My thoughts on Arbour’s statement are now posted over at Opinio Juris. Details here.

Roger Alford

Am confused myself: diplomatically, a war must in fact be “declared.” But if it walks and looks like a duck, isn’t it a duck? How else do you describe the events in the region?

War, in fact, is being engaged in for some of the actors … the lesser of the two Islamic jihads (the larger being an internal, personal struggle with the self and temptations, behaviors), the military jihad, is evidenced by the self-annihilatory acts that have occurred. So perhaps the UN is recognizing that “their” (read: Western) definition of war can/should be broadened to include this lesser jihad?

In which case, the Commissioner’s comments are not premature, but in fact quite sophisticated and cosmopolitan.

opposing arguments are rarely stupid; they focus on different facts and come from a different perspective.

your use of the quoted text could as easily be relied on to persuade an individual engaged in military self-annihilatory acts (that which the Western media describes as “jihad”) to study carefully who is and who is not a military combatant. would the argument be stupid, then? who do you think the UN statement was in fact addressing? only the sovereign actors?

This is just stupid, ignoring the question of whether “humanitarian law,” international or not, is of any relevance.

“Similarly, the bombardment of sites with alleged military significance, but resulting invariably in the killing of innocent civilians, is unjustifiable.”

Alas, this goes beyond stupid to the willfully full of shit. When war is outlawed, I suppose only outlaws will be able to wage war. Good grief.

Islamic Jurisprudence has a similar (sp?) normative theory; it too, excludes civilians/non-combatants as targets.

As normative assertions, however, it is very easy to steamroll and manipulate these parameters.