🦋 Shock and Awe
I'm reading this article in the NY Times Week in Review, and scratching my head. I have a sort of vague memory that the night before the war against Iraq started, there was a bombing raid with the objective "to kill Mr. Hussein and end the war before it began." I don't remember that event standing out much though against the general horror I was feeling that my country was being pulled into an illegal war by an illegitimate administration. But thinking about it now: wasn't this raid flatly illegal? To make an attempt on the life of the sovereign of a country we are not at war with? Or perhaps war had already been declared*, prior to the initial attack. Thinking about it further, I guess Hussein would be considered a member of the military by virtue of being something like "commander in chief", so a legitimate target.
 Also in the Times today: endlessly depressing and enraging op-ed pieces by supporters of the war allowing as how there might have been some problems with the execution of the war.
*(I mean, not "declared" and not "war" -- I don't quite understand the language that would be needed to discuss the legality of the whole kit n' kaboodle -- but it seems to me now like the initial raid was no more illegal than the rest of the, for lack of a better word, war.)
posted afternoon of Sunday, March 16th, 2008
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