The country with
the world's largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction threatens another
war
By Stephen Gowans
It has led a sanctions regime against
It has the world's largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
And a substantiated threat: it is the only country to have ever used atomic
weapons.
What's more, it has a long history of mass destruction, destroying
millions of the world's poor through campaigns of carpet bombing, in
How sadly ironic, then, that 57 years after it dropped atomic
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this very same country, armed to the teeth
with weapons of mass destruction, is preparing to wage all out war against a
devastated country it has attacked and besieged for over a decade. Why?
Because, we're told, the victim might acquire what the aggressor has in spades
-- weapons of mass destruction.
"If you wait for a threat to develop, you've waited too
long," says US President George W. Bush. By
Bush's logic, it's perfectly acceptable to walk down the street and empty the
magazine of an assault rifle into a passer-by who refuses to get off the
sidewalk, his refusal to submit being evidence of a potential threat.
"I call it self-defense," says
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
I call it naked aggression.
"The greatest danger," says William Shawcross
of the International Crisis Group, "is to allow
this evil man to remain indefinitely in power, scorning the United Nations and
posing a growing threat to the world." He could have been talking about
Bush or Rumsfeld: scorning international law, posing
a growing threat to the world; it fits. But he was talking about
Not an analyst, but a propagandist who beats the drums of war, Shawcross describes Hussein as evil, diabolical, ruthless,
intolerable, dangerous and immoral, words used to drum up support for a US
foreign policy that is evil, diabolical, ruthless, intolerable, dangerous and
immoral.
This, as all wars, is being framed as a war of good vs. evil, but
the good guys are hardly good. In their pursuit (as the late Walter Rockler, a prosecutor at
"As a primary source of international law" wrote Rockler, "the judgement of the Nuremberg Tribunal in
the 1945-1946 case of the major Nazi war criminals is plain and clear. Our
leaders often invoke and praise that judgement, but obviously have not read it."
The
"To initiate a war of aggression...is not only an
international crime, it is the supreme international
crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself
the accumulated evil of the whole."
But these days,
In 1947, John Flynn remarked that, "The enemy aggressor is
always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are
always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to
regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilize
savage and senile and paranoidal peoples while
blundering accidentally into their oil wells."
Last week, Senator Richard Lugar said, "As part of our plan
for Iraq, in addition to identifying the political leadership and the coalition
and building democracy, we're going to run the oil business...we're going to
run it well, we're going to make money, and it's going to help pay for the
rehabilitation of Iraq."
A war against evil? Or a war of evil? And oil? And power?
In 1957, Dr. Jan Van Stolk, now a
retired physician living in
"I'm dumbfounded. Two human-beings, two
young women. They were four and five when the Bomb dropped. They look
like monsters and I'm supposed to examine them. Mitsu
has no ear-lobes left, her face is a mass of scars, her eyes are constantly
watering, her nose is two holes, her hands are claws. Aya's back is a patchwork of . . . I don't know what. Her
mouth is pulled to one side by the big scars on her face. Her hands and fingers
are also contracted and look like claws. Most of her head is bald. One ear-lobe
is gone too.
"I don't quite know what happened next. I became
upset....Something must have shown on my face, because Mitsu
reached out, and with her claw-like hand she stroked me and said, 'It isn't
your fault.'
"Was Mitsu right? Maybe it isn't
our fault. But isn't it our responsibility? As The Power of Now author Eckhart Tolle said: 'Don't we
belong to this human race, this species, which has managed to kill, in one
century, nearly 150 million of its own.'"
Fifty-seven years after
We should also remember the 150 million who died in the last
century's wars, many in places with names like
"Individuals have international duties which transcend the
national obligations of obedience." They have a duty "to prevent
crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."
Another crime against peace and humanity is about to happen.
We have a duty.
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