Majority at UN Call for an End to Illegal Aggression Against Iraq

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Majority at UN Call for an End to Illegal Aggression Against Iraq

Bush and his Cohorts are Guilty of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity

Dreams of Empire, Eulogies for International Law

The United Nations Security Council today (Thursday) resumed its first debate on Iraq since hostilities began on 19 March, with a majority of speakers so far calling for an end to what they called illegal aggression and demanding the immediate withdrawal of the invading forces. The Council meeting began on Wednesday at the request of the Arab League and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) to hear the views of those states that are not members of the 15-nation body.

Forty-five UN members addressed the Council on Wednesday expressing regret that diplomacy had failed to resolve the question of Iraq’s disarmament. Speakers emphasized that the current war, carried out without Council authorization, was a violation of international law and the United Nations Charter. Many stressed they could not understand how the Council could remain silent in the face of the aggression by two of its permanent members against another United Nations member state.

The 15 members of the Security Council are expected to speak after non-members have expressed their views. However it has been announced that the representative of the United States walked out of the meeting on Thursday during a speech by the representative of the government of Iraq, who condemned the US for its aggression against Iraq.

WDIE is below publishing summaries of the speeches by the representative of the government of Iraq, the representative of Malaysia, speaking as the Chair of the Coordinating Bureau of the Non-aligned Movement, and Yahya Mahmassani, Observer for the League of Arab States:

MOHAMMED A. ALDOURI (Iraq) said that his country -- a founding Member of the United Nations -- was being subjected to aggression, which was killing women, children and the elderly. Sanctions, which have lasted for almost 13 years, were also having a terrible effect on the country. The goal of changing the regime in his country, which had been proclaimed by the United States, constituted a blatant violation of international law and the Charter of the United Nations. The humanitarian effect of the war was devastating.The lack of water in Basra, for example, was likely to lead to outbreaks of disease. A mosque in Baghdad had been destroyed. In an attempt to terrorize Iraq, the United States and the United Kingdom conducted some 2,000 bombing sorties a day. The forces of the Iraqi army and the people of the country were fighting a heroic battle against the aggression, however.

The Council must take action to make sure that the rules of international law were observed, he continued. While the aggressors said that their goal was disarmament of Iraq, everybody knew that they were not the ones tasked with that mandate. The real reason was occupation of the country, its re-colonization and controlling its oil wealth.

The international community was also well aware that the Security Council had not authorized the use of force by the United States and the United Kingdom, he said.Despite the position of the majority of the members of the Council and Iraq's cooperation, the two countries had launched their aggressive war, which constituted a blatant material breach of international law and the United Nations Charter. It was also a material breach of relevant Security Council resolutions, which, without exception, called for respect for Iraq's sovereignty and territorial integrity. This barbaric colonial military aggression against Iraq constituted a threat to international peace and security. The Council was called upon to stop the aggression and demand the withdrawal of United States and United Kingdom forces from the territory of Iraq. The Council must impose respect for its resolutions, particularly those relating to unjustified embargo against his country. He was still hopeful that the international community would be able to impose its will on those who had broken the international law. A failure to do so would mean the end of the United Nations system.

It was also peculiar that instead of considering the aggression itself, the Council had been busy discussing the humanitarian aspects of the problem, he added. Shouldn't the Council pay attention to the cessation of the aggression was first?Wasn't that putting the cart in front of the horse? The oil-for-food programme had been stopped, and the inspectors had been withdrawn from Iraq, with the Council's blessing. How had the Council allowed itself to be manipulated into such a situation? It was his hope that the Council would be able to stand up to the aggressors.

RASTAM MOHD ISA (Malaysia), speaking as the Chair of the Coordinating Bureau of the Non-aligned Movement, said the Movement strongly believed that Member States of the United Nations should observe and abide by the United Nations Charter and the principles of international law in dealing with problems among nations. The Movement opposed all unilateral military actions or use of force, including those made without proper authorization from the Council. It deplored any unilateral action against the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Member States.

The war against Iraq violated the principles of international law and the United Nations Charter, he continued. It was highly regrettable that the parties concerned had chosen to cast aside multilateral diplomacy and taken the path of war, while efforts to avert conflict were continuing in earnest. The unilateral military action was an illegitimate act of aggression. The war against Iraq should never have started in the first place, and should end immediately. The problem of Iraq should and could be resolved peacefully through the United Nations.He called on the Council to use its power and authority to revert to the multilateral process in a common effort to resolve the issue.

