>ZNet Commentary
>UN Resolution or Not, this War Violates International Law March 14, 2003
>By Rahul Mahajan
>
>The majority of the antiwar movement has made a mistake in emphasizing the
>unilateral nature of the war on Iraq and the need for United Nations
>approval, and we may well reap the consequences of that mistake.
>
>The argument has made major inroads with the public; polls consistently
>show that the majority of Americans oppose a unilateral war without
>international support and the latest poll in Britain shows only 15% of the
>population supports a war without a second U.N. resolution.
>
>It's also an entirely unobjectionable argument in a negative sense -
>without a Security Council resolution, the war is clearly a violation of
>international law, as U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has recently
>pointed out. It is, however, possible for a war fought with U.N. approval
>still to be a violation of international law.
>
>That is the fundamental question -- not whether our "allies" support us,
>not whether we can strong-arm and browbeat enough members of the Security
>Council to acquiesce, but whether or not the war is illegal.
>
>Interestingly, in this, as in so many other things, the Bush
>administration turns this question on its head and claims that the war is
>necessary in order to uphold international law.
>
>Let's start with that argument.
>
>Iraq is threatening no country with aggression and its violations of
>Security Council resolutions, while clear, are technical, mostly a matter
>of providing incomplete documentation about weapons that may or may not
>exist, and for the use of which there are no apparent plans.
>
>At the same time, Israel is in violation of, at a very conservative count,
>over 30 resolutions, pertaining among other things to the very substantive
>issue of the continuing illegal occupation of another people, along with
>violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention through steady encroachment on
>and effective annexation of that land.
>
>Indonesia, another U.S. ally, violated U.N. resolutions for a quarter of a
>century in East Timor with relative impunity. Morocco is illegally
>occupying Western Sahara. In each of these cases, the United States
>wouldn't be required to go to war to help uphold international law; it
>could start simply by terminating aid and arms sales to these countries.
>
>The United States is also a very odd country to claim to uphold such a
>principle. Ever since a 1986 International Court of Justice ruling against
>the United States and in favor of Nicaragua, the United States has refused
>to acknowledge the ICJ's authority (the $17 billion in damages it was
>ordered to pay were never delivered).
>
>Shortly after that judgment, the United States actually vetoed a Security
>Council resolution calling on states to respect international law. Of
>course, the United States doesn't itself violate Security Council
>resolutions, since it can always veto them -- as it did when the Security
>Council tried to condemn its blatantly illegal invasion of Panama in 1989,
>and on seven occasions regarding its contra war on Nicaragua.
>
>For the sake of argument, let's forget about the international double
>standard and focus just on Iraq. Even without reference to anything else,
>one can argue that repeated U.S. violations of international law when it
>comes to Iraq and in particular of the specific "containment" regime
>instituted after the Gulf War release Iraq from any obligations.
>
>To start, Iraq has been under illegal attack for the past decade, with
>numerous bombings including the Desert Fox campaign, even as it was being
>called on to start obeying international law.
>
>The United States also took numerous illegal or questionably legal steps
>to subvert the legal regime of "containment" -- passing the "Iraq
>Liberation Act" in October 1998, which provided $97 million for groups
>trying to overthrow the Iraqi government, a clear violation of Iraqi
>sovereignty and a violation of international law; stating that only with
>regime change would the sanctions be lifted, in violation of UNSCR 687;
>and using weapons inspections to commit espionage, the information from
>which was then used in targeting decisions during Desert Fox.
>
>Is the War Itself a Violation of International Law?
>
>Perhaps the most cogent argument, however, is the fact that the war the
>United States is planning on Iraq is an act of premeditated aggression.
>
>All the signs point in the same direction.
>
>First, in August, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld ordered that the list of
>bombing targets be extended far beyond any goal of enforcing the no-fly
>zones to include command-and-control centers and in general to go beyond
>simple reaction to threats. According to John Pike of Globalsecurity.org,
>this was "part of their strategy of going ahead and softening up the air
>defenses now" to prepare for war later.
