British Democracy and Iraq War Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

British Democracy and Iraq War - Essay Example They also argued that there was need to liberate the Iraq people from the oppressive regime which was not democratic and was abusing the human rights of its citizens (Armstrong, Farrell, & Maiguashca, 2005). Democratic norms are in most cases not perceived to be relevant to the foreign and international policies of a country. However, in the consideration of the democracy framework of various governments a number of critical questions arise. The first one is about respect of the international law by a country, basing on the fact that such a government cannot easily acquire the democratic tribute in regard to the rule of law locally if it is capable of violating the rule of law in a foreign country. The international law is much vaguer compared to the domestic one, but majority of the international lawyers are in agreement that Iraq's invasion by both the United States of America and Britain was a blatant breach on the charter of the United Nations. The charter is very clear and stipulates that armed forces can only be used in a case of self defense or when the United Nations Security Council explicitly authorizes use of such force (Vickers, 2004). Tony Blair in attacking Iraq had complete disregard of the United Nation's charter in fact, his speech in 1999 whi... ve failed to implement them and hence country's like Britain and the United States of America, have to bear some burden like invading Iraq since they have a sense of world responsibility. In this case he was actually implying that his government had the right to invade a sovereign government like that of Iraq and thus participate in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations. The British government was in this case very biased as it even chose the resolutions to enforce and which ones to leave out, which by any standards cannot be viewed as respecting international rule of law (Allawi, 2007). The British government argued that it was not important to wait the United Nations to pass resolutions that would explicitly authorize the use of force in Iraq as this could mean taking a back seat and watch as a humanitarian crisis takes center stage in Iraq as it happened in Kosovo. By basing their argument on the Kosovo humanitarian catastrophe the British government justified the removal by force of the Iraq's undemocratic regime, arguing that the Iraq government was actually violating human rights of its citizens (Beck, Grande, & Cronin, 2007). The second question evolves around Britain's consistency on its quest to support human rights and democracy in foreign countries. When the human rights and democracy are used as base of justifying morality of a government's policies then consistency is considered to be a vital factor. Such arguments when applied selectively loose meaning and the weight they ought to carry. Although, largely believed that the more powerful and democratic countries can support human rights and democracy on foreign countries, they cannot achieve their objectives by use of force, since that would in fact, mean violation of the same human rights