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--- Begin Message --- -Caveat Lector- March 14, 2003
Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/news/warwatch/2003/11/we_326_05.html
It's Not About Iraq...
Will they or won't they?
As of late Thursday, it was still unclear if the United States would force a UN Security Council vote on its war-making resolution. Administration officials were pre-emptively waging a recrimination-filled campaign on two fronts, dismissing the UN as irrelevant, and rejecting Iraq's latest signs of cooperation as subterfuge. What has become increasingly clear, however, is that the struggle within the Security Council is less about Iraq or the UN than it is about the US and the Bush administration's agenda of domination.
As William Pfaff writes in The International Herald Tribune, that agenda is now threatening the very heart of the post-war diplomatic system.
"The international system rests on the principle of absolute sovereignty of states, which has nothing to do with the merits or morality of governments. By trial and error, this has been found the least bad of international diplomatic and legal systems. The United Nations is the agent of this system for exercising international authority. The United States, in the Iraq crisis, is proposing to break the system. This is what the current crisis is really about.
The Bush administration says that unless the Security Council gives the United
States what it wants, America will ignore the United Nations and from now on do whatever it thinks right. In this, a different international order is implicitly proposed. The United States making a claim to the sovereign right to intervene in, disarm, and carry out 'regime change' in other countries, subject to no external restraint."
That unchecked interventionism is exactly what France, Germany, Russia, and so many other countries around the world find so disturbing.
Despite the charges of 'appeasement,' none of the war party's biggest critics are excusing Saddam Hussein. But Iraq remains a sovereign country, protected by the same standards of international law as the United States.
Now, George Soros writes in The Miami Herald, Bush is proposing to scrap those standards in favor of a world with two distinct classes of sovereignty: "American sovereignty, which takes precedence over international treaties and obligations; and the sovereignty of all other states."
"The Bush administration believes that international relations are relations of power; legality and legitimacy are mere decorations. This belief is not false, but it exaggerates one aspect of reality to the exclusion of others. The aspect it stresses is military power. But no empire could ever be held together by military power alone.
Yet that belief guides the Bush administration. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon believes the same, and look where that has led. The idea that might is right cannot be reconciled with the idea of an open society."
As both Pfaff and Soros note, the Bush administration's �ber-hawks have been building their 'might makes right' doctrine since the president first took office. The war in Iraq is only the latest example of that approach, in which Teddy Roosevelt's foreign policy axiom is carried to the bellicose extreme -- plenty of big sticks, and an eagerness to use them, with very little speaking at all.
The Bush administration, of course, has argued that the war in Iraq is justified because Iraq represents a threat to world peace. Unfortunately, none of those arguments have convinced the world's skeptics, in part because the administration has been unable to provide any evidence of a real threat.
In fact, the only arguments that have found supporters outside the hawkish right are the purely idealistic ones -- that Saddam Hussein is a monster who must be removed to 'liberate' the Iraqi people, and that a 'liberated' Iraq will serve as a democratic inspiration for the rest of the Middle East.
Both arguments have been repeatedly undermined, of course, usually by the Bush administration itself. White House and Pentagon officials have been forced to explain why they did business with the "monster" they now seek to topple.
Now, according to Forward's Oni Nir, Bush's own State Department has drafted a report punching holes in the 'wave of democracy' theory.
"The report strongly criticizes the controversial prediction of a post-Saddam Hussein democratic 'domino effect' in the Middle East, the Forward has learned. It was put together by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, an agency that produces independent intelligence assessment reports. Officials at the State Department have taken the unusual step of sending the secret report to a select group of legislators on Capitol Hill.
C
ongressional staffers confirmed the existence of the report, but refused to disclose any details, citing the document's classified status."
Of course, many anti-war activists remain convinced that the administration's rush to war is primarily about oil -- specifically locking up Iraq's oil to slake America's massive thirst for petroleum.
Mother Jones contributing writer Robert Dreyfuss reports that the reasoning is partly right. Tracing the roots of the war back three decades, Dreyfuss explains how an invasion of Iraq and control of Iraq's oil fields is a pivotal step in an effort to control the flow of Gulf oil -- and with it the world's economy. The war is about oil, Dreyfuss writes, because oil is power.
