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tweakabelle -> RE: Putin coup in NY times (9/12/2013 6:57:25 AM)
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It's odd that none of the players, all of whom claim to be upholding one or other version of international law, has yet proposed the proper route for dealing with all the war crimes committed by all the various players in Syria - and there has been lots, committed by all sides.
Is it too much to hope that someone will remember that an investigation by the UN can be established into war crimes in Syria? That this investigation gets underway sooner rather than later, and that its findings be referred directly to the ICJ in The Hague? That this investigation remain ongoing after the war is over so that all the perpetrators will answer to justice at some point, regardless of whether they are winners or losers? This is the appropriate legal way of dealing with war crimes, in accordance international law.
Knowing that whatever the outcome of the civil war in Syria, the players will have to account for their actions to the ICJ just might succeed in getting them to moderate their behaviour in future. It will give some limited reassurance to all of us who have been horrified by the chemical weapons attack, and the countless other barbarities in Syria. It will give some tiny glimmer of justice to the tens of thousands who have died while the great powers decided to use Syria as the place to act out their power games.
Above all it will make international law relevant, and not the private plaything of the great powers of the world.
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