| The Rajpal Abeynayake Column By Rajpal Abeynayake | ||||||
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Exposing War on Iraq - US justifications are 'excuses'
On the face of it, it might even appear that this argument holds water. It has been said by those who support the American President's war on Iraq, that those who do not want war are the “weasel squad'' who are similar to those who wanted to appease Hitler before WW2, and before they knew what kind of megalomaniac he was. Apparently the US Vice President Dick Cheney for instance, reads a great deal of literature on military campaigns in history, and he is convinced that world history is full of leaders who waged war against the wishes of their allies, and the 'right thinking men' of the day but were vindicated later, and considered in history as heroes.i For all those reasons the US war on Iraq needs to be carefully considered to determine whether it passes this 'moral crusade' test. After all, George Bush and his backers in this campaign on Iraq, say that the UN is impotent, that Saddam Hussein has to be removed for the simple fact that he has caused thousands of his own people to be killed and tortured, and that anti war protestors are stupid because after all America wants to get rid of a tyrant, when nobody else is prepared to do that dirty work. But consider these facts: 'During the height of Saddam Hussein's repression during the 1980s, the United States provided military and economic aid to his government and even covered up for Iraqi human rights abuses, such as falsely claiming that the Iranians were responsible for the Halabja massacre and other atrocities'.ii 'The heavy U.S-led bombing campaign during the 1991 Gulf War targeted much of Iraq's civilian infrastructure, including the country's irrigation and water purification systems. The subsequent sanctions have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, mostly children.iii Now, a nation which has caused worse hardships for the citizens of a country than the 'tyrant' that it wants to liberate that country from, can hardly be regarded as a fearless paragon of moral virtue that is not only motivated by doing the right thing, but is also doing so in brave defiance of “weasel like'' world opinion. When one considers that the US tolerated and covered up for Saddam Hussein and his atrocities once upon a time, and when one considers that the US has had absolute disregard for the civilian population during a previous war it waged on Iraqi soil, the whole 'liberator' argument rings so hollow that the US immediately needs to vacate that claim to the moral high ground. But it is also being suggested by Bush and his backers, that even if there are other regimes that are said to be amassing 'weapons of mass destruction,'' (North Korea for instance, which is said to be in possession of nuclear weapons) which are not coming up for US scrutiny, that the attack on Iraq is still one that is proper and warranted because it only gets rid of a scoundrel. The tenor of that argument is something like 'allright, even if we are not doing the perfect thing here, and are not observing the niceties such as obtaining a UN resolution, we are still only getting rid of a scoundrel and a dictator, so what's the fuss all about?'' In an imperfect world, even that argument may have been enough to convince some, even if it certainly does not convince me. Dismissing years of accumulated achievements in international law, by disregarding the need for UN backing against an intervention, in my reckoning makes it impossible to justify the US incursion in Iraq at the very outset. But some others
might not think so, and might reason that getting rid of a scoundrel
even it means that it is not being done according to accepted international
tenets is still right, because, after all, one is only getting rid
of a scoundrel in the process and not doing any real damage to the
existing world order. 'The Pentagon has rewarded a Texas construction firm with close ties to US President George W. Bush a multimillion-dollar contract to oversee Iraq's oil fields. The Houston-based company, Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton Company, has won a multimillion-dollar contract to oversee any fire fighting operations in Iraqi oil fields after any US-led invasion. Vice-President Dick Cheney served as Halliburton's chief executive officer from 1995 to 2000.'iv The US motives are so suspect, in fact, that a close scrutiny of history might reveal that there is almost no chance that the US has noble motives this time around, of “removing a scoundrel and a dictator and liberating Iraq's people''. It is known that "the CIA staged a coup that toppled the constitutional government in Iran and installed the Shah as dictator. The Shah then promptly turned over most of the country's oil resources to American oil companies.''v Considering that the US is a country that has a history of installing puppets who later turned over the oil resources of this country to US interests, can anyone be convinced that the US motives this time around are suddenly out of character, and are now quite noble? Some might however argue that notwithstanding all of that, the US is yet only getting rid of a murderer and a dictator who committed genocide on his own people. However, "notwithstanding all of that'' is not a good argument, because the US could have perused other options without incurring immense civilian suffering in Iraq. Despite UN plans and US plans to “feed the war displaced'' the longer the war gets, the more civilians are going to be trapped without supplies placing them under threat of starvation - even death. The US has options other than a war to ferret out Saddam Hussein, such as (just to take one) engineering a 'regime change' from within. This is assuming that it is the business of the US to get rid of Saddam Hussein in the first place, which it is not. However bad he may be it is not the job of the US to replace the international community as the ultimate arbiter in removing a bad hat from power. Also, the George.W. Bush administration has a record of blocking international treaties that would have forbidden the use of biological and chemical weapons. The US also blocked several times a UN resolution that would have required Israel to place its nuclear program under international safeguards. Also the US needs to show some good faith in beginning to disarm itself of nuclear weapons, before ferreting out Saddam Hussein for his possession of weapons of mass destruction. Such facts -
-and an abundance of similar facts - make it indubitably clear that
it is utterly hypocritical for the US to claim that its pursuit
of war on Iraq is one of securing justice. In fact it makes it clear
that George. W. Bush's motives are anything but noble - or right.
This is why a prominent group of US lawyers opposed to the war on
Iraq, recently sent the President an official signed communiqué
to the effect that he and his officials can be prosecuted for their
war on Iraq.vi
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