In fact, Dreyfuss reports that many oil companies are actually deeply concerned about a war in Iraq, worried that it will spawn chaos throughout the oil-producing region. Still, as Warren Vieth and Elizabeth Douglass report, American and British oil companies would certainly be "long-term beneficiaries of a successful military offensive."
"Industry officials say Hussein's ouster would help level the playing field for U.S. and British firms that have been shut out of Iraq as Baghdad has negotiated with rivals from other countries -- notably France, Russia and China, three leading opponents of war.
A
post-Hussein Iraq also would be a bonanza for the U.S.-dominated oil-services industry, which is in the business of rehabilitating damaged infrastructure, reversing declining output from aging fields and providing essential support work to drillers and explorers. A leader in that industry is Halliburton Co., where Dick Cheney was chief executive before becoming vice president."
Bush the Uniter
In campaigning for the White House, President Bush described himself as 'a uniter, not a divider."
Well, Bush may have split NATO, torn apart the Security Council, and divided the country, but he's managed to get two of the world's most committed antagonists to agree on at least one point. As the BBC reports, both Pakistan and India have announced they strongly oppose any US military adventurism in Iraq.
Of course, the countries have somewhat different reasons for standing against Washington's plans, and a joint statement on Iraq from Islamabad and Delhi is a verified longshot. Popular opposition to the war is remarkably strong in both countries, but neither government wants to alienate the US. So, while they trade diplomatic barbs and artillary shells over Kashmir, the governments of India and Pakistan can take solace in the fact that, on at least one issue, they are in the same position.
Reconstruction, Pentagon-Style
The Bush administration is clearly eager to fight a war in Iraq, and clearly believes it can do so without any help. But is Washington as eager to rebuild the country it's about to invade? And can the US accomplish that massive undertaking without international support?
Hugh White of the Melbourne Age asserts that the White House has shown little appetite for the work or the bill.
"George Bush has done little to prepare Americans for what will probably be a long and difficult task. The military dimensions alone are daunting. America's army chief of staff, General Eric Shinseki, was reprimanded by the Pentagon recently for saying the occupation force would need to number several hundred thousand troops. But comparisons with peacekeeping operations elsewhere suggest he was right.
Britain has hoped that the UN will come to the rescue, and take over responsibility for Iraq, as it did in East Timor. But if the invasion goes ahead without UN endorsement, the UN is unlikely to help pick up the pieces afterwards. Herein lie the seeds of a troubled future. America has the will to invade Iraq without UN support, but it may not have the will to rebuild it without UN support."
Sandra Mitchell, the head of the International Rescue Committe, told US Senators that the UN and private aid organizations were finding it nearly impossible to plan for an invasion's humanitarian fallout -- primarly because the US has allowed military planning to blot out all other on-the-ground concerns.
"'US planning has so embedded humanitarian tasks and activities with the military war plan that vital information remains classified,' Ms Mitchell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She pointed out that over two weeks ago, the UN's top humanitarian official had said food stocks and supplies being sent to the region by the US Government were not enough to meet the needs of Iraq.
...
Secrecy over its humanitarian plans was underscored when the man who has been nominated to run the program declined to appear at the Senate hearings. General Jay Garner told the senators he was 'unavailable.'"
That's not to say the Bush administration is keeping all its reconstruction initiatives under wraps. Among other things, a select group of US construction firms has been invited to bid on a lucrative contract to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure. As Sheryl Fred of the Center for Responsive Politics reports, those companies are generous in their own rights -- contributing "a combined $2.8 million--68 percent to Republicans--over the past two election cycles."
Randeep Ramesh, noting that Halliburton is among the firms invited to bid on the huge progect, argues that the effort to impose order on Iraq "is a decision that involves weighing difficult moral, ethical and legal issues that threaten to destabilise the fragile world order." It should not, Ramesh asserts, be "just another business opportunity."
"The 25 million people of Iraq deserve better, especially considering the scope of the humanitarian assistance that will be necessary, in the event of war, to feed, house, clothe and care for refugees, the wounded and ill in Iraq, as well as those who will inevitably flee to neighbouring states."
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