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CounterPunch
November
18, 2002
World's Policeman
or Bully?
by ROBERT JENSEN
In the debate about a U.S. war against Iraq, the
question often pops up: Should the United States be the world's
policeman?
This is a case where the answer doesn't
matter, because it is the wrong question. The United States isn't
offering to be the world's cop; U.S. officials are acting as
the world's bully.
The role of police is to uphold the law.
We all know that police officers sometimes fail to do so and
that those who should hold them accountable sometimes look the
other way. But police don't boast that they will respect only
those laws they decide to respect. When officers are nailed for
disregarding the law, they become rogues.
 All this talk about being the world's policeman
helps obscure a simple reality: U.S. policy-makers routinely
ignore international law and act as rogues.
Was the United States acting as a police
officer in 1989 when President George H.W. Bush ordered the invasion
of Panama to depose Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian dictator and
former CIA asset? The attack was denounced all over the world
as an illegal act of aggression, not because other countries
particularly liked Mr. Noriega but because the U.S. attack was
unlawful.
Such contempt for international law is
a bipartisan affair. In 1998, after passage of a U.N. Security
Council resolution on weapons inspections in Iraq, diplomats
came out of the meeting and told reporters that the resolution
didn't give any nation the right to move unilaterally against
Iraq. Bill Richardson, then the U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, simply shrugged and said, "We think it does."
By the end of the year, President Bill Clinton had ordered an
illegal strike on Iraq.
Now, as the Bush administration is lauded
for going the extra mile for diplomacy by ramming through a new
U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq, administration officials
are announcing their intention to ignore the law. The resolution
calls for the Security Council -- not any individual member state
--to consider possible responses if Iraq doesn't comply. But
the United States simply declares its intention to ignore the
law.
White House chief of staff Andrew Card
said, "The U.N. can meet and discuss, but we don't need
their permission."
Secretary of State Colin Powell, the
administration's official "dove," repeatedly has made
it clear that the United States won't be "handcuffed"
by the United Nations.
U.S. officials don't try to hide their
contempt for the law or the intelligence of others. John Negroponte,
the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, reassured the other
nations on the Security Council that the resolution the United
States had drafted included no "hidden triggers" for
a U.S. strike. Yet he also contended the resolution "does
not constrain any member state from acting to defend itself against
the threat posed by Iraq or to enforce relevant U.N. resolutions
and protect world peace and security."
That is what President Bush meant in
September when he challenged the United Nations to be "relevant":
If you do what we say, we will give you some minor role in executing
our policy. If you don't, we will do what we please.
Administration officials seem to think
that simply repeating the phrase "Iraq is a threat to America"
will make it so and somehow justify a war. But it is clear that
the latest Security Council resolution doesn't authorize a U.S.
war on Iraq, nor does the U.N. Charter, the ultimate legal authority.
That means that if Mr. Bush takes the
country to war, we won't be the world's policeman but simply
the world's bully with the power to ignore the law.
Robert Jensen
is an associate professor of journalism at the University of
Texas at Austin, a member of the Nowar Collective, and author
of the book Writing
Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream
and the pamphlet "Citizens of the Empire."
He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
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