| Al Jazeera, May 30, 2009 |
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Palestinian Fatah has said it was “encouraged” by the meeting between Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and his US counterpart in the White House, while Hamas said the encounter would lead to nothing. “Palestinians are encouraged by the commitment President Obama and his administration have shown to Middle East peace,” Saeb Erakat, a Fatah member and the Palestinians’ top official said on Friday. Erekat said the establishment of a viable Palestinian state and a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem would make the region more secure and stable. But, he warned “the peace process lives on borrowed time,” saying it would not survive another round of failed negotiations. “Israel’s failure to implement its obligations under existing agreements has eroded its credibility, while its continued settlement activities are undermining the very viability of the two state solution,” Erakat said. Hamas reaction
Hamas, however, called the meeting a continuation of Abbas’ “way of begging” to the US and the “Zionist entity.” Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, said the meeting would “accomplish nothing but more pressure on Abbas.” He said the US administration would fail to take “any action on the ground” to halt Israeli “aggressions” and realise Palestinian rights. In the meeting on Thursday Obama called for a stop to Israeli settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and emphasised the two-state solution. However, Benyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, refused to openly endorse the two-state solution during a meeting with Obama on May 18. He also rejected the US and Palestinian demand for an absolute freeze in settlement activity. Netanyahu promised not to build new settlements, but vowed to continue construction in existing ones to accommodate for “natural growth.” |
Palestinians differ on US promises
May 30, 2009
UN chief knew Tamil civilian toll had reached 20,000
May 30, 2009The Times/UK, May 30, 2009
Stop the US torture ship
May 30, 2009
British human rights campaigners Reprieve have urged the Spanish authorities to board and search US torture ship USS Bataan after it moored at the Palma de Mallorca holiday resort.
Reprieve said on Friday that the USS Bataan is one of the US government’s most infamous “floating prisons” and will remain at the island until Saturday.
At least nine prisoners including John Walker Lindh, David Hicks and Ibn Al-Sheikh Al-Libi, who recently died in mysterious circumstances in Libyan custody, are confirmed to have been held aboard the USS Bataan.
Reprieve pointed out that, in January 2002, Mr Al-Libi was flown to the ship, which was then cruising the northern Arabian Sea, before his interrogation began.
From there, he was rendered to Egypt where he was forced under torture to confess that al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein were in league on weapons of mass destruction.
Details regarding the operation of prison ships have emerged through a number of sources, including the US military and other administration officials, the Council of Europe, various parliamentary bodies and journalists, as well as the testimonies of prisoners themselves.
Reprieve investigations also suggest that a further 15 ships have been used to hold prisoners beyond the rule of law since 2001. Prisoners are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations.
A former prisoner told Reprieve: “One of my fellow prisoners in Guantanamo was at sea on an American ship before coming to Guantanamo. He was in the cage next to me. He told me that there were about 50 other prisoners on the ship.
“They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on TV. The people held on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantanamo.”
Reprieve investigator Clara Gutteridge said: “Ships have been used by the US to hold terror suspects illegally since the days of president Clinton, so it would be no surprise if this practice continues under Obama.
“The US and Spanish governments, as well as the EU, must urgently reveal what this ship is doing on European territory.”
Reprieve director Clive Stafford Smith added: “The arrival of USS Bataan should ring alarm bells in any law-abiding country. The Spanish authorities are duty-bound to board and search the ship for missing prisoners.”
Mr Stafford Smith has also pointed out that the US chooses ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers.
“By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons and information suggests up to 80,000 have been through the system since 2001,” he said.
“The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are and what has been done to them.”
US Army chief sees Iraq, Afghanistan occupations continuing for a decade
May 29, 2009By Bill Van Auken | wsws.com, May 29, 2009
The chief of staff of the US Army, Gen. George Casey, said this week that the American military is preparing to continue its interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan for at least another decade.
In an invitation-only interview Tuesday with selected reporters and think tank representatives, Casey said that the protracted US occupation of the two countries was necessary in order to meet a “sustained US commitment to fighting extremism and terrorism in the Middle East,” the Associated Press reported.