With military activity now escalating in Iraq, he said, he was extremely concerned about the humanitarian situation of the civilian population in that country. There were reports, for example, that the people in Basra could be facing a serious humanitarian disaster, including shortage of basic needs such as electricity and water, if relief supplies did not reach them in time. He hoped the sufferings of the civilian population would be relieved as soon as possible. While the responsibility for that lay with those countries that had initiated military action against Iraq, the international community must also assist the United Nations in carrying out the important task of providing humanitarian relief.

YAHYA MAHMASSANI, Observer for the League of Arab States, said that the resolution adopted at the end of the Ministerial Council meeting of the League on 23 March had stated that the aggression against Iraq was a violation of the United Nations Charter and the principles of international law, as well as a threat to international peace and security. The League had called for the unconditional withdrawal of United States and British forces from Iraq and held them responsible for all the repercussions of the aggression. It had also called on the Council to adopt a resolution calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of forces.In addition, the League had called for a reaffirmation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq.

The United States and the United Kingdom had waged war at a time when Iraq was positively cooperating with United Nations inspectors, who needed only a few months to discharge their tasks, he said.The only party authorized to disarm Iraq was the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC).Wouldn't it have been better to wait a few moths to avoid a war, which would lead to grave consequences for the country and the region? The war was taking place despite the Councils refusal to approve and despite international pressure.The waging of war against Iraq had led him to believe that the question of Iraq was not one of weapons of mass destruction, but of the imposition of absolute power, plans and schemes. He reaffirmed that the shape of the Arab political regimes must be decided by the peoples of the region themselves. Any attempt to impose changes in the region or control its resources was totally unacceptable.

At a time when there was hope for the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he was stunned to see the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Instead of one occupation, there were now two to deal with. The threat to the security of Arab nations was the possession by Israel of weapons of mass destruction.The other threat was the continued Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. The current international system was facing a grave danger. He called on the Council to shoulder its responsibility as the organ responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security. How could the Council remain silent while an unjust war was being waged? He called on the Council to put an end to the war and call for the immediate withdrawal of the invading forces.

The National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) most vehemently condemns US imperialism and its cohorts for flagrantly violating the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq.  Bush and the entire US ruling clique, supported by their British and Australian cohorts, are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity as they cause the killing of numerous Iraqi civilians and the destruction of many non-military targets through thousands of missiles and bombs.  They have shown only utter contempt for the UN Charter that prohibits the use and the threat of the use of force.  They blatantly trample on the universally recognized principle and norm of international humanitarian law that requires that civilians and the civilian population may not be targets in an armed conflict. They commit the most barbaric crimes all for the purpose of grabbing the oil resources of Iraq, planting evidence of "weapons of mass destruction" and installing a regime of colonialism with a retinue of puppets.

Bush and his cohorts are brutally inhuman in carrying out their illegal and inhuman act of aggression against the Iraqi people.  Eyewitnesses in   Baghdad   report how buildings that are targeted are hit twice.  After the first time, a second hit is made 15 or 30 minutes later.   The purpose is to kill and maim the medical aid workers who come to the aid of the wounded.   Because of this devilishly malicious practice, aid workers are prevented from giving immediate aid.   The effect is that many of the wounded die due to loss of blood and lack of immediate first aid.

Peoples throughout the world have launched massive and militant demonstrations against the US-led war of aggression on Iraq. In mass actions in the Philippines, in the US and other countries, Filipinos have participated to condemn US imperialism and to declare their solidarity with the Iraqi people.

The National Democratic Front of the Philippines expresses its firm solidarity with the Iraqi people in their heroic resistance against the US-led war of aggression.   In an act of solidarity with the Iraqi people, the New People's Army carried out a successful tactical offensive on 21 March 2003, confiscating 92 arms from the security guards of the biggest paper mill in the Philippines, PICOP Resources, that had brutally repressed its workers.  "We really timed it with the war on Iraq … to make a clear statement that we abhor this aggression on Iraq by Bush and President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's support without consulting the people," said Comrade Oris, regional spokesman for Mindanao of the New People's Army.  On 18 March 2003, Gregorio "Ka Roger" Rosal, Spokesperson of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), declared:   "The CPP salutes the Iraqi people for their militancy in defending their country's sovereignty and opposing the dictates of the US imperialist superpower."  