>
>By December 2002, the shift could be noted in a 300% increase in ordnance
>dropped per threat detected -- a clear sign that simply defending the
>overflights was no longer the primary aim of the bombings. According to
>the Guardian, "Whitehall officials have admitted privately that the
>'no-fly' patrols, conducted by RAF and US aircraft from bases in Kuwait,
>are designed to weaken Iraq's air defence systems and have nothing to do
>with their stated original purpose."
>
>Weakening air defense and command-and-control are the standard first steps
>in all U.S. wars since 1991, so the first salvoes in the war were being
>fired even as inspections continued. In the first two months of this year,
>bombings occurred almost every other day.
>
>Even worse, according to strategic analyst Michael Klare, by February 2002
>it had become clear that all of the administration's supposed diplomatic
>activities in the Fall of 2002 and early 2003 had merely been a smokescreen.
>
>The war was being seriously planned from at least the spring of 2002, but
>in the summer there was a serious internal debate in the military between
>a so-called "Afghan option" with 50-75,000 troops and heavy reliance on
>air power and Iraqi opposition forces and the eventual plan, "Desert Storm
>lite," with 200-250,000 troops and a full-scale invasion.
>
>The decision was made in late August, but the more involved plan,
>according to Klare, required at least a six-month deployment. Ever since
>then, the timetable has not been one of diplomacy, U.N. resolutions, and
>weapons inspections, but rather one of deployment, strong-arming of
>regional allies needed as staging areas for the invasion, and, quite
>likely, replenishment of stocks of precision weapons depleted in the war
>on Afghanistan.
>
>For over a month, as inspections increase in effectiveness and scope, as
>Iraq dismantles its al-Samoud missiles, and as it struggles desperately to
>find ways to reconcile questions over biological and chemical agents, the
>White House has contemptuously dismissed all efforts. The constant refrain
>is that time is running out, with no explanation of why the time is so
>limited. The reason is simple; it's not because of any imminent threat
>from Iraq, it's just because the troops are there and ready to go.
>
>The obvious conclusion is that the war was decided on long ago,
>irrespective of Iraq's actions. Nothing Iraq could have done short of
>full-scale capitulation and "regime change" would have stopped the United
>States from going to war. That makes this war a clear case of aggression.
>
>Even the fig leaf of another U.N. Security Council resolution will not
>change this fact. Nor will it confer any legitimacy on the actions,
>because of the massive attempts by the United States, documented in the
>study "Coalition of the Willing or Coalition of the Coerced?" by the
>Institute for Policy Studies, to coerce, bribe, and otherwise exert undue
>influence on other countries, including key undecided Security Council
>members, to support the U.S. position.
>
>Above all else, if other countries acquiesce to U.S. plans, it will be
>because of the constant refrain of the Bush administration -- that the
>United States will go to war with or without their consent, so there is
>nothing to be gained (and much to be lost) by resisting.
>
>In fact, the U.S. war on Iraq is itself the most fundamental violation of
>international law. In the language coined at the Nuremberg trials, it is a
>crime against peace. Former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, chief
>U.S. prosecutor at the first Nuremberg trial, called waging aggressive war
>"the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in
>that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
>
>It surely is unprecedented in world history that a country is under
>escalating attack; told repeatedly that it will be subjected to a
>full-scale war; required to disarm itself before that war; and then
>castigated by the "international community" for significant but partial
>compliance.
>
>Rahul Mahajan is a founding member of the Nowar Collective
>(http://www.nowarcollective.com) and serves on the National Board of Peace
>Action. This article has been excerpted from his forthcoming book, "The
>U.S. War Against Iraq: Myths, Facts, and Lies,"
>(http://www.sevenstories.com/Book/index.cfm?GCOI=58322100353810). His
>first book, "The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism,"
>(http://www.monthlyreview.org/newcrusade.htm) has been described as
>"mandatory reading for all those who wish to get a handle on the war on
>terrorism." His articles can be found at http://www.rahulmahajan.com He
>can be contacted at rahul at tao.ca
>
>