Human
Rights and the illegal
US/UK Attack on Iraq
By
Johan
Galtung, TFF Associate and Transcend
July 15, 2005
This is Galtung's speech to the
World Tribunal on Iraq, Istanbul Final Session, June
24-26 2005.
Distinguished Members of the Jury
of Conscience, Fellow Advocate, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Friends!
The testimonies have brought the
reality of an Iraq tortured by the US/UK (and a coalition
of willing clients) illegal attack, and illegal
occupation, into our minds and hearts. With a sense of
deep anger at the continued aggression and deep
compassion with the victims we have witnessed the reality
of crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against
humanity, including nuclear war through the use of
depleted, radioactive uranium, on top of the genocidal
economic sanctions, and the general "softening up" of
Iraq for a quick, decisive war and remolding to the taste
of the aggressors.
Members of the
Jury!
What we are witnessing is the
geo-fascist state terrorism of US imperialism, following
the defunct British Empire, soon to follow it into the
graveyard of empires. In my research-based opinion at the
latest by 2020, but, past experience being a guide, there
is more to come. By some counts the attack on Iraq is US
aggression no. 239 after the Thomas Jefferson start in
the early 19th century and no. 69 after the Second world
war; with between 12 and 16 million killed in that period
alone. All of it is in flagrant contradiction of the most
basic human rights, like the "right to life, liberty and
security of persons" (Universal Declaration, UD:3) and
the condemnation of the "cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment" (UD:5). In a Pentagon Planner's
chilling words: "The de facto role of the United States
Armed Forces will be to keep the world safe for our
economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends,
we will do a fair amount of killing". (1) And in my drier
words: "Imperialism is a transborder structure for the
synergy of killing, repression, exploitation and brain-
washing."
I hold up against this organized
atrocity - - whether attempted legitimized through packs
of lies about weapons of mass destruction and links to Al
Qaeda, or by invoking a divine mandate or a mandate to
export democracy and human rights through dictatorship
and world crimes - - a slip of paper, Article 28 of the
Universal Declaration:
Everyone
is entitled to a social and international order in
which the rights and freedoms set forth in this
Declaration can be fully realized. (UD:28)
This admirable formulation provides
an excellent linkage between various levels of social
organization, from the individual level at which these
rights are implemented or violated, to the structure of
the social and world spaces. It indicates the spaces in
which these conditions may be identified. The basic needs
served by human rights are located inside the individual,
but the conditions for their satisfaction are social
and/or international, generally speaking. UD:28 is a
meta-right, a right about rights, with nothing short of
revolutionary implications.
US imperialism in general, and its
articulation in Iraq in particular, invokes the whole
International Bill of Rights, but the focus is on the
UD:3 right to life, in the context of Article
29:
Everyone
has duties to the community in which alone the free
and full development of his personality is possible.
(UD:29)
There are no rights without duties,
and right-holder and duty- bearer may also be the same
actor. The word "community" rather than, but not
excluding, "country" is used. This is very realistic as
human beings developed personalities long before there
were countries run by states and peopled by nations in
our sense. But "communities" are as old as humankind
itself. To a growing part of humanity the most important
are non-territorial, like the NGOs.
Problem: What are the rights that
flow from the conjunction of UD:3 with UD:28, and what
are the corresponding UD:29 duties?
First
Exercise:
The entitlement
to a social and international order where everything is
done to resolve conflicts nonviolently.
Obvious, but worth emphasizing: the
US/UK continued warfare is not only criminal, even by
intent as demonstrated by the Downing Street Memorandum,
but also plainly stupid, a folly. The criminal and the
stupid can operate singly, but they also often combine
and reinforce, due to a simple mechanism. Criminal acts
must be planned in secret, also to deceive their own
peoples, by small gangs with cojones, in Bush's words.
They do not benefit from the dialogue of open agreements
openly arrived at in an open society, also known as a
democracy. Democracy's traitors easily become its
fools.
Barbara W. Tuchman, in her fine
book The March of Folly (2)gives us some leads.
She studies Troy in the Battle of Troy, the Renaissance
Popes during the Protestant Reformation, England and the
American Revolution, and the USA in Viet Nam and
concludes that their action was simply foolish (3). And
she presents three criteria for a policy to be
characterized as a "folly" (4): a) It was perceived
as counter-productive in its own time; b) A feasible
alternative course of action was available; and c) The
policy was not the policy of one particular ruler
only.
