How America Gets Away With Murder Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against

They call it "collateral damage," but legally and morally it is really mass murder. In Kosovo, America claimed its war was a "humanitarian intervention," in Afghanistan, "self-defense," and in Iraq, it claimed the authority of the Security Council of the United Nations. Yet each of these wars was illegal according to established rules of international law. According to these rules, illegal wars fall within the category of "supreme international crimes". So how come the war crimes tribunals never manage to turn their sights on America and always wind up putting America's enemies -- "the usual suspects" -- on trial? This new book by renowned scholar Michael Mandel offers a critical account of America's illegal wars and a war crimes system that has granted America's leaders an unjust and dangerous impunity, effectively encouraging their illegal wars and the war crimes that always flow from them.

Michael Mandel is Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, Canada. He has also taught law at universities in Italy and in Israel, and frequently appears as a commentator on radio and television both in Canada and abroad. In 1999 he led an international effort to have NATO leaders prosecuted for crimes against humanity committed during the Kosovo war. He is currently co-Chair of Lawyers Against the War, founded in Canada in 2001 with members in thirteen countries. He is a contributor to Beyond September 11: An Anthology of Dissent, edited by Phil Scraton (Pluto Press, 2002).