Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Saddam's trial

While trying to wake up this morning and struggling with a cold that seems to have no intentions of ever going away, I heard a report on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme about the Saddam trial which re-visits the question of whether Saddam's trial should have been conducted outside Iraq and generally how well the trial is going.

I was pleasantly surprised by the guest, Geoffrey Nice QC, the lead prosecutor in the Milosevic case, who left a negative impression on me the one and only time I met him previously. He makes a number of interesting remarks and he is worth hearing. The key one is that it is really difficult to know really how the trial is going because it is only partially and rarely broadcast! This is something that I am currently working on together with James Gow, and it struck me recently when I searched the CNN database, that almost all clips of the trial are named something like "Chaos", "Circus", "Crisis" etc. reporting the trial only when Saddam is reprimanded/kicked out or something similar, while more often than not ignoring the evidence presented. This damages a key part of the process - namely storytelling and establishing facts on the alleged crimes.

Another point to make is the question on whether the trial should have been held somewhere else. Although the security situation in Iraq makes this and interesting proposition, it just shows that war crimes tribunals have an uphill struggle to prove their legitimcay and worthiness. The ICTY was often criticised as removed from the region and thus less able to contribute to the reconcilliation process in the former Yugoslavia. At the same time, the legitimacy of the Iraq tribunal is already contested. Having the trial somewhere else would have damaged it further.

...it's been a while

It just dawned on me that I have not posted anything on this Blog for a while (since 8 October to be precise). The prolific writings of my colleagues Theo and David have kept me entertained and wishing that I would have the same inspiration to publish stuff on my blog. I have decided that I am too lazy to do that (I can't even blame the workload as they probably have more on their plate than I do), but will try and force myself to come up with things. I am grateful to some in my tutor group, and Dan in particular, for leading by example and using the blog as much as they are. I think that there is a lot of merit in writing these blogs, and I certainly spend a lot of time reading various ones. But finding the inspiration to write something is proving more difficult... Anyhow, I will leave you with a video of two of my favorite US TV hosts.

Oh! And get the book...

Sunday, October 08, 2006

YouTube Videos and WiMW

There seems to be a growing trend amond WiMW academics to post YouTube videos on their blogs so I decided to join in the fun. This is my favorite recent video (admitedly not that recent, but I still think it is cool):



More seriously, YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo! Video are a great source of video on all sorts of things. In particular, I think that the amount of videos from Iraq and Afghanistan is interesting. These services provide a new outlet for soldiers to share their experience.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Military Blogs

David Betz noted a couple of days ago how interesting military blogs were. I have to agree. A couple of years ago I was teaching on a course at the Department of War Studies called "The Experience of War". It is a BA1 course (first year undergraduates) aiming to provide students with the a range of ways to study the experience of war. What I thought was lacking by that time were blogs. They are a valuable window into the world of soldiers these days and should be given more attention. For those interested in them, I recommed MilBlogs.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Resources for military students

The following was posted on Sergio's blog:

Dear Army/Military students,

The Prince Consort's Library in Aldershot can provide all essential coursework books and do post to warm & sandy locations...

They come on a long loan and the PCL staff are very helpful indeed, though you need to give them a couple of weeks lead time to get hold of the books.

The contact address for the Head Librarian, Tim Ward, is pcl@dstl.gov.uk

Cheers,
Sergio
PS Thanks to Roger MacMillan for this info.