These three criteria are met in the
US/UK illegal attack on Iraq. Hardly ever has a policy
been so massively critiqued for being
"counterproductive", including the 15 February 2003
demonstration of 11 million in 600 places around the
world, the biggest in human history. As I shall indicate,
alternative courses were available. And there was more
than one ruler involved, a whole coalition defying their
people, headed by 2B, Bush-Blair, followed by clients
like 2b, Berlusconi-Bondevik (the Norwegian
fundamentalist prime minister). Only two countries were
democratic in the sense that executive, legislature and
public opinion coincided: the USA for the war, and our
host country, Turkey, against. EU, take note!
Two Security Council members,
France and Germany, put forward an alternative course of
action: continued, deeper inspection that could then be
extended to a human rights inspection, gradually
eliminating two of the pretexts for a war which obviously
was for geo-economic. geo-political and geo-cultural
(Judeo-Christian anti Islam, that is what the content of
the torture and the desecration of the Qur'an are about).
This proposal could easily have been developed into
something that could serve to organize a General Assembly
Uniting for Peace resolution, possibly also using the
highly successful Helsinki Conference for Security and
Cooperation of 1973-75 as a model (also to avoid US/UK
veto).
But this was not the road traveled.
Not to do so was not a US/UK brutal act of commission,
but an act of omission that always comes as a poor second
in Judeo-Christian philosophy and Western jurisprudence.
Many can be blamed, including France and Germany
themselves for not having followed up, lesser coalition
members, the UNGA for not mustering the collective
courage against the bullying by Colin Powell telling that
Uniting for Peace (in the UNSC-run UN) is seen by the USA
as an "unfriendly act".
We are sensing here a missing human
right with corresponding duty: the right to live in a
"social and international order" where everything is done
to solve conflicts nonviolently. That right can only be
implemented if others fulfill certain duties. It is not
for everybody to have an impact on the "social and
international order" in such concrete and partly
technical issues. In other words, for the right to be
implemented somebody "high up", socially and/or
internationally, indeed including the media, will have to
do a better job, being more open to nonviolent
alternatives and more closed to violence, war and the
"military option" in general.
This point becomes even more clear
in the next example, Saddam Hussein's peace proposal in
the New York Times (6 November 2003) "Iraq said to have
tried to reach last minute deal to avert war":
In February 2003 Hassan Al-Obeidi,
chief of foreign operations of the Iraqi Intelligence
Service, met with Imad Hage, a Lebanese- American
Businessman in his Beirut office. Mr. Obeidi told Mr.
Hage that Iraq would make deals to avoid war, including
helping in the Mideast peace process. He said, "If this
is about oil, we will talk about U.S. oil concessions. If
this is about weapons of mass destruction, let the
Americans send over their people." Mr. Obeidi said Iraq
would agree to hold elections within the next two years.
Of all people Richard Perle seems to have been willing to
pursue this channel, but was overruled by higher
officials. Said Perle: The message was, "Tell them that
we will see them in Baghdad".
The blame for this act of omission
falls on the U.S. itself. But this is entirely in line
with a very transparent U.S. approach: the U.S. reports
its own proposals but not the other side, like in Viet
Nam, in the Rambouillet negotiations over whether to bomb
or not to bomb Serbia, or in general over
Israel-Palestine. When the other side, denied access to
public space by the compliant media of the
military-corporate-media complex, fails to accept U.S.
proposals they can more easily be portrayed as being
"against peace".
In a Helsinki -style Conference
for Security and Cooperation In and Around Iraq these
proposals would be on the table, as "it" was about all
those issues, holding Saddam Hussein to his words. "Oil
issues" could be translated into quotas and put the U.S.
in a negotiating rather than dictating position. WMD: the
U.S. knew the program had been discontinued in 1995; the
CIA is hardly that badly informed. And even if Hussein is
not credible as a guardian of democracy these elections
would not be under the U.S./corporate press/"one dollar
one vote" control that gives democracy such a bad name,
close to a synonym for "US client state". However that
may be, to have closed this channel was both criminal and
stupid.
Second
exercise:
The entitlement
to a social and international order where perpetrators of
(major) crimes are brought to justice.
With major perpetrators having
major power through major veto, the UN today is not an
adequate instrument for bringing US/UK to justice; the
USA even having exempted itself from ICC adjudication.
Yet they should not get away with impunity. Justice has
to be done.
When a government fails to live up
to its duty civil society, meaning nongovernment, has to
step in. When the major international instrument of
governments, the UN, fails to live up to its duty the
international civil society has to step in. This World
Tribunal on Iraq is an example of a tribunal based on the
international civil society. But how about the
instruments of punitive justice?
The answer is that the
international civil society, everyone of us, has that
instrument: an economic boycott of US/UK products. A
boycott could include consumer goods (drinks and food of
iconic nature, fuels), capital goods (like not using
Boeing, a major death factory, aircraft whenever there
are alternatives), and financial goods (like using other
currencies than dollars for international transactions
including tourism and price denomination; divestment from
US/UK stock and bonds). It could relate to all products,
or only to products from the most obnoxious,
empire-related companies, like US/UK oil companies. It
could be combined with a "girlcott" favoring
non-coalition countries and acceptable US/UK
companies.
