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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (15172)	3/21/2003 2:38:23 AM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

This article can be found on the web at thenation.com Iraq and Beyond (Nothing can justify this war) The Bush Administration has launched a war against Iraq, a war that is unnecessary, unwise and illegal. By attacking a nation that has not attacked us and that does not pose an immediate threat to international peace and security, the Administration has violated the United Nations Charter and opened a new and shameful chapter in US history. Moreover, by abandoning a UN inspection and disarmament process that was working, it has chosen a path that is an affront not only to America's most cherished values but to the world community. The UN did not fail; rather, Washington sought a UN imprimatur for a war it had already decided to wage and scorned it when the Administration couldn't get its way. To justify the war, the President has invoked the doctrine of "preventive" war, under which the United States is to be the sole judge of that doctrine's legitimacy and application. Thus, the war is about more than Iraq; it is about the character of our society and the international order in which we live. The Administration hopes that a quick victory will not only silence critics and confer an ex post facto legitimacy on the war but also give momentum to its larger political agenda. But even if there are minimal casualties and devastation, that will not justify overturning international norms developed over sixty years. Nor can it legitimize a worldview that will make Americans the target of international outrage and make the world less secure. Americans will soon be forced to confront the question of who is to pay for what is about to unfold. The White House has withheld from Congress and the American people the true political, humanitarian and economic costs of the war and of the occupation that is to follow, but even by the most modest estimates, they will be staggering. In addition to lost lives in Iraq and ruptured friendships around the world, they include grave domestic damage; by adding $200 billion or more in war-related costs to the cost of his tax cuts for the wealthy, Bush has signed a death warrant for many social welfare programs and damaged our society for years to come. The costs also include the renewed threat of nuclear proliferation from countries, including North Korea, fearful of leaving themselves without a deterrent to US aggression. Another issue that must be confronted is the postwar agenda in the Middle East. Already hawks are arguing that the United States should use a conquered Iraq as a base for increased military pressure on Iran and Syria, with the goal of further "regime change." If the Administration chooses this course, it will put the lie to its rhetoric about bringing democracy to the region. Instead, it must work cooperatively with the European Union, Russia and the UN to dismantle Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and bring about a viable Palestinian state. If we are present at the creation of a new American empire, we are also present at the creation of another superpower--the largest, most broadly based peace and justice movement in history, a movement that has engaged millions of people here and around the globe. In America, in the weeks and years ahead, this movement confronts several historic challenges. In the long term it must build an alternative foreign policy and sustain its dedication to a nonimperial future. In the short term it must organize to remove the Bush Administration from office and elect new leaders dedicated to international cooperation and peace.

To: stockman_scott who wrote (15172)	3/21/2003 7:43:23 AM
From: Kip518	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 89467

[view of the war in a Pakistan newspaper] Op-ed: Injustice that will scar us forever Farish A Noor For those of us who happen to have friends and colleagues in the United States, this is a sad moment indeed. We fear for the safety and welfare of our American friends, who will probably live in fear for the rest of their lives Thus it has come to pass that despite the counsel, protests, admonition and appeals of the entire global community, the United States of America has decided to go it alone along with a handful of crony states hanging on to its grimy coat-tails. America’s aggression towards Iraq has proven once and for all that it is indeed an expansionist military power with limitless ambitions and the willingness to use whatever means necessary to get its way in the world. The American government has also unmasked itself, and revealed its truly perfidious side: The whole campaign to gain international acceptance for its misdeeds was nothing more than a smokescreen to buy itself more time before it went about the real task that has been guiding its foreign policy all along — to destabilise and topple the regime of Saddam Hussein and to put in its place a puppet regime that it can control all the way from Washington. As was the case in Afghanistan, this is yet another attempt to undermine and take over the government of a Muslim country in order to be able to ensure that the US will have indirect control of its internal management, economic development, human and natural resources, and to ensure that it will remain dependent and beholden to the West forever. There is a word for this: Imperialism. The rest of the world stands dumbfounded and paralysed before this demonstration of brute force and violence. Yet, there remain many among us who still cannot comprehend what has happened and what is going to happen in the near future. This state of uncertainty exists only because so many of us have been deluded all along, thinking that the United States was a genuine promoter of democracy and human rights. We were naive in our childish assumption that a country that speaks the language of liberty and justice might actually believe in what it preaches, oblivious to the cruel fact that governments — like individuals — can lie and practice deceit. For months we played along, failing to question the blatant hypocrisy and contradictions that stared us in the face: first we were told the US would seek international approval; then we were told it would act unilaterally. First we were told the US wanted Iraq to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction; then we were told that Iraq would be invaded in any case. First we were told the US and its allies might relent should Saddam concede to their demands; then we were told the US would attack the country even if Saddam were to go into exile. The goalposts have been moved so many times, we do not even remember where they were when all of this started. A war with absolute and final consequences has been fought on the plane of relativity and truth has been the first casualty, as always. The human costs of the Iraqi conflict will be beyond measure, but in the long run it is America that will stand to lose the most. The American government has exposed its true nature, and American foreign policy has lost what little moral credibility it was left with. Never again will the world believe in America’s claims to be the cradle of democracy and liberty; never again will we believe that America actually believes or practices what it preaches abroad; never again will we accept the “guiding hand” of the US without fearing the dagger that will stab us in the back. President George W. Bush will go down in history as the man who single-handedly destroyed the name, image and status of the United States for posterity. The nation that prides itself as the “home of the free and the land of the brave” has shown that it is nothing more than an introverted, isolated, marginalised and insecure state with more military power than it can handle. It is the United States that has proven itself to be the biggest threat to the freedom and liberty of other nations. For those of us who happen to have friends and colleagues in the United States, this is a sad moment indeed. We fear for the safety and welfare of our American friends, who will probably live in fear for the rest of their lives and who will never again be able to travel abroad without having to bear the stigma of being labelled “American”. Thanks to the hawks of Washington, being an American today has become an insult and an embarrassment. The geo-political costs of America’s latest adventure will also be high. Despite the paper-thin assurances it has given, America’s political elite fails to realise that for the rest of the world this has been nothing more than a war against the Muslims. Decades of cross-cultural dialogue and bridge-building have been destroyed in a hail of bullets and barrage of bombs. How these bridges can ever be rebuilt again is a question that nobody can answer at the moment. More worrying still is the suspicion — deeply held by many — that Washington’s elite has no interest in seeing these bridges rebuilt at all, unless it is solely on their terms and serving their interests. For now, though, we stand weak and impotent before the might of this colossal power that has gone beyond the pale of morality and reason. All we have left are the weapons of the weak and the protests of the downtrodden: Shame on you, America. In your quest for revenge you have scarred humanity forever. Dr Farish A Noor is a Malaysian political scientist and human rights activist dailytimes.com.pk

