Open brief Ramsay Clark aan VN betr.Irak
U. Woudenberg - 04.10.2002 11:24
"The statement by Bush that Iraq is a menace which justifies war is false"
Letter of Ramsay Clark to the secretary-general of the
UN.
International Action Center,
September 20, 2002.
"If George Bush is permitted to attack Iraq, with or
without the approval of the UN, he will convert himself
into public enemy number 1 and the United Nations will
be, worse than useless, an accomplice of the wars for
whose prevention it was created. The peoples of the
world will then have to begin anew if they hope to end
the calamity of war."
.=================
Secretary General Kofi Annan
United Nations
New York
Dear General Secretary Annan,
George Bush will invade Iraq unless the United Nations
persuades him not to. Other international organizations
- including the European Union, the African Union, the
OEA, the Arab League, the brave nations sufficiently
important to speak against the aggression of the
superpower, the international movements for peace, the
political leader amd the public opinion of the United
States - must do their part in favor of peace. But if,
above all , the United Nations fails to oppose the
invasion of Iraq by the United States, it will lose its
honor, its integrity, and its reason for existence.
A military attack against Iraq is obviously criminal:
completely inconsistent with the urgent necessities of
the peoples of the United Nations, unjustifiable from
whatever legal and moral point of view, irrational in
the light of the known facts; out of proportion (in
comparison) with other threats of war and violence and
a dangerous adventure which risks maintaining the war
over the whole region and for many years in the future.
The most rigorous analysis must be made of why the
world is submitted to such threats Of violence by the
only superpower which in so sure and important a manner
could lead us on the road to peace, and as United
Nations, could avoid the human tragedy of a new attack
and of major scope on Iraq, and the powerful stimulus
for vengeful terrorism which it could create.
1. President George Bush acceded to the presidency with
the determination to attack Iraq and change its
government.
George Bush advances rapidly with the object of making
his war unstoppable and to make it quickly. Having
declared last Friday ( September 14) that he did not
believe Iraq would accept UN inspectors, he answered
the prompt response of Iraq of unconditional acceptance
calling for giving it no credence, as a "false hope",
and promising to attack Iraq alone if the United
Nations did not act. Bush is obsessed with the desire
to launce the attack against Iraq and to install his
substitutes to govern Iraq by force. Days after the
most belligerent speech delivered before the UN - an
attack without precedent in the Charter of the United
Nations, in the Law of Rights and the search for peace
- The United States announced that the objectives
declared on Iraq had change in the last eleven years
from the retaliation by threats and attacks against
military aircraft of the United States which were
invading the Iraqi airspace daily and illegally. How
could the threats and attacks have been so serious when
not a single U.S. aircraft was damaged? On the
contrary, hundreds of persons have been assassinated in
Iraq by rockets and bombs of the United States, and not
only in the denominated "No-fly zone" but in Bagdad
itself. Now, the United States declares its intention
to destroy the major part of the military
infrastructures of Iraq in preparation for is invasion,
a clear promise of aggression. Every day new threats
and more propaganda appear to overcome the resistance
to the rush of Bush to go to war. The build-up went so
far as tanks rolling, in order that non-violent
persuasion would prevail.
2,George Bush is leading the United Sates and pulling
the United Nations and all nations into a lawless world
and endless wars
With his "war against terrorism", George Bush has
affirmed his right to attack whatever country,
organization, or people without previous notice and at
his sole discretion. He and some members of his
administration have proclaimed that the old limitations
which restricted the intervention (abroad) of the
governments and limited repression against its peoples
are no longer compatible with national security.
Terrorism constitutes such a danger - he affirms - that
necessity obliges the United States to attack first to
destroy the potential for terrorist acts from outside
and to practice arbitrary arrests, detentions,
interrogations, controls and pursuit of foreigners
inside the United States. Law has converted itself into
the enemy of public security. Necessity is the argument
of tyrants. Necessity never leads to a good agreement.
Heinrich Himmler - who instructed the Nazi Gestapo to
"fire first, ask afterwards, and I will protect you" -
is being vindicated by George Bush. As the German
described by Jorge Luis Borges in Deutches Requiem (1),
George Bush has offered the world violence and faith in
the sword, as the Nazi teuton did. And as Borges wrote,
faith in the sword served for nothing since Germany
ended up defeated. What is this violence which is
governing now? Two generations of Germans have
renounced that faith. Their perseverence in the
obtaining of peace deserved the respect of the coming
generation in whatever place. The peoples of the United
Nations are threatened with the end of International
Rights and of the protection of human rights by George
Bush’s "war on Terrorism" and his determination to
attack Iraq.
Since George Bush proclaimed his "war on terrorism",
other countries have claimed the right to attack first.
