One of my friends lent me a copy of Sept. 2007 Armchair General magazine, and the historical information in it is awesome. I will start the subscription later on this month.

My Question is this:

According to the Hague Convention of 1907, President Richard Nixon stated this as the green light to start bombing into neutral countries. He also stated in his book "No More Vietnams" the following:

It is illegal to bomb neutral countries. But Neutrality is more than pacifism. As the Hague Convention of 1907 stated, " A neutral country has the obligation not to allow it’s territory to be used by a belligerent. If the neutral country is unwilling or unable to prevet this, the other belligerent has the right to take appropriate counteraction."

Nixon stated this was authorization to start bombing into North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

This is my Question:

Is this authorization to bomb neutral countries that is adjacent to a combat zone we are in?

I have not been able to find this section in the Hague Convention of 1907 on the internet. Is this in the original convention? IE Print?

This crap that Iran has been doing against US have in my opinion are acts of War. From iran providing arms, weapons, advisors and now the Artillery rounds falling in Northern Iraq from Iran. Taking out targets inside Iran, that supply the advisors, arm and supply these terrorists that have been killing OUR TROOPS. I say bomb those targets and if iran was to counteract, then we will strike with extreme prejudice, and cripple them once and for all.

Warn only once, then we take action.

Thanks for your time.

Rich

AKA: sniper pfeiffer

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Dear Mr. Pfeiffer,

Thanks very much for your emails to Armchair General magazine and for reading ACG – and we do hope you decide to subcribe!

I am certainly not a Hague Convention scholar, but what I do know is that Laos and Cambodia were far from being ‘neutral’ during the Vietnam War. Both countries were routinely used as sanctuaries and ’supply conduits’ by North Vietnam from the very beginning of the "Second Vietnam War" in the early 1960s, and Nixon’s belated decision to bomb North Vietnamese bases and supply depots in Cambodia circa 1970 was "too little too late" to staunch the flow of war supplies into South Vietnam when it might have done some good to influence battlefield operations. North Vietnam could not have continued the war in South Vietnam without the sanctuaries and supplies located in these two ostensibly ‘neutral’ countries. Virtually the entire Ho Chi Minh Trail complex was in Laos and Cambodia and Nixon held off extensively bombing it only for political reasons (as the domestic protests exposed when the bombing did at long last take place). Nixon is still vilified by his opponents for the Cambodia bombings, but anyone concerned with protecting US troops must agree that attacking the enemy’s means of waging war was Nixon’s duty.

The comparison with Iran today and it’s aggression in and around Iraq is, in my opinion, similiar in many regards to the Cambodia/Laos situation during Vietnam with the added problem that Iranians are actually serving as combatants (something that Cambodians and Laotians did not do).

Thanks again for your emails to ACG. We do not need the books you offered, but thank you for the offer.

Jerry Morelock
Editor in Chief, Armchair General Magazine