Casey’s remarks came amid mounting signs that the US attempts to pacify Iraq are coming unraveled, even as the Obama administration is carrying out new deployments that will double the number of troops in Afghanistan to 68,000.
Two more US military personnel were killed this week, bringing the death toll in May to the highest level since September of last year. The total number of US troops killed since the Bush administration launched the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 has risen to 4,302.
Meanwhile, for Iraqis, last month was the bloodiest in over a year, with more than 500 killed in a series of suicide bombings and sectarian killings.
The latest attack claimed the lives of an American soldier and four Iraqi civilians Wednesday, when a roadside bomb was detonated as an American convoy drove through Abu Ghraib, the western district of Baghdad that was home to the US detention center where Iraqis were subjected to systematic torture and abuse. The facility has since been turned over the Iraqi security forces to run.
The Pentagon also released the name of another member of the US military killed on Tuesday. Navy Cmdr. Duane Wolfe, 54, the head of the Army Corps of Engineers operations in Iraq’s Anbar province, was killed with two other individuals when a bomb exploded under his vehicle near the city of Fallujah.
Meanwhile, there are growing indications that one of the principal props of the so-called surge launched by the Bush administration in 2007 is beginning to crumble. The “Awakening Movement,” or Sahwa, which consisted of largely Sunni militias, many drawn from former insurgents, was employed as a neighborhood security force, with members paid as much $300 a month by the US military.
Last fall, Washington turned over responsibility for the militias to the predominantly Shiite Iraqi government, which has largely halted payments and reneged on its pledge to employ some 20 percent of the militiamen in the security forces and other government agencies.
Moreover, Awakening Movement leaders have been targeted for arrest, and there have been clashes between their members and the security forces. On Thursday, the Iraqi army arrested another leader of one of the militia groups at his home in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad.
“The Americans made the Sahwa militias to fight Al Qaeda, then they abandoned them,” another Awakening leader, Sheik Ali Hatem Sulaiman, told USA Today. “The heads of Sahwa are beginning to feel it would have been better to stay with Al Qaeda.”
According to the AP, Casey stressed that his remarks Tuesday about US troops continuing to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan for another 10 years “were not meant to conflict with Obama administration policies.”
But clearly the preparations that the Army’s top officer is discussing make a mockery of the so-called withdrawal plan put forward by the White House. Under the timetable announced by President Obama in February, US “combat troops” are supposed to leave Iraq by August of next year, with all US military forces out of the country by the end of 2011.
This hardly comes as a surprise. Top military commanders have been hinting for months that conditions on the ground in Iraq may force a scrapping of the timetable.
Already, US commanders have made it clear that the supposed deadline of June 30 for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraqi cities is more illusory than real. American units will continue combat operations in the northern city of Mosul, where simmering conflicts between Arabs and Kurds threaten to erupt into a new phase of civil war.
Thousands of troops will continue operating in Baghdad as well as in Diyala province north of the capital. In other areas where troops are pulled back to bases, they will continue carrying out raids on Iraqi cities, while formally maintaining that such attacks must be approved by the Iraqi regime.
As for the second phase, the withdrawal of “combat troops” in August 2010, Pentagon officials have indicated that they will merely reclassify units currently listed as combat troops, calling them support or training units in order to maintain a substantial occupation force within the country.
Meanwhile, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called into question the 2011 final withdrawal deadline during an interview on the ABC News program “This Week” last Sunday. “We’ll have to see,” said Mullen. “The next 12 to 18 months are really critical in that regard.”
Mullen went on to stress that Washington was forging a “long-term relationship” with Iraq and that “part of that is the possibility that forces could remain there longer—that’s up to the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government.”
The withdrawal dates are written into the status of forces agreement signed by Washington and Baghdad. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has repeatedly insisted that these deadlines will be enforced. This is believed to be largely for public consumption in Iraq, however, where the population is overwhelmingly opposed to the US occupation. Behind the scenes, US and Iraqi officials are agreeing to override the timetable and keep American forces in place.
