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 __________________________________________________ |