Herman / Answering the Cruise Miissile Left on Iraq

[Mark Pavlick]

>
>ZNet Commentary
>Answering the Cruise Miissile Left on Iraq December 06, 2002
>By Edward Herman
>
>It is pretty depressing to see how frequently liberals and some 
>leftists have been unable to maintain a principled opposition to the 
>U.S. policies toward Iraq, which, following more than a decade of 
>"sanctions of mass destruction" are now rushing us toward a war of 
>outright aggression.
>
>There is significant opposition, manifested in the growing and 
>numerous protest marches and teach-ins, where people of quite varied 
>political beliefs have expressed opposition to the prospective war. 
>But this widespread and deepening dissent has had only a modest 
>impact on the mass media, which are still serving mainly as conduits 
>and press agents of the war party, and the liberals and "leftists" 
>who make it there commonly accept premises of the war party and 
>serve its interests, which is of course why they make it into the 
>media.
>
>Many of the liberals and leftists who have joined the war party, or 
>criticize it only on tactical grounds, have been overwhelmed by the 
>flood of administration and administration-supportive propaganda, 
>and find it difficult to escape that barrage. Some, however, are 
>what Eric Alterman approvingly calls the "patriotic left," who are 
>not leftists but liberals who cannot bear to see their country 
>accused of criminal behavior and insist on "balance," "pragmatism" 
>(i.e., accepting the premises of state policy), and support for 
>moderate and reasonable interventionism.
>
>Without stopping here to analyse the work of the patriotic left (see 
>my "The Cruise Missile Left," Z Magazine, November 2002), let me 
>review first some of the paralyzing elements of the PR barrage, then 
>note briefly points downplayed or omitted by the patriotic left and 
>other apologists for war.
>
>
>
>PARALYZING ELEMENTS:
>
>1. Saddam Hussein is evil, hence his removal is justifiable
>
>It is certainly true that Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator, but 
>that is not a reasonable justification for his removal by a foreign 
>invasion. Such an invasion is strictly prohibited by the UN Charter, 
>except where the targeted government threatens an attack, which, 
>unlike the United States, Iraq has not done.
>
>An attack on Iraq would therefore entail a breakdown of 
>international law and constitute a return to the law of the jungle. 
>Furthermore, an invasion will be extremely costly to the Iraq 
>population, which has already suffered genocide-level sanctions by 
>the UN, covering for U.S. and British policy. This point is 
>reinforced by the fact that the United States regularly uses methods 
>of warfare that produce high civilian casualties in the target 
>country in order to minimize U.S. casualties.
>
>Removal of a bad government is primarily a task for the victim 
>population; any help from the outside should fall far short of 
>holding the population hostage to regime change (the ongoing 
>sanctions policy) or external intervention by force.
>
>It should also be noted that Saddam Hussein's qualities as a leader 
>can hardly be the real reason for the proposed war, given that the 
>United States and Britain supported him energetically in the 1980s 
>when he was fighting Iran; and they have supported other dictators 
>in his class of brutality (e.g., Suharto, Trujillo, Mobutu, 
>Pinochet, the Argentinian generals, 1976-1983).
>
>Given the U.S. and British record, their purposes (see "the hidden 
>agenda," below), and the chaos and hatred that an invasion would 
>engender-- following 12 years of genocidal sanctions--there is no 
>reason whatsoever to believe that they would want, or that their 
>intervention would result in, an end of dictatorship.
>
>
>
>2. Saddam's acquisition of "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) would 
>threaten U.S. and world security
>
>This is untenable nonsense, first, because the United States is well 
>able to defend itself and has overwhelming retaliatory capability, 
>and even Israel would threaten a level of retaliation that precludes 
>Saddam's using those weapons offensively against it even if he had 
>them.
>
>What is more, he has no delivery systems that would allow him to 
>reach U.S. targets. He has used WMD in the past, but only when the 
>United States supplied him with and protected his use of such 
>weapons (against Iran, a U.S. enemy), the United States even going 
>so far as to prevent condemnation of Saddam's methods in the 
>Security Council (for details see the Labour Party "counter- 
>dossier," Sept. 21, 2002: http://www.traprockpeace.org).
>
>Saddam did not use WMD during the Persian Gulf War, because he knew 
>that if he did so U.S. retaliation would be severe. CIA head George 
>Tenet testified before a Senate Committee in early October that the 
>probability of Saddam's using WMD in "the foreseeable future" was 
>"low," except as a desperation move if attacked. In short, even if 
>Saddam Hussein did possess WMD, he could only use them as a means of 
>self-defense, unless he directed them against a U.S.-approved 
>target, as in the 1980s.
