30 Mar Comment Thread to Legal Adviser Harold Koh’s Statement on Syria
30.03.12
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3 Comments
We thank Legal Adviser Harold Koh for guest posting the statement on Syria that he delivered earlier today at the American Society of International Law Annual Meeting. As this posting is a release of a speech text and Legal Adviser Koh will not be online to respond to comments, we at OJ didn’t place a comment thread under the released text. However, we open the following comment thread to encourage discussion of the speech.
One thing missing from his speech which I appreciate is any indication of what the Syrian dissidents want. There is a great emphasis on what we are doing to reassure all of us about what we are doing, but one question left unanswered is what the Syrians want us to do. We can then see whether this is feasible under international law and given the state of the UN Security Council. It would have been nice. As to the 9000 dead – it is very ironic to me that as we focus on this we do not mention the 100 000 or so dead in Iraq and the 4500 or so American troops dead in Iraq from that war. Assad is horrendous for killin 9000 but we can leave sous silence what we caused to happen next door. Also, left in silenct is the collaboration between the US and Syrian authorities in extraordinary renditions during the Bush years where we sent folks to be tortured like Arar. I recognize that it is not consider germane to many to speak of these things in such a speech. I write about them here just so we all know that this is part… Read more »
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