To: stockman_scott who wrote (15172)	3/22/2003 12:03:48 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 89467

Comments? ......I should have known. You can't parody the United Nations. It inhabits -- no, it has constructed -- a universe so Orwellian that, yes, Iraq is going to chair the May 12-June 27 session of the United Nations' single most important disarmament negotiating forum. Iran will co-chair. Defenders of the United Nations will write this off as a simple accident, pointing out that the chairmanship rotates alphabetically under the U.N. absurdity that grants all member states equal moral standing. Fine. How, then, do U.N. defenders explain the recent elevation of Libya to the chairmanship of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights? You couldn't make this one up either. It was no alphabetical accident. Libya was elected, by deliberate vote, by overwhelming vote -- 33 to 3. The seven commission members from the European Union, ever reliable in their cynicism, abstained. They will now welcome a one-party police state -- which specializes in abduction, assassination, torture and detention without trial -- to the chair of the United Nations' highest body charged with defending human rights. This is the United Nations. This is the institution whose support Democrats insist the United States must have to validate the legitimacy of its actions, such as the forcible disarming of Saddam Hussein. This is the institution to which they turn to test the worthiness of decisions taken by the president and Congress of the United States. It is a kind of moral idiocy: the greatest defender of freedom on the planet, enjoying the freest institutions, seeking its moral yardstick in the looking-glass values of a corrupt, perverse institutional relic. When President Bush finished his stirring State of the Union case for war on Hussein, the last redoubt of his Democratic opponents was this: Well, yes, Hussein does appear to have weapons of mass destruction, but we cannot go it alone, we must have the United Nations behind us. (Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia has already introduced a resolution to that effect. Several House Democrats are planning to follow suit.) These protestations are ritual, and mindless. How would the vote of Syria, member of both the Security Council and the State Department's list of terrorist states, confer legitimacy on America's actions? Or the vote of China? Or, for that matter, France, whose president called the president of Syria to coordinate Security Council strategy, and whose interest in stopping the war is a matter of finance (to protect its huge contracts with Saddam Hussein) and vanity (to be the one European ex-power that tames the American cowboy). The great lament of the president's critics is that "Europe" is against us. This is a fiction. Britain is with us, as are Spain and Italy, as are Portugal and Denmark, as are Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the other Central Europeans. The opponents are France and Germany, with Belgium and Luxembourg poodling along behind. By my count, that is four. When the United States asked NATO to convene to give military support to (fellow member) Turkey in the event of war with Iraq, 14 members said yes; only the Rhineland Four objected. The Rhineland Four have been undermined, however, by, of all people, the mild-mannered Hans Blix. Blix never really found anything big in his scavenger hunt through Iraq, but he reported to the Security Council that Iraq's regime had failed to cooperate and disarm. Under Resolution 1441, that is a material breach. It is a casus belli. The French got around this inconvenience by changing the meaning of the very resolution they had negotiated just 90 days ago. Things are going swimmingly, they say, because with Blix in country, Iraq is contained. But the resolution says nothing about containment. It demands disarmament. After the Blix report, France has nowhere to hide. It is the moment of truth for France, and, in a larger sense, for the United Nations. The United Nations is on the verge of demonstrating finally and fatally its moral bankruptcy and its strategic irrelevance: moral bankruptcy, because it will have made a mockery of the very resolution on whose sanctity it insists; strategic irrelevance, because the United States is going to disarm Iraq anyway. Having proved itself impotent in the Balkan crisis and now again in the Iraq crisis, the United Nations will sink once again into irrelevance. This time it will not recover. And the world will be better off for it. © 2003 The Washington Post Company