|
July 21. 2002
Dave Marsh
Mr. Big Stuff:
Alan Lomax, Great White Fraud
James T. Phillips
"I'll
Tell You No Lies"
The Human Rubble of War
July 20, 2002
Gavin Keeney
The Grave
New Urbanism
World Trade Center Burlesque
Jacob Levich
"I
Was Schooled in Hate"
Confessions of a
Summer Camp Terror Tot
Thomas Croft
Augusta,
GA
Growing Up in the Deep South
Alexander Cockburn
The
Market Hogwallow:
Popgun Populism Isn't Enough
July 19, 2002
Abe Bonowitz / SueZann
Bosler
A Discussion
with Jeb Bush on the Death Penalty
Jonathan Power
No Need
for War Against Iraq
Rick Giombetti
Qwest
Death Watch
Kurt Nimmo
Of Mice,
Bullets & Bombs
M. Shahid Alam
Through
Racist Eyes:
Is Eurocentrism Unique?
July 18, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
Business
As Usual
Jerre Skog
I Spy: Now
Let's be Fair,
the USA Ain't East Germany
Ralph Nader
The CEO
Crimewave:
Corporate Socialism
Mahbubul Karim (Sohel)
The Rising Tensions
Between Spain and Morocco
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel
and Squawk:
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save the White House?
July 17, 2002
Philip Farruggio
The
New Role Model:
Remember Jesus, George?
Zara Gelsey
Who's
Reading Over
Your Shoulder?
Behzad Yaghmaian
9/11 and
Fotress Europe:
the Drama of the New
Moslem Diaspora
Mike Ferner
War, Incorporated
Gary Leupp
Bush, Burqas
and the Oppression of Afghan Women
July 16, 2002
Pierre Tristam
Faith--based
Capitalism in
the Ruins of the Market
Kurt Nimmo
How My
35mm Camera Almost Became a Tool of Treason
Robert Fisk
The Kashmir
Distraction
Salam al--Marayati
When
is Terrorism
Not Defined as Terrorism?
Kathleen Christison
The
Image Problem:
Anti--Palestinian Bias
from Wilson to Bush
July 15, 2002
Gavin Keeney
In One
of Safire's Ears,
Out the Other
CounterPunch Wire
Nader in
Cuba
Ralph Nader
The Secret
World of Banking
Dave Marsh
Vincible:
Michael Jackson, Racism and the Music Cartel
Rahul Mahajan
Justice
for Bhopal
Jeffrey St. Clair
Seduced
by a Legend
The Return of Jimmy T99 Nelson
July 14, 2002
Bill Christison
The
DOA (Poem)
David Vest
I'll Never
Get Out of This Band Alive
July 13, 2002
M. Junaid Alam
A Process
of Dehumanization
Gavin Keeney
Go Tell
Karl Rove!
Matt Vidal
Corporate
"Ethics" Red Herrings
Ed Whitfield
Lessons
from Independence Day
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
July
22, 2002
Bush Jr.'s Nuclear
Sabre-Rattling
The Rogue Elephant
by Francis A Boyle
When George Bush Jr came to power in January of
2001, he proceeded to implement foreign affairs and defense policies
that were every bit as radical, extreme and excessive as the
Reagan/Bush administrations had starting in January of 1981.
To be sure, Bush Jr had no popular mandate to do anything. Indeed,
a majority of the American electorate had voted for his corporate-cloned
opponent.
Upon his installation, Bush Jr's "compassionate
conservatism" quickly revealed itself to be nothing more
than reactionary Machiavellianism--as if there had been any real
doubt about this during the presidential election campaign. Fascism
with a friendly face. Even the Bush Jr cast of Machiavellian
characters were pretty much the same as the original Reagan/Bush
foreign affairs and defense "experts," many of whom
were called back into service and given promotions for international
crimes they had committed anywhere from ten to twenty years ago.
It was deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra aptly put it.
International
Legal Nihilism
In quick succession the world saw these
Bush Jr Leaguers repudiate the Kyoto Protocol on global warming,
the International Criminal Court, the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty (CTBT), an international convention to regulate the trade
in small arms, a verification Protocol for the Biological Weapons
Convention, an international convention to regulate and reduce
smoking, the World Conference Against Racism, and the  Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems Treaty,
inter alia. To date the Bush Jr Leaguers have not found an international
convention that they like. The only exception to this rule was
their shameless exploitation of the 11 September 2001 tragedy
in order to get the US House of Representatives to give Bush
Jr so-called "fast-track" trade negotiation authority
so as to present the American People and Congress with yet another
non-amendable fait accompli on behalf of American multinationals,
corporations, banks, insurance companies, the high-tech and biotech
industries, Wall Street, etc. The epitome of "globalization,"
American-style.
More ominously, once into office the
Bush Jr Leaguers adopted an incredibly belligerent posture towards
the Peoples' Republic of China (PRC), publicly identifying the
PRC as America's foremost competitor/opponent into the 21st Century.
