Looks like the war with Iran is cooking off

[quintessentone]

No disrespect meant to the AI, but there is nothing in there that proves the war to be "illegal".

The UN is not a legislative body, however much it wishes it was. It does not exercise legal jurisdiction over anyone at all.

Common Law does not require an actual wound for "self-defense". In other words, I would not have to wait for a man to shoot a hole in me before I am allowed to defend myself. The mere threat of being shot, along with my own sincere belief that he can (has arms) and will (has threatened me with those arms) is enough, legally, for me to neutralize that threat. Iran itself authorized the attacks by ending the negotiations with the claim that they "have 460 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium, and can build 11 nuclear weapons with that". That statement, along with their ongoing ballistic missile production, taken together, are threat enough to justify defense. A prudent man does not wait for an attacker to pull the trigger at him before he neutralizes the threat. If he waits for the trigger pull, he may be too dead thereafter to defend himself.

Constitutional prohibitions likewise do not apply. No war has been declared by anyone. 60 days have not elapsed. So, nothing illegal there, either.

Some of the strikes MAY be prohibited under the Geneva Conventions. We do not know yet, as no evidence either way has been presented. While the Geneva Conventions do prohibit strikes on civilian targets, those same conventions make allowances for strikes on civilian targets being employed as military infrastructure. For example, a hospital or school or religious structure that is currently being used as a military staging area or depot is a legitimate target under the Geneva Conventions, because it has, at that point, been converted from a civilian target to a military target.

So, a bold claim of  "illegal war" is not a a statement of fact, it is a statement of speculation being masqueraded as a statement of fact. There is a name for those sorts of statements that escapes me at the moment...

FWIW, the Nuremberg Trials were factually illegal under "international law" for lack of jurisdiction, but I've never heard anyone complain about that.

Right or wrong, people will try to bend "law" to mean whatever they want it to mean, and in doing so will frequently bend it right out of the bounds of actual law in their efforts. It's not a "Left" or "Right" thing, it's just a "people" thing. That's why we have courts - to take that determination out of the hands of the individual, and put it into the hands of a supposedly disinterested "third party" of competent jurisdiction. It's not a perfect system, and the "third parties" sometimes display a startling lack of impartiality, but it's still the best system we've got.

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ETA: regarding the Constitutional requirement for congress to declare war, that is true so far as it goes. However, Congress has not declared a war since WW II, yet we've had quite a few, and sometimes lengthy, military actions since then, none of them declared by Congress. Truman did it (Korea), JFK did it, LBJ did it, Nixon presided over and ended the same one the previous two presidents ran with (Vietnam), even Milquetoast Carter did it with his half-assed and failed  "attack" meant to spring the hostages in Iran, Reagan did it, Bush I did it, Clinton did it, Bush II did it, Obama did it, and Biden did it. Most of those actions were never questioned... but now, it's Trump, so now we have claims of an "illegal" war. The sole intent of those claims can only be to "muddy the waters",since nothing has been adjudicated anywhere in a competent court of law. "Illegal war" as a claimed statement of fact is premature.

Regarding the empty, hollow term "war of aggression", can anyone name for me a WAR that was NOT aggressive? If war isn't aggressive, you're doing it wrong... so, an empty, useless term that is merely an appeal to emotion.

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I think this needs to be bumped.
I'm still seeing that ridiculous 'illegal war' phrase being used.
This is a good reminder that it's NOT an 'illegal war'.

Well if Trump's allies say it's an illegal war, then it's an illegal war that will stop them from joining said war, so Trump f**d himself.