Jane Arraf of the Christian Science Monitor reported last week that, as part of the attempt to maintain the fiction that the deadline for withdrawing from Iraqi cities is being observed, US occupation commanders and the Iraqi regime agreed to re-draw the map of Baghdad. It declared that Base Falcon in the Rasheed district of Baghdad was outside the city limits so that 3,000 US troops deployed there can continue patrolling the tense southern part of the capital.
While openly declaring that his “reality scenario” is “10 Army and Marine units”—more than 50,000 troops—”deployed for a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he expressed concern that the military would not be able “to draw down in Iraq close to the schedule we have set.”
“It would be very difficult to sustain the current levels of commitment here for very much longer,” the general said, referring to the 139,000 American soldiers and Marines now deployed in Iraq.
With the Obama administration escalating the war in Afghanistan—Casey warned that “there’s going to be a big fight in the south”—and extending the intervention into Pakistan, the strain on the US military has never been greater. The Army chief said that with the buildup in Afghanistan, the military now has 10,000 more troops deployed in the two wars than it did under the Bush administration.
An attempt to continue deployments at current levels, with back-to-back troop deployments, he warned would “bring the Army to its knees.”
Among the starkest indications of the immense toll that nearly eight years of war and occupation in Afghanistan and more than six in Iraq are taking on the US military is a record suicide rate in the Army—more than double what it was in 2004—and the growing incidence of mental problems, with more than 13,000 cases of post-traumatic stress disorder being diagnosed by Army doctors last year. (See “US: Army base ordered on stand-down after multiple suicides”)
In remarks delivered earlier this month, Casey pointed to the same stress upon the military, stating that there was a “thin red line,” which, if it were crossed, would “break” the Army. “You can fix this two ways,” he said, “increase the forces, or decrease the need.”
It is evident that the need for cannon fodder will not decrease as Washington escalates its military interventions. Increasing the forces in a substantial way calls into question the viability of the “volunteer” military and raises the prospects of the reinstitution of military conscription.
What is perhaps most remarkable about Casey’s matter-of-fact declaration that the US will be waging colonial-style warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan for at least another 10 years—and, as he indicated, carrying out new wars elsewhere on the planet—is its failure to arouse any serious coverage in the “mainstream” media, much less any hint of protest from within the political establishment.
While Barack Obama owes his election to the presidency in large part to the deep-going antiwar sentiments in the American population, the move by his administration to escalate US militarism and increase the number of American troops sent into battle enjoys the support of America’s ruling elite and both of its major parties.
The consensus behind the continuation and escalation of the US wars of aggression found unmistakable expression in the approval by an overwhelming 86-3 vote in the US Senate of more than $91 billion to continue funding the two wars through September.
The absence of opposition raises the obvious question of why there was at least the pretense of dissent from the Bush administration’s war policy within the Democratic Party. Clearly, it was not a matter of opposition to wars of aggression or imperialist foreign policy. The Democrats no less than the Republicans remain committed to achieving the original aims of the two wars: countering American capitalism’s economic decline by using military means to assert US hegemony over geo-strategically vital, oil-rich regions of the planet
What differences that existed were largely a matter of tactics, not strategy; style and not substance.
While the ruling establishment uses the Obama administration to create an air of political consensus for American militarism within official Washington, the hostility to these wars is only deepening among broad masses of working people. More and more, this opposition will come together with struggles against the escalating attacks on jobs and living standards, creating the conditions for social and political explosions in the US itself.
