P.S. I realized after some thinking that maybe the problem is this: I'm claiming might makes legally right, whereas you seem to think I'm claiming might makes morally right, which I'm not.
Maybe you can look at it this way: if you take your original post and re-write it so that it doesn't contain the words "legal" or "moral" or reference any abstract principles other than the interests of the powerful, you'll have the same argument you are making, except it will come across as absurd:
> Since at the most base level the use of force is necessary to [exert force], bombing is its own justification [for using force]. We're making a [use of force] that says [we are using force]....
The words "legal" and "international law" make your argument sound more reasonable, but only because the reader assumes they mean something like a codification of moral or social principles.
My goal is not trying to be argumentative. It's that I'm reflexively pacifist and deeply skeptical of arguments which seek to justify violence, especially when made from a position of relative power or hypocrisy, and in a way which glosses over the moral problems in killing people.
> The words "legal" and "international law" make your argument sound more reasonable, but only because the reader assumes they mean something like a codification of moral or social principles.
I think the assumption that laws actually correspond to widespread morals and social principles is the fundamental problem here. It's not a valid assumption. I think it's actually immoral to believe that because something is lawful it must be good. In other words, if somebody actually does have "legal justification" to kill someone else (no greater authority will stop them), that doesn't necessarily make it a good thing, e.g. in the case of capital punishment in the US, or in the case of using chemical weapons in Syria absent some kind of foreign intervention, or in the case of the US bombing Syria.
Morals are relative, and not everyone will agree with a law. Illegal things can be moral, immoral things can be legal. In the best case everyone's morals contribute to the law, in the worst case it's only the lawmaker's morals that truly matter. None of that changes the fact that for something to be a law there has to be a punishment for breaking the law, and that punishment for doing something makes it into a de facto law. It's unpalatable but there it is.
I'm a pacifist too, for what it's worth; I believe violence is only a good idea when it prevents even greater violence, I believe it's a good thing for power to be concentrated by governments, and I don't like the current state of international relations where rich countries tell poor countries what to do. But, I'm not an anarcho-pacifist.
Fair enough. My complaint was with the statement that bombing is its own legal justification. As above, it is always ethical or moral considerations that "justify" action (make them just). To the extent that law is simply an expression of the interests of the powerful, the argument for use of force becomes absurd.