Members of the
Jury!
Everybody could find his/her own
formula, seeing some boycott not only as a human duty but
as a human right not to be interfered with. For Iraq a
focus on oil is recommended.
However, channels of communication
should be kept open for dialogues. The goal is less to
inflict pain than to bring about an end to an illegal
aggression and, by implication and atrocities, illegal
occupation. When the occupation is over, so is the
boycott.
Third
exercise:
The entitlement
to a social and international order without imperial
structures perverting the order.
We are today talking about a US
empire which may or may not have successors, in which
case what follows also applies to them.
The empire is a structure based on
unequal exchange in the military, political, economic and
cultural fields, and has to be counteracted in all four
fields. Being the negation of the social and
international order in the sense of UD:28 there is not
only a human duty for people at all levels to counteract
an empire but also a human right, not to be interfered
with, to do so.
Unequal exchange is injustice. To
counteract it will be construed as hostile action, as
"terrorism", interfering with the "normal" flow of
resources and products, "normal" as established by the
empire (see Article 24 of the new NATO Pact of
1999).
In reality, not to interfere is
complicity, and to interfere is justice, and more
particularly restorative justice. It restores not only
victim countries, groups and individuals, but also the
perpetrator, to normalcy and sanity, coexisting
peacefully in a world of more equal, or at least less
flagrantly, unequal exchange.
The country to benefit most from
the dismantling of the US Empire is the U.S. which, while
enriching its upper classes at the same time has
degenerated into a paranoid, angst-ridden country
tormented by the existential fear that "one day they will
do to us what we have done to them" (yes, one day they
did: 9/11 2001.).
I join the ranks of those who say
"I love the US Republic, and I hate the US Empire".
The question is how to engage in
these colossal acts of restorative justice. And the
answer is that it is happening all the time militarily
and politically, that more can and should be done, and
that there is a need for action in the economic and
cultural fields. And who are the actors?
Everybody.
How can it be done?
Four examples, covering the four
fields:
Militarily this is happening all
places in the world where that "most powerful country" is
challenged by people shedding their uniform, dressing and
living like the people around them with their total
support and more dedicated than soldiers fed packs of
lies.
Members of the Jury! All resistance
against an illegal attack is legitimate, and the Iraqi
resistance is fighting for us all. But I also blame us in
the peace movement for having been unable to share our
insights in nonviolent resistance with our Iraqi
friends.
Politically regionalization is
happening all over the world, in part motivated by
getting out of the US grip: the EU, the AU and similar
incipient movements in Latin America, OIC and East
Asia.
Economically there is the economic
boycott, adding to punitive justice the restorative,
gandhian aspect of taking on the challenge of developing
your own products and helping the U.S. accommodate to a
reasonable and equitable niche in world trade. In John
Perkins Confessions of an Economic Hit Man lies
the depth of U.S. insanity.
Culturally we are confronted
with US/UK legitimacy. It used to be that "the U.S. is
chosen by God; the UK by the U.S." like a pale moon
reflecting that divine Anglo-American light. Today the
idea of God using Bush as his instrument is sheer
blasphemy, and countries chosen by the USA should ask
"what is wrong about me". If you are so immature as to
need a strong father seek psycho- therapy, not a mafia
boss. To kill Iraqis as therapy is
despicable.
Members of the Jury!
My own Buddhism is sufficiently
close to the gentle Christianity of a St Francis to sense
the blasphemy. I call on the Jury to call on Christian
communities to protest this blasphemy, including Pope
Benedict XVI, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who had the task
of protecting the faith. The time to act is now.
Notes
1. From Susan George, "The
Corporate Utopian Dream", The WTO and the Global War
System, Seattle, November 1999. He is missing the
political dimension and might have added "a fair amount
of bullying" or "arm-twisting" after killing.
2. The March of Folly, From Troy
to Vietnam (New York: Knopf, 1984).
3. Visitors today to the ruins of
Troy (in Turkey, near the Dardanelles, on the Asian side)
will find a model of the famous wooden horse, and can
judge for themselves the wisdom of letting such a thing
within their walls. In the other three cases a little
patience, flexibility, willingness to listen, and real
dialogue might have come a far way. But then we might
have had neither economic growth and individualizing
democracy as we know them, if we accept that both are
related to the world view of Protestantism, nor the end
of the beginning of the US Republic, nor the beginning of
the end of the US Empire.
4. Op.cit.., p. 5.
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