>
>
>
>3. Saddam's obstructive behavior toward Security Council resolutions 
>and the inspections regime is intolerable
>
>This charge assumes that the inspections regime has moral standing 
>and has not been an instrument of a U.S. program and vendetta. In 
>fact, although the inspections system was put up nominally to assure 
>the elimination of Iraq's WMD, throughout the Clinton years it was 
>repeatedly made clear that the inspections-sanctions system would 
>stay in place until Saddam Hussein was removed.
>
>This eliminated any incentive for Saddam to cooperate with 
>inspections, and it also showed that the inspections system was a 
>cover for a quasi-hidden U.S. agenda. It has also been acknowledged 
>by U.S. and high UNSCOM officials that the United States used UNSCOM 
>to spy on Iraq in preparation for military attack, which helped 
>targeting in the December 1998 "Desert Fox" bombing campaign carried 
>out by the United States and Britain. That bombing campaign, the 
>numerous further bombings, and the "no-fly zones" were never 
>authorized by Security Council rulings or decisions, or the 1991 
>truce accord with Iraq, and are therefore illegal, unilateral acts 
>of aggression.
>
>The inspections regime is also discredited by the fact that its sole 
>proponents, the United States and Britain, have regularly refused to 
>allow the enforcement of Security Council resolutions when this 
>suited their political interest. Resolution 687, which imposed 
>sanctions and inspections, also called for the creation of a 
>WMD-free zone in the Middle East. This has not been implemented, as 
>it would require the United States to admit to, and force the 
>elimination of, Israel's large stock of WMDs.
>
>In the case of Iraq, the United States and Britain have also used 
>Iraq's alleged 687 failings to continue the "sanctions of mass 
>destruction," which have resulted in more than a million civilian 
>deaths.
>
>Joy Gordon has shown in "Economic Sanctions of Mass Destruction" 
>(Harpers, Nov. 2002) that the United States and Britain have 
>repeatedly interpreted sanction rules to prevent humanitarian relief 
>to civilians (vetoing ambulances, vaccines, water pumps, 
>fire-fighting equipment, even wheel-barrows), actions on the part of 
>U.S. and British officials that constitute war crimes.
>
>Despite the hidden agenda and illegalities of the inspections 
>system, and Iraq's foot-dragging and deceptions, the system did 
>oversee the destruction of an estimated 90-95 percent of Iraq's WMD 
>stocks, and most of its WMD capacity. Iraq was essentially disarmed, 
>according to Scott Ritter and Hans Von Sponeck, who were active 
>participants in the inspection process. But this did not satisfy the 
>United States and Britain, and couldn't do so because of their 
>illegal aim of regime change.
>
>
>
>4. Well, what do you propose?
>
>In the face of planned aggression--the most serious of all 
>international crimes--the only decent and rational response is: 
>don't do it. Apologists cannot admit that their state is embarking 
>on aggression, so they can't see this elementary point. They can't 
>acknowledge that the "threat" posed by Iraq is contrived, and that 
>the big problem is containing a superpower rogue state manufacturing 
>reasons to go to war.
>
>My first and main "proposal" therefore is that the United States and 
>Britain be pressed to stop their plan to commit aggression, and that 
>the "international community" end its support for sanctions of mass 
>destruction and the superpower rogue's planned aggression and force 
>the rogue to desist, threatening him with global economic sanctions 
>if he fails to stop.
>
>The second great threat is Ariel Sharon's and Israel's policies of 
>occupation, ethnic cleansing and expanding settlements, and planned 
>further wholesale terrorism and "transfer." I propose that the UN 
>should condemn these policies, but also condemn U.S. support of this 
>massive and accelerating ethnic cleansing, and threaten sanctions 
>and expulsion from the UN and civilized community if these 
>terroristic and ethnic cleansing policies are continued beyond a 
>specific deadline.
>
>As regards Iraq, given that the policies of inspections and weapons 
>control have been based on a mythical fearsome threat, constructed 
>to rationalize a hidden agenda and sheer vengefulness on the part of 
>the United States and Britain, and that these policies have had 
>genocidal consequences, they should be terminated forthwith.
