State Department on the Iraq War

State has permitted its very able counsel, John Bellinger, to blog this week on the invaluable international law site, Opinio Juris. The arrangement is described here, and Mr. Bellinger has already provided a very comprehensive and substantive explanation of, for example, why the use of force (indeed, the prosecution of war) is appropriate against al Qaeda under international law, and how the administration views the obligations of the United States under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions (which got so much attention as a result of last year's Hamdan decision and the subsequent passage of the Military Commissions Act).

Readers may be alarmed — as they should be — by the degree to which modern international law strait-jackets the use of force in self-defense, such that actions that should be commonsense (e.g., making war against an international belligerent capable of projecting power on the scale al Qaeda has) seem to require extensive, factitious justification capable of jumping through numerous legal hoops. Such are our times, when issues that are not essentially "legal" are nevertheless looked at as if they were legal problems.

But given that this is the lay of the land, the Opinio Juris posts amply demonstrate that President Bush is not presiding over the cowboy administration of the international media's imagination. The administration has thoughtful positions — particularly well articulated by Mr. Bellinger — and it would be nice if its officials got out and engaged with critics more often.