PeakOil is You
New movie "Why We Fight"...thoughts on Empire
Re: New movie "Why We Fight"...thoughts on Empire
by Petrodollar » Mon 13 Feb 2006, 16:14:57
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he reason I ask is that you often seem to argue that the second Bush's neocon policy represents a radical change in US foreign policy.
It most definitely is a radical change in US policy. The United States National Security Strategy (NSS) of 2002 is the most radical foreign policy statement in the history of the United States. Bar none.
rogerhb stated:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he main change I see is that the current admin no longer cares about US Law, the US Constitution, International Law, the UN, world opinion, and basically any pretence of working with the rest of the world. It's all now black and white "you are with us or against us".
I concur with that basic statement, and I have the facts to support that assertion. First and foremost, none of the previous 42 presidents over the previous 224 years ever argued that the US has the right to engage in a "preventative" war against other nations that did not pose an imminent threat to the nation. The so-called "Bush doctrine" embodies the same distorted illogic used by the Nazis during the Nuremberg War Criminal Trials of 1945-1946. They argued their invasion of Poland in 1939 and various other nations was done as a "preemptive" attempt to prevent those nations from building up their forces and attacking Germany.
Was was the verdict? The Nazis were found guilty of commiting crimes against humanity - a pre-meditated war of aggression. All of the US, British, French and Soviet jurists ruled that the Nazi defense as both illogical, and a war crime. Here are the Nuremberg Principles:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Principle VI
The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:
(a) Crimes against peace:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
(b) War Crimes:
Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
(c) Crimes against humanity:
Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.
Principle VII
Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.
Indeed, the whole idea of "preventative war" against sovereign nation-states began to be discredited going back to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, and formally codified into International Law in 1946.
Your view of the 1991 versus the 2003 War reveals how different we see the world. First I will state that I was in favor of the 1990-1 Desert Shield/Desert Storm war given that Saddam had clearly violated the soverignty of Kuwait with the August 1990 invasion. But I do not follow your logic here...
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') don't see the big difference between the 91 war and the 03 war.
I wish you were kidding, but if you can not see the obvious, I will state it for you:
1) The 1991 Gulf War was supported by the UN, dozens of allies including most the ME states, and had nothing to do with the discredited "preventive" war concept.
2) The 2003 invasion of Iraq was the test case of the new “Bush doctrine” of “preventive warfare.”
It is well established that this is illegal, and thus the US, UK and Austrialian gov'ts (the only 3 who supplied troops for the March 2003 invasion) are guilty of war crimes according to long-standing international law. Tony Blair was warned about this issue, but proceed anyway hoping that WMD would be found...
Some may argue that the 1999 Yugoslavian War was illegal, but regardless of that debate, neither Clinton nor any other US president ever dared to produce a formal document such as the 2002 NSS. The bombing of Serbia was not a pre-meditated act of aggression by the US/NATO - but the 2003 Iraq invasion was most certainly a premeditated conspiracy by the Executive branch (WHIG) and Pentagon (OSP/CTEG) to launch a war in Iraq as early as Jan 2001 (according to John O'Neill, etc.). One of the many websites that objectively analyzes and critiques current neoconservative geostrategy is this review of the Bush doctrine witin the context of international law:
http://www.globelaw.com/Iraq/Preventive ... r_iraq.htm
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Preventive War’ and International Law After Iraq
The doctrine of ‘preventive war’ announced and practised by the United States, the attack on Iraq by the United States supported by a number of countries described as the ‘coalition of the willing’, and unilateral actions taken with respect to a number of international conventions such as the NPT, the ABM Treaty, the CTBT and the Kyoto Protocol have given rise to concern about the current state of international law and in particular whether the prohibitions against the use of force on which the United Nations Charter is founded are still respected by Member States and whether multilateralism and the rule of law is to be superseded by unilateralism and a return to reliance on the use of military and economic force instead of law and diplomacy.
..The new Bush doctrine of ‘preventive war’ which was published in the National Security Strategy in September 2002 contemplates attacking a state in the absence of specific evidence of a pending attack. This doctrine marks a departure from the prohibition of the use of force under international law, starting from the Kellogg-Briand pact, the establishment of the Nuremberg Charter, the conclusion of the United Nations Charter and the establishment of the International Criminal Court, and marks a return to a readiness to use force in international relations.
Following the publication of that doctrine, the United States, together with United Kingdom, Australia and other States, launched an attack on Iraq, having failed to gain approval of the Security Council under Chapter VII. Many international lawyers believe that attack was illegal and amounted to a war of aggression.
A number of breaches of international law have already been reported following the occupation of Iraq, including failure to prevent looting and allowing breakdown of law and order to take place in Baghdad, failure to provide humanitarian assistance and shooting of civilians during protest.
Members of the ‘coalition of the willing’ that go to Iraq under Security Council resolution 1483 (2003) would go as belligerent occupants and would be subject to the requirements of international law accordingly, and may themselves incur responsibility or individual liability for actions which have or which will place in Iraq.