Then their needlessly pugnacious approach towards the downing
of a US spy plane in China with the death of a Chinese pilot
only exacerbated these already tense US/Chinese relations. Next
the Bush Jr Leaguers decided to sell high-tech weapons to Taiwan
in violation of the USA/PRC Joint Communique of 17 August 1982
that had been negotiated and concluded earlier by the Reagan/Bush
administration. Finally came Bush Jr's breathtaking statement
that the United States would defend Taiwan in the event of an
attack by the PRC irrespective of Article I, Section 8, Clause
11 of the United States Constitution expressly reserving to Congress
alone the right to declare war. President Jimmy Carter had long
ago terminated the US-Taiwan self-defense treaty.
For twelve years the Constitution and
the Rule of Law--whether domestic or international--never deterred
the Reagan/Bush administrations from pursuing their internationally
lawless and criminal policies around the world. The same was
true for the Clinton administration as well--invading Haiti;
bombing Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Serbia; the Lewinsky scandal,
etc. The Bush Jr administration has behaved no differently from
its lineal Machiavellian predecessors. Their bellicose handling
of the 11 September 2001 tragedy was no exception to this general
rule.
Jr's Withdrawal
from the ABM Treaty
Then, as had been foreshadowed, whispered,
hinted at and finally broadcast over a period of several months,
came the monumentally insane, horrendous, and tragic announcement
on 13 December 2001 by the Bush Jr administration to withdraw
from the ABM Treaty, effective within six months. Of course it
was sheer coincidence that the Pentagon released their self-styled
Bin Laden Video just as Bush Jr himself publicly announced his
indefensible decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty in order
to pursue his phantasmagorical National Missile Defense (NMD)
Program, the lineal successor to the Reagan/Bush Star Wars dream.
Predictably, the Bin Laden Video back-staged this major, pro-nuclear
announcement. Once again the terrible national tragedy of 11
September was shamelessly exploited in order to justify a reckless
decision that had already been made for other reasons long before.
Then on 25 January 2002, the Pentagon promptly conducted a sea-based
NMD test in gross violation of Article 5(I) of the ABM Treaty
without waiting for the required six months to expire, thus driving
a proverbial nail into the coffin of the ABM Treaty before its
body was even legally dead.
The Bush Jr withdrawal from the ABM Treaty,
which was originally negotiated by those well-known Machiavellian
realpolitikers Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, threatens the
very existence of other seminal arms control treaties and regimes
such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Biological
Weapons Convention, which have similar withdrawal clauses. The
prospect of yet another round of the multilateral and destabilizing
nuclear arms race now stares humanity directly in the face, even
as the Bush Jr administration today prepares for the quick resumption
of nuclear testing at the Nevada test site in outright defiance
of the CTBT regime and NPT Article VI. The entire edifice of
international agreements regulating, reducing, and eliminating
weapons of mass extermination (WME) has been shaken to its very
core. And now the Pentagon and the CIA are back into the dirty
business of researching, developing and testing biological weapons
and biological agents that are clearly prohibited by the Biological
Weapons Convention and its US domestic implementing legislation,
the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989.
The US first-strike
nuclear strategy
With the collapse of the Soviet Union
and the impoverishment of Russia leaving the United States as
the world's "only superpower" or "hyperpower,"
we are getting to the point, if we are not there already, where
only the United States has the capability to launch an offensive
first-strike strategic nuclear weapons attack upon any adversary.
For that precise reason, deploying the so-called "national
missile defense" (NMD) has become a critical objective of
the United States government. NMD is not really needed to shoot
down a stray missile from some so-called "rogue state."
Rather US NMD is essential for mopping up any residual Russian
or Chinese strategic nuclear weapons that might survive a US
offensive first-strike with strategic nuclear weapons systems.
The successful deployment of NMD will
finally provide the United States with what it has always sought:
the capacity to launch a successful offensive first-strike strategic
nuclear attack, coupled with the capability to neutralize a Russian
and/or Chinese retaliatory nuclear attack. At that point, the
United States will proceed to use this capability to enforce
its Hegemonial Will upon the rest of the world. Strategic nuclear
"thinkers" such as Harvard's Thomas Schelling call
this doctrine "compellance" as opposed to "deterrence."
With NMD the world will become dominated by this US "compellance"
strategy.
Honest nuclear
war-mongering
Consequently, it should come as no surprise
that the historically covert intent of America's nuclear "deterrence
policy" should now come to light through almost off-the-cuff
remarks such as those by the omnipresent US Deputy Secretary
of Defense Paul Wolfowitz appearing in the 9 January 2002 edition
of the New York Times:
"We're looking at a transformation
of our deterrence posture from an almost exclusive emphasis on
offensive nuclear forces to a force that includes defenses as
well as offenses, that includes conventional strike capabilities
as well as nuclear strike capabilities, and includes a much reduced
level of nuclear strike capability," the deputy secretary
of defense, Paul D Wolfowitz, said. [Emphasis added.]
