#Syria, The Geneva Convention and President Obama

[Pryderi]

The UN Charter's Article 25 and others[19] require that obligations to the United Nations prevail over all other treaty obligations. The UNSC rarely invokes its authority regarding the Geneva Conventions and so most issues are resolved by regional treaties or by national law.

Geneva Convention also defines the rights and protections afforded to non-combatants, yet, because the Geneva Conventions are about people in war, the articles do not address warfare proper — the use of weapons of war — which is the subject of the Hague Conventions (First Hague Conference, 1899; Second Hague Conference 1907), and the bio–chemical warfare Geneva Protocol (Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, 1929).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_the_Geneva_Conventions

I guess no one but President Obama believes in the obligations of treaties.

[mike_c]

1. that is the most twisted logic I've seen all day....

The UN Charter and the Kellog-Brand Pact specifically forbid attacking another country EXCEPT for immediate self defense or under UN authority. Ban Ki Moon confirmed yesterday that attacking Syria would be a war crime. AND the supremacy clause of the Constitution establishes Kellog-Brand and the Charter as U.S. law. Enforcing the Geneva Convention absent U.N. authority for war must occur at The Hague, not in Damascus.

Obama and Congress-- and American exceptionalism-- are trampling on our treaty obligations.

[Pryderi]

2. That's only because

Security Council members, Russia and China, are staunchly against foreign intervention, and have repeatedly vetoed past resolutions brought out by other members against the Syrian regime.

http://www.ibtimes.com/ban-ki-moon-us-unilateral-action-against-syria-will-violate-un-charter-says-use-force-allowed-only

The UN can't act enforce Geneva Convention and other protocols. It's because of Russia and China will veto it.

Violating the UN Charter and enforcing the Geneva Convention is the only way to enforce treaties and punish those that break human rights/chemical weapons agreements.

[mike_c]

3. kinda like destroying the village in order to save it, huh?

We are just as intransigent as Russia and China on the UNSC. It's called consensus, and civilized people don't just break their agreements when the consensus doesn't go their way. The whole point of SC vetos is to prevent one country from running roughshod over the others.