Residents seethe as Pakistan army destroys homes
May 29, 2009
By Chris Brummitt, Associated Press, May 28, 2009
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| A Pakistani woman carries her soon as she walks through the rubble of houses destroyed in an air strike in Sultanwas village, in Buner district, Pakistan, on Wednesday, May 27, 2009
SULTANWAS, Pakistan (AP) — When Pakistan’s army drove the Taliban back from this small northwestern village, it also destroyed much of everything else here. F-16 fighter jets, military helicopters, tanks and artillery reduced houses, mosques and shops to rubble, strewn with children’s shoes, shattered TV sets and perfume bottles. Commanders say the force was necessary in an operation they claim killed 80 militants. But returning residents do not believe this: Although a burned-out army tank at the entrance to Sultanwas indicates the Taliban fought back, villagers say most fighters fled into the mountains. Beyond any doubt is their fury at authorities for wrecking their homes — the sort of backlash the army doesn’t want as it tries to win the support of the people for its month-old offensive against the Taliban in Pakistan’s northwest frontier region near the border with Afghanistan. “The Taliban never hurt the poor people, but the government has destroyed everything,” Sher Wali Khan told the first reporting team to reach the village of about 1,000 homes. “They are treating us like the enemy,” he said as he collected shredded copies of a Quran from the ruins of a mosque, one of three that were damaged, possibly beyond repair. The anger in this village is an echo of recent years, when previous army offensives against the Taliban in the northwestern frontier area caused widespread civilian casualties and damage to homes. The military’s heavy-handed approach here shows it may still be more equipped to fight conventional war with India than guerrilla warfare in the shadows of mountain villages and towns, where militants use civilians as cover. The Associated Press traveled to Sultanwas on Wednesday after the Pakistani army briefly lifted a curfew in the Buner district to allow residents to return. But the fight for the region is clearly not over. Just beyond the village, a makeshift army checkpoint shows where its control ends. Beyond that, the army and villagers say the Taliban are in charge, patrolling streets on foot and in pickup trucks. The United States wants a resounding victory against insurgents who are threatening not only the stability of this nuclear-armed country, but also the success of the American-led mission in neighboring Afghanistan. The army launched its operation in April to take back the northwest after the militants lost popular support across the region partly because of their defiance of a peace deal with the government. The Taliban have also carried out atrocities in the northwest and claimed responsibility for attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians elsewhere in Pakistan. But residents of Sultanwas say the militants in their village threatened no one. Khan, a 17-year-old who is quick with a smile and hopes to attend medical school, said about five militants occasionally came to a mosque. There, he said, they preached an ultraconservative brand of Islam and called for overthrowing the government because it was not implementing Islamic law. He said he did not agree with either position. Khan fled with his family and most other residents when the army warned them last week to get out because the offensive was about to reach them. The Taliban entered Buner last month from the Swat Valley, an advance that triggered the military’s offensive. There was very little damage to buildings in the road leading to Sultanwas, which military officials said used to be one of the Taliban’s major strongholds in the district. The army says it is making every effort to avoid damaging buildings in the offensive. Reporters on a military-escorted trip to part of the Swat Valley last week saw no significant destruction. But the army used helicopters, F-16 jets, tanks and artillery in the battle for Sultanwas. While the military says this tactic reduces army casualties by “softening up” areas before troops move in, critics question its effectiveness against a small and, for the most part, lightly armed insurgent force moving in and out of towns. Khan and others insisted the militants were not living in their homes either before or after the attack. There were no bodies, blood or obviously buried corpses in the rubble, which spans an area the size of two football fields, roughly a third of the village. A reporter could find no sign any rebels had dug in there or used the area as a base. Residents said the same. “When the operation started, the Taliban all ran away from the area,” said Rosi Khan, citing an account from the only three villagers who he said stayed behind. He could not say where those villagers are now. Spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said fleeing villagers had told military officials that militants were using Khan’s house and others nearby. He said 80 insurgents were killed in the operation, and that other militants apparently removed their bodies. But two officers involved in the Buner operations said most of the roughly 400 fighters believed to be there escaped to the mountains — terrain they know far better than do army troops trucked in from elsewhere in Pakistan. The two officers spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to give information to reporters. It is a pattern the military says the outgunned and outnumbered militants are following elsewhere in the region, including in the main Swat Valley city of Mingora. A defense attache for a Western embassy said the Swat operation appeared to be better organized and more coordinated than earlier ones in the northwest. But he questioned whether the 15,000 troops deployed against roughly 4,000 militants were enough to secure the region. Besides