The Filipino people have been waging a 34 year-old revolutionary struggle against US imperialism and the local reactionaries.  Currently, they are waging a vigorous resistance to the escalating US military intervention, as US President Bush has declared they are opening a so-called Second Front in the Philippines and Southeast Asia in their alleged war against terrorism.  In reality, US imperialism wants to reestablish its military presence in the Philippines to tighten its hegemonic control over the whole region, take over the oil, gold and deuterium in southern Philippines and the whole region, and attack the revolutionary movements that oppose US military presence in the area.   The NDFP condemns this malicious scheme of US imperialism and the Macapagal-Arroyo administration that subserviently allows the US military intervention in violation of Philippine national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The NDFP condemns the US-led war of aggression in Iraq also because it endangers the lives and livelihood of 1.5 million overseas Filipinos in the region.It also denounces the Macapagal-Arroyo administration for supporting the US and disregarding the safety of the overseas Filipinos and not providing any assistance to them.

The NDFP therefore joins the peoples of the world in denouncing the US-led war of aggression in Iraq and in calling for all forms of militant struggle against US imperialism and its cohorts and make them accountable for their war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Luis Jalandoni

NDFP Chief International Representative

24 March 2003

By John Gershman

With the war in Iraq just under a week old, the jockeying for what comes next has already begun, with implications that will shape the outlines of imperial governance in the post-9/11, post-invasion world. Two related but nevertheless distinct debates--one regarding the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq and the other over whether Iraq is just the first step in a broader   and more sustained effort to transform the region--will define a new relationship between the U.S., international organizations like the United Nations, and both formal and informal alliances such as NATO and the "coalition of the willing" that has been cobbled together to support this particular military operation. While 9-11 is often portrayed as if it changed everything, the invasion of Iraq and the fallout could mark a significant turning point in the architecture of U.S. hegemony.

*Reconstruction

The debate over reconstruction in Iraq has already begun, even as the bombs continue to fall. Both the ends and the means of reconstruction are up for grabs. In terms of means, the major issue is when and in what capacity will the United Nations be asked to play a role? The main plan at the moment appears to be one of U.S. unilateral control, with a civilian administration headed by retired General Jay Garner under the direct command of the military serving as an occupational government. The civilian administration will be staffed primarily with former U.S. diplomats, and is aimed at ruling for as long as it takes for an interim Iraqi government to be formed--at this point, at least a few months. U.S. companies are already competing for contracts worth roughly $1 billion to rebuild infrastructure and operate health and education services.

Under the plan, the role for the UN in the immediate aftermath of the conflict will be limited to humanitarian relief. Its role in reconstruction efforts remains unclear, as any major UN role would require authorization by the Security Council. Aid groups are concerned that their humanitarian relief and reconstruction efforts will be branded as part of U.S. military operations.

This plan has sparked concern among members of the administration's "coalition of the willing" as well as opponents of the war. The joint statement released at the conclusion of the war council meeting in the Azores on the weekend prior to the launch of the war described a central role for the UN in reconstruction efforts. But the current U.S. plans would seem to suggest those were just words. The political battle is currently being waged in the negotiations over a UN Security Council Resolution that would provide the political sanction for post-war operations in Iraq. Last week Britain's Minister for International Development Clare Short left the U.S. empty-handed, after failing to get agreement on a resolution that would place the UN in charge of reconstruction. British Prime Minister Tony Blair is scheduled to arrive in the next day or two to discuss both the progress of the war as well as the role of the UN in reconstruction.:p>

The debate stretches to control over the funds to be used for reconstruction. The UK has also clashed with the Bush administration over the control of Iraqi assets, which have been frozen since the first Gulf war began 12 years ago. The Bush administration has asked countries who have frozen assets to pool them into a U.S.-controlled fund. The Bush administration has already ordered 17 banks in the U.S. to hand over $1.7 billion in frozen Iraqi government money. But Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, has so far refused o turn £200 million Iraqi assets frozen in Britain to an American-controlled account, instead wanting them to go to the UN. White House officials have threatened to prevent foreign banks from doing business in the U.S. if they refused to turn over Iraqi government money and what they called "blood money" belonging to President Saddam Hussein or his associates.

