Bismarck’s dictum that people who want to appreciate treaties and sausages should not watch them being made applies to Security Council resolutions as well. The U.S. is set to win Security Council support for a resolution on Iraq and is already calling it victory.
Americans owe a debt of gratitude to the coalition of people and countries around the world that is trying to save us from a catastrophic war in Iraq.
Every time I hear the likes of Vice-President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, or Senator Lieberman go on about war with Iraq, it reminds me of a history lesson Congress should keep in mind when it begins its debate over Iraq: wars are waged with the bodies of the young, and they always come home.
Given what is at stake, one would have thought that the administration would have made a stronger case for going to war than President George W. Bush did on Monday evening.
Dan Handelman is haunted by two images of Iraq that most Americans never see on television.
After President’s Speech, Questions Remain Unanswered By Stephen Zunes and Erik Leaver October 16, 2002 Editor : Tom Barry, Interhemispheric Resource Center ( IRC )
(Editor’s Note: In its effort to justify its planned invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has emphasized the importance of enforcing UN Security Council resolutions. However, in addition to the dozen or so resolutions currently being violated by Iraq, a conservative estimate reveals that there are an additional 88 Security Council resolutions about countries other than Iraq that are also currently being violated. This raises serious questions regarding the Bush administration’s insistence that it is motivated by a duty to preserve the credibility of the United Nations, particularly since the vast majority of the governments violating UN Security Council resolutions are close allies of the United States. Stephen Zunes, University of San Francisco professor and Middle East Editor for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org),compiled the following partial list of UN resolutions that are currently being violated by countries other than Iraq.)
>After months of internal wrangling over tactics and strategy, it now appears that the White House has settled on the basic design for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. President Bush was given a detailed plan for the assault on September 10, and it appears that key combat units have been moved to the Middle East or are being readied for deployment to the region. Although most of the world is still focused on the diplomatic whirlwind at the United Nations, American military personnel are behaving as if a war with Iraq is imminent. And while it is impossible to predict the exact day and hour when hostilities will commence, it is unlikely that “D-Day” will occur much later than the second or third week of February 2003.
The United States still appears determined to move forward with plans to engage in a large-scale military operation against Iraq to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein. In the international community, however, serious questions are being raised regarding its legality, its justification, its political implications, and the costs of the war itself. Such an invasion would constitute an important precedent, being the first test of the new doctrine articulated by President George W. Bush of “preemption,” which declares that the United States has the right to invade sovereign countries and overthrow their governments if they are seen as hostile to U.S. interests. All previous large-scale interventions by American forces abroad have been rationalized—albeit not always convincingly to many observers—on the principle of collective self-defense, such as through regional organizations like the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) or the Organization of American States (OAS). To invade Iraq would constitute an unprecedented repudiation of the international legal conventions that such American presidents as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower helped create in order to build a safer world. Despite the pretense of “working through” the United Nations, it appears the Bush administration is determined to pursue its objectives unilaterally.
How much is the Bush administration’s push for war with Iraq motivated by its desire to gain control of Iraq’s oil fields? “Regime change” to a pro-U.S. government would permit the privatization of Iraq’s state-controlled oil resources—and a bonanza for U.S. oil companies. As former South African president Nelson Mandela said in a recent interview in Newsweek, “It is clearly a decision that is motivated by George W. Bush’s desire to please the arms and oil industries in the United States of America.”