>
>Instead, relations with Iraq should be normalized and it should be 
>given incentives to behave by establishing trade relations and 
>"constructive engagement," which the United States regularly uses 
>with repressive states that serve its interests. Iraq's "threat" 
>will be controlled by this web of interests, by its acceptance of 
>surveillance by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and by the 
>existing balance of power system in which offensive behavior and use 
>of WMD on its part would be immensely costly (2 above).
>
>This will not automatically produce democracy in Iraq, but that is 
>something that should come from within, and it is likely that it 
>will happen sooner under "constructive engagement" and reduced siege 
>conditions than with continuing intense hostility or U.S.-engineered 
>regime change.
>
>
>
>POINTS DOWNPLAYED OR OMITTED:
>
>The apologists for U.S. policy and the imminent war regularly ignore 
>or fail to see the significance of the features of that policy that 
>make it hypocritical, illegal, immoral and criminal. Among them are 
>the following:
>
>
>
>1. Unclean hands
>
>Saddam was not only supported, he was protected in his use of 
>chemical warfare in the 1980s by the two countries that have been 
>most concerned over his possession of WMDs today. The hypocrisy here 
>is notable, but this consideration also suggests the fraudulence of 
>the claim of a threat.
>
>The death of over a million Iraqi civilians as a result of the 
>sanctions policy constitutes a major case of war criminality, 
>violating the Nuremberg Code. The engineers of this genocidal policy 
>not only do not have clean hands in pursuing Iraq any further, in a 
>just world they would all be under trial in a court of justice. The 
>apologists for U.S. policy and prospective war seem quite unaware of 
>this hugely compromising background to today's policy discussions.
>
>
>
>2. The illegality of preemptive war
>
>The apologists are also very blase about the fact that going to war 
>against a country that has not attacked you and poses no credible 
>threat of attack violates basic international law and constitutes 
>plain aggression. This lack of concern with basic legality is helped 
>along by the advanced demonization process and threat inflation. It 
>also disregards the fact that according to "preemptive" principles, 
>scores of states would be justified in preemptively attacking U.S. 
>territory.
>
>
>
>3. The double standard
>
>It is also helped along by the long-standing double standard in 
>which international law and Security Council resolutions apply to 
>others only, not to ourselves or our friends. Thus the apologists 
>find no problem in the fact that Ariel Sharon and Israel can not 
>only ignore international law (the Fourth Geneva Convention) and 
>scads of Security Council rulings, but also receive positive U.S. 
>support for these violations. If their state says it is important to 
>enforce the law selectively, they join in the selective enforcement 
>bandwagon with great moral fervor.
>
>
>
>4. The hidden agenda
>
>Their moral fervor is not diminished by the obviousness of a hidden 
>agenda beneath the claptrap about the threat to U.S. national 
>security in the bad man's possession of WMD. The desire to control 
>oil resources, to help Sharon, to help the weapons producers, to 
>reshape the Middle East and project power more broadly, and to keep 
>a war going to cover over the reactionary Bush agenda are 
>unrecognized or kept out of sight. This is a great help to the Bush 
>team's program.
>
>
>
>5. The corruption of the UN
>
>The apologists also ignore the extent to which U.S. policy has made 
>the UN a farce and tragedy. The Bush team is openly contemptuous of 
>the UN (and international law) as it pursues the administration's 
>aims. It (and the Clinton team before it) will use the UN if it can 
>and will ignore it when the UN is not available for service. In the 
>run-up to an attack on Iraq the Bush team has gotten the UN to agree 
>to an inspections regime that will assure a casus belli and make it 
>possible for it to commit aggression with UN approval. Instead of 
>opposing aggression the UN is colluding in its implementation. This 
>represents the moral death of the institution.
>
>
>
>6. The costs of war
>
>The apologists underrate the costs of war. There will be modest U.S. 
>casualties, but enormous Iraq casualties as the U.S. carries out its 
>standard policy of intense bombing prior to invasion- occupation. 
>There will be huge costs in a destroyed Iraq and heavy costs in the 
>conduct of the war. "Collateral Damage: The Health and Environmental 
>Costs of War on Iraq," put out by the Medical Association for 
>Prevention of War in November 2002, estimates half a million deaths 
>assuming only conventional warfare, costs exceeding $200 billion, 
>and immeasurable adverse secondary effects on health and welfare.
>
>There will also probably be intensified terrorist responses to the 
>attack on Iraq. This and the feedback effects of war on the U.S. 
>society will push it further toward an authoritarian state. This is 
>a plus for the Bush administration as it will, like 9/11 and the war 
>on terror in general, help it cover over its anti- public interest 
>agenda.