A rchive Date
[ 10-03-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/brodbeck.html
War against Iraq senseless
By TOM BRODBECK - Winnipeg Sun
March 10, 2003
It's one thing for the United States and their so-called coalition of the willing to argue that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is a menace to the world who ought to be extinguished.
It's quite another for them to bomb Baghdad without the approval of the United Nations and argue they're doing so to enforce a series of broken UN resolutions.
That's hypocrisy in its purest form.
If the U.S. and others feel they have enough justification to declare war against Iraq, whatever that justification may be, nobody can really stop them.
But I wish they wouldn't insult my intelligence by telling me they're doing so to enforce a series of UN resolutions.
That's like claiming someone has violated the Criminal Code of Canada and because police, who are charged with enforcing the law, decline to lay charges, you're going to enforce the law yourself outside the court system.
In that case, you can't say you're enforcing the Criminal Code because the Code itself lays out how it's supposed to be enforced.
You would, in fact, be breaking the law if you tried to enforce it yourself.
It's the same with the United Nations. The UN passes resolutions all the time.
But they have rules on how those resolutions should be enforced. They have a Security Council with voting members who have the sole authority to enforce those resolutions.
Anyone else, including a "coalition of the willing," who tries to enforce them is not enforcing UN resolutions, they are acting outside the UN.
You can't have it both ways. You can't say you're enforcing UN resolutions and then spit in the eye of the institution that created them.
It's one of the many deficiencies in the pro-war argument.
Another major flaw is the argument that Iraq is "linked" to terrorist cells, whatever that means. The contention is that Iraq had something to do with the Sept. 11 attacks and that it's harbouring terrorists whom Saddam Hussein could arm to attack the United States.
But when asked for evidence that Iraq was behind 9/11, the White House always fails to deliver.
The spin that Iraq was linked to 9/11 makes for good rhetoric on the talk show circuit. But in the cold, hard light of day, the claim doesn't have a leg to stand on.
It's perhaps that assertion that erodes Bush's credibility more than any other. When you don't have a strong case for action, you reach. And George W. is reaching.
The other justification for war against Iraq is that not only does Saddam Hussein have weapons of mass destruction - which dozens of countries do - he's used them against his own people.
It's true, he has. He's a dangerous, murderous dictator - one of many around the world. But what you don't hear much about is the American's complicity in Iraq's use of chemical and biological warfare in the 1980s.
The U.S. provided intelligence and arms to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war in an effort to stave off an Iran victory. U.S. companies were exporting biological agents to Iraq which were licensed by the Commerce Department. And the U.S., which knew about the chemical warfare, did nothing to prevent them.
They gave Iraq tacit approval to use them.
The bottom line today, though, is that nothing is going to happen overnight in Iraq, except for a possible U.S.-led war.
Iraq is surrounded by tens of thousands of troops. There's a northern no-fly zone and a southern one.
The United Nations is combing though Iraq looking for and actively destroying arms. UN chief inspector Hans Blix is reporting continued progress and co-operation. The eye of the world is on Iraq and they can't attack anyone or really do anything. They're incarcerated.
Under these circumstances, I don't know how any logical thinking person could in good conscience approve of military action against Iraq, killing tens of thousands of innocent people, creating an explosively dangerous environment in the Persian Gulf and substantially increasing the threat of terrorism in the United States.
It simply makes no sense.
Tom Brodbeck is the Sun's city columnist. He can be reached by e-mail at tbrodbeck@wpgsun.com.
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@wpgsun.com.
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