|
CounterPunch
September
19, 2002
War on Iraq
It's Not the President's Decision
by
Richard Falk and David Krieger
It took the public expression of doubts by Brent
Scowcroft, a former national security adviser to presidents
Gerald Ford and George Bush, to initiate finally a national
debate on the merits of preemptive war against Iraq. Before
Scowcroft spoke out it was nearly impossible to be heard above
the drumbeats of war being orchestrated from the White House.
Scowcroft was careful to couch his criticism in ultra-pragmatic
terms relating to the dangers of undertaking such a war at this
time and its likely diversion of energy from what he rightly
depicts as America's number one security priority, the continuing
challenge posed by al-Qaida. Persuasively, also, Scowcroft downplays
the regional threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and is highly
skeptical about Iraq's purported links to Sept. 11 or to terrorism
generally. Scowcroft relies for political closure on an American
call for a renewal of inspections, this time on an unrestricted
(anytime, anywhere, no permission required) basis. If refused
by Iraq, then Scowcroft appears to accept the logic of preemptive
war.
This diminishes greatly the overall force
of his argument, and provides the Bush planners with a way to
shore up their support, especially in Washington-namely, by
insisting on unrestricted inspection arrangements with such
a wide ranging intrusion on Iraqi sovereign rights that Baghdad
would have no choice but to refuse.
Scowcroft's doubts have been echoed by
other Republican stalwarts, including House Majority Leader
Dick Armey.
 Most unexpectedly, it is from Armey that we hear
for the first time objections to launching a preemptive war
against Iraq based on international law. The highly conservative
Congressional leader asserted that an attack on Iraq would
violate international law and would not be consistent with what
we have been as a nation or what we should be as a nation.
This is such an obvious reality that
it is an extraordinary commentary on the passivity of the Democratic
Party that such a principled concern about Bush's war talk had
to wait upon the words of a leading Republican lawmaker.
Finally, with such rumblings coming from
prominent and conservative members of his own party, President
Bush could no longer turn a blind eye to doubts and criticisms
directed at his plans for preemptive war against Iraq.
He even acknowledged that skepticism
was coming from some very intelligent people, promised to consult,
and called these dissenting voices part of a healthy debate.
Unilateralist
ways
But in the same breath, the president
resumed his unconstitutional and unilateralist ways by saying,
``But America needs to know, I'll be making up my mind based
upon the latest intelligence and how best to protect our own
country plus our friends and allies.''
Doesn't Bush realize that the U.S. Constitution
does not vest war-making powers in the office of the presidency?
Doesn't he realize the founders deliberately, with the greatest
care, placed a decision of such gravity in the hands of the
Congress?
And even if this condition were to be
satisfied, formidable legal obstacles to war would still remain.
It would still be constitutionally necessary for the United
States to show respect for validly ratified international treaties,
including the United Nations Charter.
It does not seem to us possible, given
these considerations, to launch a preemptive war against Iraq
without violating both the U.S. Constitution and international
law.
Although we welcome and agree with the
pragmatists who warn about the dire consequences that would
likely follow upon initiating war against Iraq, we side with
the principled opponents of war against Iraq, relying not only
on international law, including the U.N. Charter, but also on
the moral and religious guidelines contained in the just war
doctrine.
Guilty of aggressive
war
From these perspectives, under present
conditions, it is clear that if the United States goes ahead
and wages war against Iraq it will be guilty of what international
lawyers call aggressive war, which was one of the principal
charges leveled against surviving Axis leaders at the Nuremberg
and Tokyo war crimes tribunals after World War II.
The main argument put forward by the
Bush administration for the war is that the United States cannot
stand aside while a brutal and expansionist Iraqi regime is
acquiring nuclear and other weaponry of mass destruction.
Iraq, their argument continues, would
then be in a position to transfer such weaponry to al-Qaida
and other terrorist groups, as well as threaten Israel and the
Gulf countries, which hold a large share of the world's oil
reserves.
As Scowcroft and others have pointed
out, however, Saddam Hussein, for all his evils, has not had
a record of cooperating with terrorist groups, much less al-Qaida.
It would be clear to Saddam Hussein that
any provocative action would lead to the annihilation of Iraq
as well as his personal destruction. Baghdad has been deterred
over the course of the last decade, and there is every sound
reason to think that deterrence and containment will work in
the years ahead.
Unlike Iraq, al-Qaida cannot be deterred
by threats of retaliatory force since it has no territorial
base. The U.S. government should give its highest priority to
guarding against al-Qaida gaining possession of weapons of mass
destruction. Unfortunately, in this regard, the United States
is failing to provide adequate support to assuring the control
of the Russian nuclear arsenal.
Going to war against Iraq would produce
the one set of conditions in which Saddam Hussein, faced with
certain death and the destruction of his country, would have
the greatest incentive to strike back with any means at his
disposal. These would include the arming of al-Qaida or the
launching of such weapons as Saddam Hussein possesses against
U.S. troops and Israel.