India and Pakistan brought the world and their own
peoples to the brink of nuclear conflict as never since
October 1962, and in direct consequence of the claims
of the United States of its unrestricted right to
pursue and assassinate terrorists, or attack nations
which protect them, basing itself on a unilateral
decision without consulting the United Nations, without
previous judgement, or without having revealed evident
objective facts to claim that its targets are
terrorists and that they are marked for such actions.
There exists almost an epidemic of nations which
proclaim the right to attack other nations or to
intensify the violations of human rights of their own
peoples on the basis of the declarations of power in
the "war against terrorism" of Geroge Bush.
Mary Robinson, in her valiant and calm declaration on
ending her responsibility as High Commissioner of the
United Nations on Human Rights, spoke of the wave
effect which the demands of the United States on the
right to attack first and to suspend the protection of
human rights is having since the 11th of September,
2002.
In Colombia, whose new government is strongly supported
by the United States, authority is being claimed to
arrest persons suspected without proofs and to declare
zones under military control, in addition to new powers
which make it easier to tap telephones and limit the
entrance and presence of foreigners in zones of
conflict, and permit the security agents to enter
houses or offices without judicial orders at whatever
hour of the day because a minimum of suspicion exists.
These additional threats to human rights have followed
the emergency plans (put into effect0 after September
11, to put into action a network of a million informers
in a nation of four million inhabitants. (2)
3. The United States, not Iraq, is the great and only
threat to the independence and objectives of the United
Nations.
The statement of president Bush that Iraq is a threat
which justifies war, is false. 80% of the Iraqi
military capacity was destroyed in 1991 according to
the Pentagon, 90% of the material and equipment which
are necessary to manufacture arms of mass destruction
were destroyed by the UN inspectors during more than 8
years of inspection. In 1990, Iraq was powerful
compared with most of its neighbors.
Today it is weak country. One child out of every four
born in Iraq survived weighing less than 2 kilos, with
a short life expectancy, with illnesses and a worsened
development. In 1989, less than one of every 20
children born with less than 2 pounds of birth weight
lived. And threat to peace into which Iraq could
convert itself is remote, much more remote than that of
many nations and groups, and can not justify a violent
assault. An attack against Iraq would make attacks of
revenge against the United States and against the
governments which support its actions much more
probable in the future.
George Bush proclaims that Iraq is a threat to the
authority of the United Nations, while the sanctions -
in which the United States participates -continue
causing an increase in the rate of mortality in the
Iraqi population. The deaths caused by the sanctions
have reached, after 12 yers, the level of genocide.
Iraq can only ask in vain for the end of this crime
against its people.
The role of the United Nations in the sanctions against
Iraq compromises and stains its integrity and the honor
of the international institution. Therefore the
resistance of the United Nations against this war is
now more important.
The inspections (of disarmament) have been utilized as
an excuse to maintain the sanctions during eight years
while thousands of Iraqi children and old people have
died every month. Iraq is the victim of criminal
sanctions which should have been lifted in 1991. For
every person dead from the terrorist actions of
September 11 in the United States, five hundred have
died in Iraq as a consequence of the sanctions.
It is the United States which threatens not only the
authority of the United Nations, but its independence,
integrity and hope of effectiveness. The United States
pays its dues to the United Nations only if, when, and
in the quantity it wants, it supports the U.S. by the
votes of its members.
The U.S. acted together with the UN in the election of
its functionaries to the general secretariat. It has
returned to the bosom of the UN to get a temporary
favor after 18 years of opposition to all its
objectives, and places spies in the inspection teams
(of the commission on disarmament UNSCOM of the UN).
The United States has renounced the treaties of control
and proliferation of nuclear weapons, has voted against
the protocol which permits putting into effect the
Convention on Biological Weapons, has rejected the
treaty of prohibition of land mines; has worked to
prohibit the creation and afterwards refused to use the
International Crime Tribunal, and has frustrated the
Convention on Childhood and the prohibition against the
utilization of children in wars. The United States has
opposed virtually every international effort to control
and limit war, to protect the environment, to reduce
poverty, and to protect
health.
George Bush cites two invasions of other countries by
Iraq during the last 22 years, but ignores the twenty
invasions and attacks of the United States against
other countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America
during the lat 20 years, as well as the permanent
taking over the lands of native Americans and other
nations - lands such as Florida, Texas, Arizona, New
Mexico, California and Puerto Rico, among others,
seized through force and threats.
In the same 22 years the United States has invaded or
attacked directly, Grenada, Nicaragua, Libya, Panama,
Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan,
and others, while it supported attacks and invasions in
other parts of Europe, Asia , Africa and Latin
America..