The U.S. plan for reconstruction, with the UN in a subordinate, if not subcontracting role, is the most immediate example of a new world order where the UN has a well-defined, explicitly subordinate position in the architecture of U.S. global hegemony. It suggests an end to rhetorical, if not actual, commitments to collective security based on international law and multilateralism embodied in the UN charter.

Such a vision was outlined in a recent op-ed by Richard Perle, the head of Defense Policy Board and a key intellectual architect of the Bush administration's policy in the Middle East, and is worth quoting at length:

He [Saddam Hussein] will go quickly, but not alone: in a parting irony, he will take the UN down with him. Well, not the whole UN. The "good works" part will survive, the low-risk peacekeeping bureaucracies will remain, the chatterbox on the Hudson will continue to bleat. What will die is the fantasy of the UN as the foundation of a new world order. As we sift the debris, it will be important to preserve, the better to understand, the intellectual wreckage of the liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international institutions.

Perle's eulogy for the vision of collective security the UN offered is an important illustration of the vision of the future it outlines, a vision that is truly staggering in its ambition, and in its casual rejection of the framework of international law. Perle's alternative is a shifting away from international institutions to one of shifting ad hoc coalitions. As he writes,

The chronic failure of the Security Council to enforce its own resolutions is unmistakable: it is simply not up to the task. We are left with coalitions of the willing. Far from disparaging them as a threat to a new world order, we should recognize that they are, by default, the best hope for that order, and the true alternative to the anarchy of the abject failure of the UN.

(In an interesting twist showing the editorial differences of headline writers, the same piece was headlined "Coalitions of the Willing Are Our Best Hope" in Canada's National Post while the Guardian headlined it as "Thank God for the death of the UN.")

*First Baghdad, Then …

While rejecting the UN Security Council Perle also identifies countries hosting or sponsoring terrorism and possessing weapons of mass destruction as the major threat to international security (without actually naming names). What then is the next step in the Bush administration's security agenda?

One clue is embodied in the statement from a senior British official to Newsweek last August: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran." According to the Israeli paper Ha'aretz, in February 2003, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea.

With North Korean policy in a seeming holding pattern while the war in Iraq continues to unfold, the next steps in the Middle East are already being tabled. Michael Ledeen, another key intellectual in the pantheon of neo-conservatives shaping the Bush administration policy, described one such agenda. In a panel at the American Enterprise Institute on March 21st and in the New York Sun Ledeen argues for the need to look beyond Iraq and go after other regimes in the region, particularly Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia:

Iraq is not the war. … the war is a regional war, and we cannot be successful in Iraq if we only do Iraq alone.

Writing in the New York Sun on March 19, there is no mistaking the messianic vision of manifest destiny that Ledeen believes the war in Iraq will provide:

Once upon a time, it might have been possible to deal with Iraq alone, without having to face the murderous forces of the other terror masters in Tehran, Damascus, and Riyadh, but that time has passed. …

The Iranian, Syrian, and Saudi tyrants know that if we win a quick victory in Iraq and then establish a free government in Baghdad, their doom is sealed. It would then be only a matter of time before their peoples would demand the same liberation we brought to Afghanistan and Iraq. Thus, they must do everything in their power to tie us down in Iraq, bleed us on the ground, frustrate our designs, and eventually break our will. …

It would be a terrible humiliation for America and Britain to fall prey to needless bloodshed because we blinded ourselves to the larger war in which we are now engaged. Iraq is a battle, not a war. We have to win the war, and the only way to do that is to bring down the terror masters, and spread freedom throughout the region.

Rarely has it been possible to see one of history's potential turning points so clearly and so dramatically as it is today. Rarely has a country been given such a glorious opportunity as we have in our hands. But history is full of missed opportunities and embarrassing defeats.

We'll know soon which destiny we will achieve.

The first Persian Gulf War marked the transition to the new post-cold war world. The Second Gulf war will mark the end of the post-cold war world. The history of what comes next remains to be written. But it is clear that the advocates for Empire, for a Pax Americana, are well prepared.

(John Gershman <john@irc-online.org> is a senior analyst at the Inter-hemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) and the Asia/Pacific editor for Foreign Policy in Focus.)