Several constructive alternatives to
war exist that are both consistent with international law and
strongly preferred by America's most trusted allies, and at
the same time address those security concerns about future Iraqi
behavior that seem valid.
These include the resumption of responsible
weapons inspections under U.N. auspices combined with multilateral
diplomacy and a continued reliance on non-nuclear deterrence.
By responsible weapons inspections we mean those that an international
inspectorate deems necessary to achieve confidence that weapons
of mass destruction are not possessed or being developed by
Iraq.
This approach is very different from
the Scowcroft ``anytime, anywhere'' image of an acceptable inspection
capability, which would almost certainly be rejected by Iraq,
thereby reopening the door to the initiation of war that would
still be unwarranted, imprudent and illegal.
In contrast, the resumption of responsible
inspections could also lead to an improving diplomatic atmosphere,
especially if coupled with ending the sanctions that have had
such a cruel impact on Iraqi civilian society for more than
a decade and the ending of frequent U.S. and British bombing
missions in the no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq.
Diplomacy and international inspections successfully addressed
comparable concerns about North Korea's pursuit of a nuclear
weapons capability.
Principle and
prudence
It is time for the public debate on Iraq
policy to raise these issues of principle and prudence, and
to recognize that American leadership in the world will be much
more respected, and in the end effective, if it does everything
in its power to avoid war, and to strengthen the role of international
law, including its insistence that international disputes be
settled by peaceful means.
It has never been more crucial for American
citizens and our friends abroad to raise their voices for peace
and to resist the counsels of war.
Richard Falk,
professor emeritus of international law and policy at Princeton
University, is board chair of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
David Krieger is president of the Nuclear
Age Peace Foundation. He can be contacted at dkrieger@napf.org.
Today's Features
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Goodbye
to All That
Jeffrey St. Clair
Cancerous
Air
Born Under a Bad Sky
Ben Tripp
Smoking
Gun of a Hatchet Job
Peggy Thomson
20 Years
After:
Sabra and Shatila
Thomas Mountain
September
1982
Sabra and Chatila (Poem)
William Cook
Yet Another
Bush Doctrine
Kathleen Christison
Israel's Other Voices
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- Hunting Commie Perverts:
The Scarlet Professor
- DC's Best Political
Mind; DC's Most Dangerous Man;
- Dershowitz the Torturer:
Guess Why He Wants Clean Needles;
- Lese Majeste: That's
Against the Law Too;
- The Greatest Endorsement
AAA Will Ever Get;
- Merle Haggard on Civil
Liberties;
- Dullness Hailed: The Press on the Defeat of McKinney,
Traficant and Barr;
- National Review Puffs
into Town.
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
September
18, 2002
Rep. Cynthia
McKinney
Goodbye
to All That
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Cancerous
Air
Born Under a Bad Sky
Ben Tripp
Smoking
Gun of a Hatchet Job
Peggy Thomson
20 Years
After:
Sabra and Shatila
Thomas Mountain
September
1982
Sabra and Chatila (Poem)
William Cook
Yet Another
Bush Doctrine
Kathleen Christison
Israel's Other Voices
September
17, 2002
Adam Federman
All
That Matters is Oil
Linda S.
Heard
Paranoid
Americans
Hussein Ibish
The Incident
at Shoney's
Francis Boyle
Is Bush's
War Illegal?
Let Us Count the Ways
Heidi Lypps
Bush's
Crackdown on
Medical Marijuana
Riad Z. Abdelkarim,
MD
Why
Do They Hate Us?
September
16, 2002
Wayne Madsen
The Shoney's
Snoop
America's Horst Wessel
Tariq Ali
Debating
Daniel Pipes
on Bush's Wars
Ahmad Faruqui
American
Primacy at Bay
Kurt Leege
Voices
for Peace
M. Shahid
Alam
A New Theology
of Power
Robert Fisk
Bush's War
Dossier:
Blindness, Hypocrisy & Lies
Dave Randall
Mad, Mad World:
J. Edgar Hoover's Obsession with Mad Magazine
September
14 / 15, 2002
Ben Tripp
Notes for
Future Historians:
The Bush Administration Explained
Tom Crumpacker
Democracy & US Policy on Cuba
David Vest
Neither-Handed
Behzad Yaghmaian
A Letter
from Istanbul
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Fire Next Time:
Nuclear Plants & Terrorism
Anis Shivani
The Warped
World of
Bernard Lewis
Uri Avnery
A Witness from the Past
Robert Fisk
Bush Across
the Rubicon
Josh Frank
Lacking Tenacity
Christini, Alam, & Krieger
Poems
September
12, 2002
Paul de Rooij
A Glossary
of Occupation
James C.
Faris
Riefenstahl
at 100:
The Fascist Aesthetic
Gary Leupp
Presidential
Honesty on Iraq
Tarif Abboushi
A Conversation
with My Arab-American Self
Ron Jacobs
Shelter
from the Storm
Rick Giombetti
Paxil
and Addiction
Krystal Kyer
From NAFTA
to CAFTA
Another Rotten Trade Deal
John Jonik
Overcome
in Philly
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!)
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
|