Hard records exist that the United States invaded and
attacked directly little Grenada in 1983, after a year
of threats, of assassinations of thousands of civilians
and the destruction of its little mental hospital
where many patients died. In a surprise attack against
the undefended cities of Tripoli and Bengasi while they
slept, in April 1986, the United States assassinated
thousands of civilians and caused damage to four
foreign embassies. It launched 21 Tomahawk cruise
missiles against the pharmaceutical plant of al-Shaifa,
in Khartum, in August of 1998, destroying the supply of
half of the medicines available for all the population
of Sudan. For year it has kept its armed forces in
Uganda and in the south of Sudan, fighting against the
government of that country. The U.S. has bombarded Iraq
on hundreds of occasions since the Gulf War, including
this week, killing hundreds of persons without
suffering a single casualty (itself) or damage to a
single warplane.
4. Why has George Bush decided that the United Stated
must attack Iraq now?
No rational base exists to believe that Iraq
constitutes a threat the the United States or any other
country. The reason to attack must be sought elsewhere.
As governor of Texas, George Bush presided over some
twenty executions, moe than any other governor of the
United States, since the death penalty was reinstalled
in 1976 (after an interruption in 1967). (Bush)
demonstrated the same zeal which he shows today for the
change of regime in Iraq when he supervised the
executions of minors, women, mentally backward persons,
whose rights under the Convention of Vienna relative to
Diplomatic Relations on the notification of their
arrest to the foreign embassy of their nationality were
violated. Th Supreme Court of the United States
considers that the executions of mentally backward
persons constitutes a cruel and unusual punishment
which violates the U.S. Constitution. George Bush rules
the United Sattes with the same values and the same
intentions.
His motives can include saving a failed presidency
which has converted an healthy economy and a surplus in
the treasury into losses of trillions of dollars; and
to realize his dream - which turned into a nightmare -
to settle a family grudge against Iraq; threaten the
Arab nation and all its people at one move; hit the
muslim nation to weaken Islam; protect Israel to enrich
the interests of the United States and afterwards
dominate the petroleum of the region and control its
prices. To attack Iraq for whatever of these reasons is
criminal and constitutes a violation of a great part of
the international conventions and laws, including the
Resolution of the General Assembly on the Definition of
Aggression of December 14, 1974.
The previous changes of regime carried out by the
United States brought to power, among a long list of
tyrants, authorities like the Shah in Iran, Mobutu in
the Congo, and Pinochet in Chile, all of them replacing
government presidents elected democratically.
5. A rational policy which attempts to reduce the
menace of arms of mass destruction in the Middle East
must include Israel.
A policy of the United Nations or of the United States
of selecting enemies to attack Is criminal and can only
breed hate, division, terrorism and end in war. The
United States gives Israel more aid per capita than the
total of income per capita of Subsaharan Africa coming
from all sources.
The coercive sanctions of the United States have
reduced the per capita income of the Iraqi population
75% since 1989. The income per capita in Israel in the
decade past has been approximately 12 times more than
that of the Palestinians.
Israel intensified its decade-long attacks against the
Palestinian people using the proclamation of George
Bush of "war against terrorism" as an excuse for
indiscriminately destroying cities and towns in
Transjordan and Gaza to take possession of more land
(Palestinian) in violation of International Rights and
against reiterated resolutions of the General Assembly
of the United Nations.
Israel has accumulated reserves of hundreds of nuclear
warheads imported from the United States, sophisticated
rockets, capable of reaching objectives at distances of
various thousands of kilometers, and contracts with the
U.S. for the joint development of more sophisticated
rocketry and other arms with the United ?States.
The possession of arms of mass destruction by a single
nation in a region with a history of hostility promotes
the race of proliferation and war. The United Nations
must act to reduce and eliminate all arms of
massive destruction and not submit itself to the
demands of punishment against the enemies of the
superpower which iis the one which possesses the
majoriy of such weapons and the capacity to use them.
Israel has violated and ignored more resolutions of the
United Nations during 40 years than any other nation.
It has done so with impunity.
The violation of the resolutions of the United Nations
can not be the basis for the approval of attacks
against any nation or people, in time of peace or in
the absence of threat of immediate attack except that
the same efforts must be made that all nations which
violate them fulfill the resolutions of the Security
Council of he United Nations.
6. The choice is war or peace
The United Nations and the United States must seek
peace, not war. An attack against Iraq could open the
Pandora’s box which would condemn the world to decades
of extended violence. Peace is not only possible, it is
essential, considering the hights to which science and
technology have raised human skill and self
destruction.
If George Bush is permitted to attack Iraq, with or
without the approval of the United Nations, he will
convert himself into public enemy number 1 and the
United Nations will be, worse than useless, an
accomplice of the wars for whose prevention it was
created. The peoples of the world will then have to
find a means to begin again, if they hope to end the
calamity of war.
This is a definitive moment for the United Nations.
Will it remain strong, independent and faithful to its
Charter, to International Rights and to the essence of
its creation, or will it submit itself to coercion of a
superpower which would lead us to a world without law
and condones war against the cradle of civilization?
Don’t permit this to happen.
Sincerely,
Ramsay Clark
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