IRAQ: WAR CRIMINALS ON THE RAMPAGE!
(Discussion articles for publication to: tpapard@btinternet.com)
We hear that once the illegal war on Iraq starts, everyone will rally behind ‘our boys’. Will we heck! They are not ‘our boys’ but war criminals plain and simple! Anyone in the armed services with any conscience or knowledge of international law should refuse to participate in this illegal military invasion which obviously does not have the support of the UN Security Council or the majority of people in this country and the world at large.
The UN General Secretary, Kofi Annan, has said any military action by USA and UK without the authority of the UN Security Council would be illegal. It is therefore the duty of ‘our boys’ to refuse to obey orders and desert if necessary, like many Israeli conscripts have done. If they participate in an illegal invasion of Iraq they may well at some future stage be hauled before the International Criminal Court and accused of war crimes. There will be no defense of ‘we were just obeying orders’; the Nuremburg judgments clearly stipulated that it is the duty of soldiers to disobey illegal orders.
As for Blair, Bush and their cronies who are determined to press on with this illegal invasion of Iraq without authorization from the UN Security Council, they are of course even bigger war criminals. But that is nothing new; all leaders of the nuclear powers are war criminals already by nature of the very fact that they threaten civilians with weapons of mass destruction; nuclear weapons which cannot discriminate between military and civilian targets and are therefore completely illegal, as is their possession and threatened use by any country.
The arrogance of these two war criminals, Bush and Blair, preparing to commit even more war crimes in defiance of world opinion and the UN Security Council is breathtaking. And don’t think it will end with the occupation of Iraq. There is an endless list of countries which could be up next for attack. Apart from the so-called ‘rogue states’ in the ‘axis of evil’ described by George W. Bush, there are unsavory dictatorships all around the world – are Bush/Blair planning to declare war on all of them one by one, or only those not currently supported by the US government? It is not so long ago Saddam Hussein’s regime was being provided arms and the materials to build weapons of mass destruction by the USA and UK governments. Pinochet’s Chile committed many atrocities, yet was installed in power and supported by the USA.
War criminals, torturers, dictators, terrorists and those committing murder and genocide on their own citizens must be brought to justice, but this can only be done thru international agencies like the UN and the ICC using policing methods to arrest the culprits, not all-out war which will kill thousands of innocent civilians and probably leave many of those guilty of the above crimes unscathed. The Afghanistan episode did not result in the capture of Bin Laden or his top leadership; only now is this slowly being achieved by means of policing methods.
Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with September 11th. There are other countries with far more dangerous weapons of mass destruction because Iraq has been contained for the past 12 years by UN weapons inspectors and UN Security Council resolutions. American spy satellites would have pinpointed the location of any significant stores of WMD if they existed anywhere in Iraq, or if they were moved to new locations in advance of UN inspections. In fact the main danger of nuclear and chemical/biological weapons spreading to terrorists and unstable states comes from the former Soviet Union whose arsenals of WMD and their components leak like a sieve.
The end result of the planned illegal invasion of Iraq will be turmoil in the Middle East, a vast increase in the problem of terrorism, more fundamentalist regimes in the Arab world, and a new world order based on total anarchy as the world’s one superpower and its loyal poodle, UK, try to impose their will and economic system on the world. It will also encourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons, because this military adventurism in Iraq will encourage other countries likely to be attacked by USA/UK to try and develop nuclear weapons. Note it is not Pakistan, India, China, Israel or North Korea which USA/UK plans to attack – they already have nuclear weapons of their own.
Nuclear weapons were of little military use to the two old super-powers and their allies. Politically, they could not be used and everyone knew this since the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki sent shockwaves of revulsion around the world. So America lost the Vietnam war, the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan and eventually their empire in Asia and Europe collapsed, and Argentina was not deterred from claiming back the Malvinas (Falklands). The nuclear weapons of USA, USSR and UK were useless to them in preventing these defeats.
However, if nuclear weapons are in the hands of unstable regimes prepared to commit national suicide rather than admit defeat, the world is in a whole new ball game. This is why Bush’s disregard of international treaties, especially the anti-ballistic missile treaty, is so dangerous. After the Afghan and Iraq invasions, every unstable country in the world will rush to acquire nuclear weapons, and some will be prepared to use them even if it means they commit national suicide.
This madness must stop NOW! All weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, must be banned. UN inspectors must be allowed to enter every country on Earth, including the USA and UK, to make sure all nuclear weapons and other WMD are destroyed.
It is the height of hypocrisy for USA and UK to preach to Iraq and other countries about the illegality of WMD when they have huge stockpiles themselves, and still threaten civilian populations with nuclear annihilation. This kind of nuclear terrorism by USA/UK and the other nuclear states make September 11th pale into insignificance, but unfortunately it also encourages other terrorists to adopt the same methods: targeting innocent civilians in order to try to achieve political aims.
Lawyers around the world, and the UN Secretary General himself, have ruled that war against Iraq is illegal without a second UN Security Council resolution specifically authorizing it. All those planning it, directing it or participating in it should be warned that they are liable to be convicted of war crimes in the future.
The fact that Saddam Hussein may also eventually be brought before the same ICC is neither here nor there – the fact that Hitler was a war criminal did not mean Stalin wasn't, or Churchill, Roosevelt or Truman for that matter. They were ALL war criminals, and the victims were in the Nazi concentration camps and the gulags, and they were also the citizens of Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and countless other places bombed indiscriminately and therefore illegally by the Second World War allies.
It has been suggested that the Fire Brigades' Union is acting unpatriotically by calling for more firemen's strikes, so tying up troops covering the emergency fire and rescue service while there may well be a war going on. Not only should the FBU be applauded, trade union leaders should call a general strike and tie up as many troops as possible to frustrate this illegal war. Everything possible, short of violence to persons and animals, should be done to assert the will of the majority of people in this so-called 'democracy' by making Britain's participation in this illegal war as difficult as possible. At the May local elections New Labor and the Tories should be given a thrashing for supporting this illegal war. Vote for any party or candidate that opposes it.