries that didn’t have anything to do with the 9/11 attacks."

and later in the article:

"Suppose an armed robber enters a person’s home and the owner’s neighbor comes over to help him. The homeowner and his neighbor fire at the robber who fires back, killing both the homeowner and his neighbor."

"Can the robber claim self-defense? No, because he had no right to be in the home in the first place. The intruder is guilty of murder, both morally and legally, because he doesn’t have the right to be where he is when he shoots the homeowner and his friend."

"The situation is no different in Iraq because U.S. soldiers don’t have any right to be there. “But they were ordered to invade Iraq by their commander in chief.” They could have refused to obey orders to deploy to Iraq, just as Lt. Ehren Watada has done. Watada refused to loyally obey the orders of his commander in chief. Instead, he chose to obey his conscience and also to fulfill the oath he took to support and defend the Constitution."

found on antiwar.com