This paper finds that any members of the “coalition of the willing” may be responsible for compensation, including direct loss, damage, including environmental damage and the depletion of natural resources, or injury to foreign Governments, nationals and corporations.
Under Security Council resolution 1483 (2003), no protection is given to Member States or their officials from liability under the Geneva Conventions, Hague Regulations or other provisions of international or national law including the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Here'a how another analyst summarized this issue:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he [National Security Strategy of the United States of America] document asserts as the guiding policy of the United States the right to use military force anywhere in the world, at any time it chooses, against any country it believes to be, or it believes may at some point become, a threat to American interests. No country has ever asserted such a sweeping claim to global domination as is now being made by the United States.
Furthermore, it declares that ‘The US national security strategy will be based on a distinctly American internationalism that reflects the union of our values and our national interests.’ This bold sort of internationalism may appear presumptuous to other countries, governments and religious groups when it proclaims that whatever is good for America is good for the world. As President Bush asserts in the introduction of the document, America’s values ‘are right and true for every person, in every society.’
While many people from around the world naturally tend to harbor nostalgic notions of their own country, it is often problematic for a nation state to boldly proclaim that its national interests and values are true for every nation on Earth. The NSS did not address what constitutes national interests and, as such, represented another Orwellian phrase similar to the oft-repeated, but never actually defined, “American way of life.”
According to the Declaration of Independence, the unalienable universal rights of mankind are to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Clearly preventative warfare - including the threat of using nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state - is not one of the self-evident truths, but rather appears to be an aggressive strategy for enforcing our national interests upon other states.
The essential claim in the 2002 NSS document is the right of the US to take unilateral military action against another country without having to offer verifiable evidence that it is acting to prevent a clear and verifiable threat of attack. This assertion was used to justify the 2003 Iraq War and basically stated that the US has all-encompassing power to resort to violence whenever it decides to, while using very vague language that cannot withstand the scrutiny of critical analysis or international law:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '')We must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of Mass Destruction.”
This philosophy represents a radical departure from the post–WWII period, as it does not apply to a nation’s right to self-defense from imminent attack, but proclaims that any potential, ambiguous threats at some point in the future will be used to justify US military action.
From a forthright geostrategic perspective, this policy appears to advocate the use of military force to overrule economic realities. As US policy-makers lose confidence in the economic strength and competitiveness of the American economic structure vis-à-vis its major international rivals, policy-makers may increasingly be fearful of dislocations within the domestic social structure. The ruling elites may view the application of US military power as the mechanism by which it can counteract some of the troubling economic reality.
Rarely mentioned in our censored press, but widely disseminated in the foreign media, is the disheartening realization that the majority of international legal opinion has interpreted the concept of “preventive war” as illegal under international law. The International Commission of Jurists denounced the invasion of Iraq, claiming the attack represented a “war of aggression.” In September 2004 UN Secretary General Kofi Annan unequivocally stated the UN’s position on the war, “I’ve indicated that it was not in conformity with the UN Charter from our point of view, and from the Charter point of view it was illegal." (Note: The US helped write the original UN charter and ratified it in 1948.)
So, in essence, official US doctrine is the same illegal framework used by the Nazis - a "preemptive" war against Poland that was conspired in advance, launched on Septemeber 1, 1939 - and I should remind the readers that event inititated World War II.
No US president has ever proclaimed what the Bush administration proclaims in the 2002 NSS document. It is an illegal concept, and has been since the end of WWII. The 2003 Iraq War was a pre-meditated conspiracy to launch a war of aggression against a sovereign nation that did not pose an imminent threat to the US, UK, Austrialia, or to any other state for that matter. These are well-established facts.
Most countries understand this plain as day, but in our highly censored world with 5 corporate media conglomerates that control 90% of what we read, see and hear, the illegality of the war has not been publicly addressed, but I digress....
In the week following the invasion of Iraq, Pat Rabbitte, leader of the Labour Party in Northern Ireland, wrote in an opinion piece for the Irish Times, “These men are intent on world domination or, as they put it themselves, ‘American global leadership.’ They have an imperial agenda, which they have been pursuing for more than five years.” As Rabbitte candidly noted, “In the eyes of international law, this is an illegitimate war. But that does not concern these policy-makers.”
Most nations that have traditionally been our allies share views similar to those expressed by Dalvell and Rabbitte. According to international polls conducted one year after the Iraq invasion, a majority of people in Canada, Mexico, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain had an unfavorable view of President Bush’s role in world affairs.
In addition, a poll conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that a majority of people living in Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Turkey, France, Germany, and Russia also held negative views toward the US. Most respondents — including countries that have historically been allied with the US — believed that “the US is conducting its campaign against terror to control Mid East oil and to dominate the world.”
The blowback from the War in Iraq has created serious problems in geopolitical relations...