Swat, Pakistan needs to keep troops elsewhere in the border region where al-Qaida and other militants are strong. But most of its roughly 700,000-member army is stationed on or close to the border with India, the country’s traditional rival. To claim victory, the government will have to ensure the militants do not return to the Swat Valley and Buner, and that the 2.4 million people who fled the fighting stay on the government’s side when they come home. The army is appealing for refugees to return to Sultanwas, but as elsewhere in Buner, few were heeding the call. A week after the battle for this village ended, there was still no police, electricity or civilian administration. “The political leadership is not here, there is no police,” said a senior army officer, who asked not be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media. “How can you expect them to return?” An AP photographer saw several people looting food and drinks from a damaged store in Sultanwas. They stopped only when other villagers reprimanded them. At a checkpoint in Sultanwas, young men riding in buses from Taliban-controlled Pir Baba were ordered to lift their shirts and be searched, but there was little sign they were making serious checks of all those leaving the area. In Pir Baba, Taliban fighters armed with rocket launchers and assault rifles are patrolling the streets, said Mohammed Yusuf, a 50-year-old farmer who was leaving but intended to return after buying vegetables at the nearest open market, several miles away. “They are on the streets in the morning and evening,” Yusuf said. “They are friendly. Some of them I know from my area.” Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press |
Torture and the American Conscience
May 29, 2009By Paul Craig Roberts | Counterpunch, May 28, 2009
Torture is a violation of US and international law. Yet, president George W. Bush and vice president Dick Cheney, on the basis of legally incompetent memos prepared by Justice Department officials, gave the OK to interrogators to violate US and international law.
The new Obama administration shows no inclination to uphold the rule of law by prosecuting those who abused their offices and broke the law.
Cheney claims, absurdly, that torture was necessary in order to save American cities from nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists. Many Americans have bought the argument that torture is morally justified in order to make terrorists reveal where ticking nuclear bombs are before they explode.
However, there were no hidden ticking nuclear bombs. Hypothetical scenarios were used to justify torture for other purposes.
We now know that the reason the Bush regime tortured its captives was to coerce false testimony that linked Iraq and Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda and September 11. Without this “evidence,” the US invasion of Iraq remains a war crime under the Nuremberg standard.
Torture, then, was a second Bush regime crime used to produce an alibi for the illegal and unprovoked US invasion of Iraq.
U.S. Representative Ron Paul (R,Tx) understands the danger to Americans of permitting government to violate the law. In “Torturing the Rule of Law”, he said that the US government’s use of torture to 
produce excuses for illegal actions is the most radicalizing force at work today. “The fact that our government engages in evil behavior under the auspices of the American people is what poses the greatest threat to the American people, and it must not be allowed to stand.”
One might think that the American public’s toleration of torture reflects the breakdown of the country’s Christian faith. Alas, a recent poll released by the Pew Forum reveals that most white Christian evangelicals and white Catholics condone torture. In contrast, only a minority of those who seldom or never attend church services condone torture.
It is a known fact that torture produces unreliable information. The only purpose of torture is to produce false confessions. The fact that a majority of American Christians condone torture enabled the Bush regime’s efforts to legalize torture.
George Hunsinger, professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, has stepped into the Christian void with a powerful book, Torture is a Moral Issue. A collection of essays by thoughtful and moral people, including an American admiral and general, the book demonstrates the danger of torture to the human soul, to civil liberty, and to the morale and safety of soldiers.
Condoning torture, Hunsinger writes, “marks a milestone in the disintegration of American democracy.” In his contribution, Hunsinger destroys the constructed hypothetical scenarios used to create a moral case for torture. He points out that no such real world cases ever exist. Once torture is normalized, it is used despite the absence of the hypothetical scenario.
Hunsinger notes that “evidence” obtained by torture can have catastrophic consequences. In making the case against Iraq at the UN, former Secretary of State Colin Powell assured the countries of the world that his evidence rested on “facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.” Today Powell and his chief of staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, are ashamed that the “evidence” for Powell’s UN speech
turned out to be nothing but the coerced false confession of Al-Libi, who was relentlessly tortured in Egypt in order to produce a justification for Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq.
Some Americans, unable to face the criminality and inhumanity of their own government, maintain that the government hasn’t tortured anyone, because water boarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” are not torture. This is really grasping at straws. As Ron Paul points out, according to US precedent alone, water boarding has been considered to be torture since 1945, when the United States hanged Japanese military officers for water boarding captured Americans.