Well at least he was honest about it.
Wolfowitz admitted that the current US
practice of so-called nuclear "deterrence" is in fact
really based upon "an almost exclusive emphasis on offensive
nuclear forces." To reiterate, since this deserves emphasis:
The US Deputy Secretary of Defense has publicly admitted and
conceded that "almost" all US nuclear forces are really
"offensive" and not really "defenses." That
Statement could be taken to the International Court of Justice
and filed against the United States government as an Admission
Against Interest, Wolfowitz acting within the scope of his official
duties. Of course the Peace Movement and informed American public
knew this was true all along. Nonetheless, it should be regarded
as an ominous sign of the times that the Pentagon has become
so brazen that it is publicly admitting US nuclear criminality
to the entire world. The arrogance of the Hyperpower!
A Nuremberg
crime against peace
Then, writing in the March 10, 2002 edition
of the Los Angeles Times, defense analyst William Arkin revealed
the leaked contents of the Bush Jr administration's Nuclear Posture
Review (NPR) that it had just transmitted to Congress on January
8. The Bush Jr administration has ordered the Pentagon to draw
up war plans for the first-use of nuclear weapons against seven
states: the so-called "axis of evil"--Iran, Iraq, and
North Korea; Libya and Syria; Russia and China, which are nuclear
armed. This component of the Bush Jr NPR incorporates the Clinton
administration's 1997 nuclear war-fighting plans against so-called
"rogue states" set forth in Presidential Decision Directive
60. These warmed-over nuclear war plans targeting these five
non-nuclear states expressly violate the so-called "negative
security assurances" given by the United States as an express
condition for the renewal and indefinite extension of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by all of its non-nuclear weapons
states parties in 1995.
In this regard, Article 6 of the 1945
Nuremberg Charter provides in relevant part as follows:
"The following acts, or any of them,
are crimes coming within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for
which there shall be individual responsibility: "(a) Crimes
against peace: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging
of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international
treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common
plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing;
"... "Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices
participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan
or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible
for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan."
[Emphasis added.]
To the same effect is the Sixth Principle
of the Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter
of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal,
which were adopted by the International Law Commission of the
United Nations in 1950:
"PRINCIPLE VI "The crimes hereinafter
set out are punishable as crimes under international law: "(a)
Crimes against peace: "(i) Planning, preparation, initiation
or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international
treaties, agreements or assurances; "(ii) Participation
in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any
of the acts mentioned under (i)." [Emphasis added.]
Notice that both of these elemental sources
of public international law clearly provide that the "planning"
or "preparation" of a war in violation of international
"assurances" such as the aforementioned US negative
security assurance constitutes a Nuremberg Crime against Peace.
Such is the Bush Jr NPR!
The Rogue Elephant
of international law and politics
Equally reprehensible from a legal perspective
were the NPR's call for the Pentagon to draft nuclear war-fighting
plans for first nuclear strikes (1) against alleged nuclear/chemical/biological
"materials" or "facilities"; (2) "against
targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack"; and (3) "in
the event of surprising military developments," whatever
that means. According to the NPR, the Pentagon must also draw
up nuclear war-fighting plans to intervene with nuclear weapons
in wars (1) between China and Taiwan; (2) between Israel and
the Arab states; (3) between North Korea and South Korea; and
(4) between Israel and Iraq. It is obvious upon whose side the
United States will actually plan to intervene with the first-use
nuclear weapons. And quite ominously, today the Bush Jr administration
accelerates its plans for launching an apocalyptic military aggression
against Iraq, deliberately raising the spectre of a US first-strike
nuclear attack upon that long-suffering country and its people.
The Bush Jr administration is making
it crystal clear to all its chosen adversaries around the world
that it is fully prepared to cross the threshold of actually
using nuclear weapons that has prevailed since the US criminal
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Yet more proof of
the fact that the United States government has officially abandoned
"deterrence" for "compellance" in order to
rule the future world of the Third Millenium. The Bush Jr administration
has obviously become a "threat to the peace" within
the meaning of UN Charter article 39. It must be countermanded
by the UN Security Council acting under Chapter VII of the UN
Charter. In the event of a US veto of such "enforcement
action" by the Security Council, then the UN General Assembly
must deal with the Bush Jr administration by invoking its Uniting
for Peace Resolution of 1950.
There very well could be some itty-bitty
"rogue states" lurking out there somewhere in the Third
World. But today the United States government has become the
sole "rogue elephant" of international law and politics.
For the good of all humanity, America must be restrained. Time
is of the essence!
Francis A. Boyle,
Professor of Law, University of Illinois, is author of Foundations
of World Order, Duke University Press, and The
Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, Clarity Press. He
can be reached at: FBOYLE@LAW.UIUC.EDU
Today's Features
Dave Marsh
Mr. Big
Stuff:
Alan Lomax, Great White Fraud
James T. Phillips
"I'll
Tell You No Lies"
The Human Rubble of War
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|