The US has finagled its much sought-after UN Security Council Resolution UNSCR) for assistance in Iraq, through the pliant council, albeit in altered form. Indeed UNSCR 1511 passed unanimously; even the browbeaten Syrians facing US sanctions signed off on the resolution.
The US immediately began to flaunt the outcome. Democratic Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., of the Foreign Relations Committee interpreted the resolution in glowing terms: “What the vote did today was legitimize the presence of American forces in Iraq.” The original UN rebuff to legitimating the US-UK onslaught against Iraq has been dispelled and the Americans have seized upon this resolution as the sought-after legitimacy.
The UN withstood a vicious tirade about its relevancy, which the US put to the test by unleashing violence upon Iraq without UN imprimatur. Indeed how could the UN sanction such violence? The invasion was an abnegation of the UN charter to prevent future wars. UNSCR 1511 has effectively undermined the raison d’être of the UN.
The UN acquiescence to the US makes it hard to separate it from the Occupiers. Such conclusions should have been drawn from the deadly 9 August terrorist attack on a UN compound in Baghdad.
Trite Victory
The Washington Times crows that the US has split the Russia-“Old Europe” co-operation. But it is a trite victory . The international response so far has been lukewarm.
The embattled South Korean President Roh Moon-hyun has been seeking a quid pro quo. If South Korean troops are to be dispatched to Iraq then Mr. Roh seeks furtherance toward resolving the tense diplomatic standoff on the Korean peninsula.
With an election approaching, Japan’s Koizumi Junichiro remains coy about the Japanese Diet’s approval for a Japanese troop contingent to head to Iraq. The Japanese people are extremely opposed to a rise in Japanese militarism. Japan has gotten around this by opening its coffers to finance US militarism abroad. It has pledged $1.5 billion to the rebuilding of Iraq. The US is relieved of the full brunt of its responsibility as the occupier.
Even the Japanese government advocates that Mr. Bush more effectively utilize the UN “as a bridge” to achieve US aims.
Canada will not be sending troops to Iraq. Old Europe is also unlikely to send troops and neither would its citizens allow such a move. Indian participation is unlikely. Former Indian Prime Minister I.K. Gujral intoned: “As occupation was begotten by aggression, assisting in the occupation is tantamount to endorsing the aggression.” Pakistan has made it clear that it is unwilling to contribute occupation forces without an invitation from a sovereign Iraqi government.
Blatant Hypocrisy
While President George Bush has been bleating about the need to enforce UNSCRs, he has simultaneously and selectively ignored the outstanding transgressions of UNSCRs by renegade US client states. While UK Prime Minister Tony Blair decried the threat of an “irresponsible veto” by France, he was silent about the two recent US vetos of criminal Israeli acts: the building of a wall which encroaches deep into Occupied Palestine and the call to protect Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat from expulsion or harm from Israel. Pending is a UNSCR regarding the recent Israeli attack on an abandoned Palestinian training base near Damascus; an attack that the US has already supported. Israel is left with the logical inference of a “perversely, tacit international support for its criminal threats.”
That the US considers itself beyond legal reproach is manifest. This is evinced by its disregard for the judgment of the International Court of Justice in 1986 that found that the US had wielded “an unlawful use of force” against tiny Nicaragua, its oppugnancy to the International Criminal Court, and its veto of a UNSCR calling for all states to observe international law. This above-the-law status extends also to US client states according to the caprice of the hyperempire.
Syria, which is still partially occupied by Israel in defiance of a series of UNSCRs calling for the withdrawal of Israeli occupation troops, was recently attacked by Israel in contempt of international law and without Israel presenting proof for its claims of alleged terrorist activity in Syria. This follows the path of the US, which refused to present evidence of Osama bin Laden being behind the 9-11 terrorist act and then proceeded to bomb a defenseless Afghanistan.
It is a formula for international chaos — a breakdown of societal and, more importantly, moral norms.
Israel has learned that its aggression can escape official international condemnation and hence the war criminal Ariel Sharon has a freer hand to realize his Zionist ambitions. This is the ugly spawn of US preventative wars: no proof was required in Afghanistan and lies sufficed as a casus belli for invading Iraq.