[Peace-discuss] Why Bush is a criminal

Fri Mar 21 19:36:39 CST 2003

Our last president was impeached and nearly removed from office simply for
misrepresenting his relationship with a White House intern.  Bush has
violated the United Nations Charter- the very cornerstone of international
law.  Certainly this is an offence many orders of magnitude worse than
Clinton's private personal failings.  I think we should make advocating
the impeachment of Bush a major theme of our future protests.
-Paul P.

 Attack on Iraq Could Turn Bush into Criminal
by Thomas Walkom

There are many good reasons for Canada's decision not to join U.S.
President George W. Bush's war against Iraq. The best is that such a war
would be patently illegal.

Prime Minister Jean Chtien hinted at this yesterday when he told
Parliament that Canada would not support a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq
because the U.N. Security Council has not authorized such an attack.

What he did not say, perhaps because he is too polite, is that in waging
war without U.N. authorization, the U.S. and its ragtag "coalition of the
willing" are putting themselves outside the boundaries of international
law.

Or, to put it bluntly, they are transforming themselves into outlaw
states.

"There is no legal basis for war," says Ted McWhinney, a former Liberal
MP, professor and expert on international law. "None. That was clear from
the beginning."

That the very nations which spearheaded efforts to rein in an outlaw
state should themselves become outlaws is a rich, if tragic, irony. It
will be appreciated as such in most countries, although possibly not in
the U.S. where irony, like French toast, has been declared unpatriotic.

Yet this is what has happened. Iraq, a country that for 12 years did defy
and obstruct the international community, is now seen by much of the
world as a helpless victim. Even the villainous Saddam Hussein is viewed
almost  almost  sympathetically.

The two men most responsible for this remarkable turnaround in world
public opinion are Saddam and Bush.

Saddam's strategy was simple. When faced with pressure, he did what the
Security Council told him to do. In the language of the U.N., he
complied.

By contrast, Bush appeared capricious, arrogant and ever so slightly
unhinged. The more Saddam complied, the more Bush complained that he
wasn't. The more successes the U.N. weapons inspectors scored in their
disarmament of Iraq, the more petulant Bush became.

Eventually, even those people who don't pay a great deal of attention to
world affairs began to wonder which of the two was the madman.

Indeed, Bush's behaviour is difficult to fathom. For more than a year, he
has seemed bent on invading Iraq, no matter what. Perhaps this
single-minded focus on war explains his striking inability to win
diplomatic support from the usually pliable members of the Security
Council, most of whom are eager for American dollars. In the end, Bush
couldn't even be sure of Mexico.

Which is why yesterday, the U.S., British and Spanish abandoned efforts
to have the Security Council pass a resolution authorizing war. They now
say they don't need one to invade Iraq legally. In fact, they do. Among
experts, the overwhelming consensus seems to be that there is no legal
authorization for an Iraq war.

Certainly, last fall's Security Council resolution 1441, the one that the
U.S. cites to justify its actions, does not do the trick. Contrary to the
common wisdom, it does not even threaten Iraq with "serious consequences"
for non-compliance. It merely "recalls" that the council has warned of
such consequences before.

Even Britain recognizes that resolution 1441 is a week reed. It insists
that war is implicitly authorized by Security Council resolutions 678 and
687, both of which date from the early 1990s.

Nonsense, says McWhinney. Security Council resolutions are specific to
time and place; they cannot be dragged out years later to justify
unilateral actions.

"No country alone can be judge, jury and high executioner."

Besides, writes British lawyer Keir Starmer, the earlier Security Council
resolutions don't quite work, either. Resolution 678 (1990) did authorize
military action but only to force Iraq to abandon its occupation of
Kuwait. And resolution 687 (1991), which established the ceasefire at the
end of the first Gulf War, doesn't authorize force at all.

All of this is important in the context of the U.N. system set up by the
U.S. and its allies after World War II to prevent war. Under the U.N.
Charter, it is a crime for any nation to make war, except in self-defence
or with the explicit approval of the council. Anyone in any country that
makes war outside of these conditions is breaking international law.

This is not to suggest that Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair
are about to be bundled into police vans  although there are precedents.
Bush had foresight enough to refuse to recognize the new international
war crimes court that is being set up in Holland. In any case, it's tough
to arrest a man surrounded by nuclear weapons.

Still, says McWhinney, Bush  and indeed anyone involved in an illegal
invasion of Iraq  would be wise to stay out of Belgium. That small
country has aggressively pursued war criminals, arguing that it has the
right to try them under its domestic law.

Theoretically, Bush could find himself sharing a Brussels cell with that
other notorious international outlaw, Saddam Hussein.

Thomas Walkom's column appears on Tuesday.