In fact, except for this parenthetical remark, I generally agree with Ms. McArdle in this post as well, but the remark seems unnecessary. There are aggressors in war, and in the case of Iraq I hope we could agree that our government was that aggressor. Since aggressive war is itself a crime and a violation of international law, it is reasonable to expect that governments that wage aggressive war will be more likely to ignore legal conventions against other kinds of crimes committed during war. No one would deny that governments defending against invasion can commit atrocities, but because as the state of the war has been created by the aggressor there is some sense in which all atrocities that take place during the war can be traced back to the aggressor and the aggressor is responsible for them to one degree or another. Obviously, no state wages “peaceful” or “passive” wars, but not all states wage wars of aggression and I would wager that there is a connection between launching wars of aggression and the frequency of war crimes and other violations of international law. (bold mine)
I presume he refers back to the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which identifies "The Crime of Aggression" as a crime under the terms of the statute. But with an exception:
In a communication received on 6 May 2002, the Government of the United States of America informed the Secretary-General of the following:
"This is to inform you, in connection with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court adopted on July 17, 1998, that the United States does not intend to become a party to the treaty. Accordingly, the United States has no legal obligations arising from its signature on December 31, 2000. The United States requests that its intention not to become a party, as expressed in this letter, be reflected in the depositary's status lists relating to this treaty."
And you'll note that many states put interpretations or reservations on their signatures, so the behavior of the United States, though more extreme, is not fundamentally out of the character of the behavior of other states. So there's one question of whether or not aggressive war is a crime under international law, and yet another (unrelated) question of whether that law applies to the U.S.
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