What's So "Civil" About War, Anyway?

The developing brouhaha over the legality of last year's war upon Iraq is instructive.

It has come to light that the UK's military commanders, just days before the outbreak of hostilities, refused to go to war without an "unequivocal" affirmation from Attorney General Lord Goldsmith. Goldsmith, initially hesitant, finally acceded -- after, according to a new book, the Bush Administration advised Tony Blair to "get yourself some different lawyers."

The war's illegality is a slam-dunk: the Bush and Blair Administrations new full well that a new resolution would not only be vetoed by France, China, and Russia; but also that it wouldn't even receive a majority vote in the Security Council. The Administrations also knew full well that Iraq posed no threat whatever to either its neighbours or to the Anglo-American "homelands", and that 90% of the world's population was virulently opposed to the war for this very reason.

But anybody with an ounce of common humanity would also be well aware that no matter how many legal loopholes the Administrations might attempt to jump through -- the Bush Doctrine of "preemptive war", UN Resolution 1441, the right of "self-defense" -- that it would not be very nice (to say the least) to undertake the blitzing of a completely helpless nation with a "shock and awe" aerial bombardment, to be followed by an occupation allowing the country to descend into a complete anarchy from which it has even now only very partially recovered, while proceeding to institute an "economic shock and awe" regimen of all-out privatisation of the country's resources.

Before the war's inception, any number of human rights organisations and NGOs warned that a war could kill tens of thousands of people, touch off a staggering refugee crisis, place the country's most vulnerable at grave risk, and cause environmental disturbances that would plague the country for generations.

The most dire of these warnings did not come to pass ("only" 20,000 - 50,000 Iraqis were killed during the war, for example) -- perhaps owing in large part to the war's massive worldwide unpopularity having spooked the Bush Administration into scaling back its maximal bombardment scenarios. But the war was undertaken with the knowledge that a great many experienced and respected organisations believed that they could come to pass.

In short, we don't need a bevy of laws and lawyers to determine for us the immorality of the war, and the disregard for human life by its planners that its initiation signaled.

But this is the Bush Administration all over.

Take the case of Depleted Uranium -- perhaps the most underreported story of the post-Cold War era. In 1996, the United Nations

Urged all States to be guided in their national policies by the need to curb production and spread of weapons of mass destruction or with indiscriminate effect, in particular nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, fuel-air bombs, napalm, cluster bombs, biological weaponry and weaponry containing depleted uranium...

The United States proceeded to fire off both Depleted Uranium munitions and Cluster Bombs over Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq; as well as firebombs "remarkably similar" to napalm in Iraq.

So much for International Law. The United States has known of the hazards of DU since at least 1991, when a since-leaked secret memo warned that, "There has been and continues to be a concern regarding the impact of DU on the environment." The memo continued

Therefore, if no one makes a case for effectiveness of DU on the battlefield, DU rounds may become politically unacceptable and thus, be deleted from the arsenal.

And this is the basis upon which Colonel James Naughton defended the U.S. military's use of Depleted Uranium at the outset of the second Gulf war:

In the last war, Iraqi tanks at fairly close ranges -- not nose to nose -- fired at our tanks and the shot bounced off the heavy armour...and our shot did not bounce off their armour. So the result was Iraqi tanks destroyed -- US tanks with scrape marks.

Adding salt to the wounds, Naughton remarked that the Iraqis "want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them."

Now let's think about this for a moment. Nobody had argued the effectiveness of the munitions -- just as nobody had argued the effectiveness of "nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, fuel-air bombs, napalm, cluster bombs, biological weaponry".

By the Bush Administration's logic, Saddam Hussein could have rightfully argued that his gassing of the Kurds, having killed masses of people, should have been allowed to remain in his arsenal. That his phantom weapons programmes, comprising as they did (in the words of George W.) "some of the most lethal weapons ever devised", should have been allowable.

Indeed, by this logic bin Laden could argue that highjacking jet airliners and slamming them into skyscrapers, this tactic having leveled the Twin Towers to the ground, are a perfectly lethal, thus perfectly acceptable tactic. We need not strain ourselves too much in imagining the reaction if bin Laden had offered that argument as justification for the 9/11 attacks, while speculating that the Americans were only sore because the highjackers had "kicked the crap out of them".

But the UN didn't urge "all states" to discontinue the use of weapons of mass destruction because of their effectiveness on the field of battle. It did so because of their destructive nature off the field of battle, and after the time of battle. It did so because "collateral damage" -- especially widespread, indiscriminate "collateral damage" -- is morally reprehensible.

What about the case of the Guantanamo detainees? The Bush Administration argues that because it has designated the detainees "illegal combatants", and because they aren't being held on U.S. soil, that the Administration is not bound by Habeus Corpus and laws mandating due process generally. (Note that the designation "illegal combatant" has no basis in International Law. In fact, given that the United States invaded Afghanistan, let alone that it did so without UN authorisation -- not the other way around -- the designation is lexically non-sensical.)

But our judicial system derives (purportedly) from universal notions of human rights and justice. Any five-year-old would know that -- the existence of a loophole (even were it viable) notwithstanding -- snatching people up from their homes, transporting them to the other side of the globe, and indefinitely holding them incommunicado and without trial in conditions which induced 32 suicide attempts before the introduction of "a separate category -- manipulative self injurious behaviour...applied to individuals deemed to have merely feigned suicide attempts" -- many of whom Donald H. Rumsfeld apparently believes would be found innocent if brought to trial -- is not exactly the surest way of administering "justice", no matter how the Administration might choose to "categorise" its prisoners. Any five-year-old? Hell, a two-year-old probably wouldn't have much difficulty with the concept.

Two final examples, briefly.

The commission investigating the events of 9/11, "struggling to get similar cooperation [to that offered by Al Gore and Bill Clinton] from President Bush and administration officials," is considering a subpoena to compel Condoleezza Rice to testify in public. National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack counters that, "As a matter of law and practice, White House staff have not testified before legislative bodies."

In other words, so long as our asses are covered by "law and practice", fuck you very much in your attempts to determine the cause of the attacks in in the hopes of preventing something similar happening again.

Lastly, in response to public pressure to close the School of the Americas -- our very own "terrorist training camp", located at Fort Benning, Georgia, from whence sprung many of this hemisphere's most notorious thugs -- in 2001 the School was simply renamed, and a requirement for "students" to complete "eight hours of instruction in" human-rights related subjects was added. Noticing that the grassroots protests which have seen tens of thousands annually "cross the line" in defiant witness of the facility's ignoble curricula, the Bush Administration last September announced the establishment of a new "International Law Enforcement Academy" to eventually take the school's place -- located safely out-of-reach of those pesky protesters...in Costa Rica.

Oooookay. That's one way (er, two ways) to have your cake, and eat it too.

For an Administration as steeped in the teachings of "the Christ", as hell-bent upon viewing the world in Manichean terms, as great a champion of the mores "civilised world", as abhorrent of "people that will kill on a moment's notice, and they will kill innocent women and children" as this Administration professes to be, its legalistic song-and-dance in service of its commission of actions heretofore "utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy" are the more highly suspect -- as any fule (or any five-year-old) should kno.

Which makes the American public's and the mainstream media's willingness to applaud and/or ignore such machinations the more distressing.

Posted by Eddie Tews at March 3, 2004 07:30 PM