If the Obama regime does not hold the Bush regime accountable for violating US and international law, then the Obama regime is complicit in the Bush regime’s crimes. If the American people permit Obama to look the other way in order “to move on,” the American people are also complicit in the crimes.
Hunsinger, Paul and others are trying to save our souls, our humanity, our civil liberty and the rule of law. Obama can say that he forbids torture, but if those responsible are not held accountable, he has no way of enforcing his order. As perpetrators are discharged from the military and re-enter society, some will find employment as police officers and prison officials and guards, and the practice will spread. The dark side will take over America.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
Indian doctor Binayak Sen released from prison on bail
May 29, 2009
Dr Binayak Sen
© Private
Amnesty International, 26 May 2009
Dr Binayak Sen, who spent two years in an Indian prison as a Prisoner of Conscience, was released on Tuesday after being granted bail by the Supreme Court.
Welcoming Dr Sen’s release on bail, Amnesty International believes that the charges against him are baseless and politically motivated. Amnesty International has repeated its call on the Indian authorities to immediately drop all the charges against Dr Sen.
Dr Sen, who was held in Raipur prison in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, thanked Amnesty International and other human rights organizations that have been campaigning for his release. He said he would continue to defend human rights in Chhattisgarh despite possible threats to his life from “state and non-state actors”.
The 59-year-old is a pioneer of health care to marginalized and indigenous communities in Chhattisgarh, where the state police and armed Maoists have been engaged in clashes over the last six years.
He was arrested on 14 May 2007 on politically motivated charges, aimed at stopping his human rights work, after he met with an imprisoned leader of a banned Maoist organization.
His earlier meetings with an imprisoned Maoist leader, on which some of the charges against him were based, had all been facilitated by the prison authorities.
“Dr Sen’s prolonged imprisonment is a glaring example of how the Indian authorities misuse security legislation to target activists,” said Madhu Malhotra, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Programme.
“These laws are open to abuse as they contain vague and sweeping definitions of ‘unlawful activities’. Under no circumstances should work that peacefully defends human rights be termed an ‘unlawful activity’.”
Prior to his arrest, Dr Sen had criticized the state authorities for enacting special security legislation – the Chhattisgarh Special Public Safety Act, 2005 (CSPSA).
He had also reported on unlawful killings of adivasis (Indigenous People) by the police and by Salwa Judum, a private militia widely held to be sponsored by the state authorities to fight the armed Maoists.
The state authorities have so far failed to conduct effective and impartial investigations into these unlawful killings.
Dr Sen was detained without proper charges for seven months, denied bail, and kept in solitary confinement for three weeks. Many of the charges against him stem from laws that contravene international standards. Repeated delays in the conduct of his trial have also heightened doubts about its fairness. Meanwhile, Dr Sen had asked for specialist medical treatment for his heart ailment.
UN praise for Sri Lanka criticised
May 29, 2009- Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 May 2009 20.52 BST
The United Nations was today accused by human rights groups of failing to hold the Sri Lankan government accountable for alleged abuses against civilians during the suppression of the Tamil Tiger insurgency.
The accusations followed a resolution in the UN human rights council welcoming the Sri Lankan government victory, with no reference to human rights concerns over civilian casualties and the 300,000 Tamils made homeless, many of whom are interned in government camps.
But criticism was also aimed at the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, who visited the biggest camp over the weekend and complimented the Sri Lankan government on its humanitarian role, and the security council for not speaking out officially about the human cost of the military victory.
“The human rights council performed abysmally,” said Tom Porteous, London director of Human Rights Watch. “It’s there to monitor human rights and the laws of war, and it completely failed – and failed to register any concern over the situation.”
The Sri Lankan government took the unusual step of submitting its own resolution to a council session in Geneva convened to examine its conduct in the conflict. Colombo won substantial support from friendly governments, derailing an attempt to launch an inquiry into war crimes allegations.
“It was a deplorable result, a self-congratulatory resolution that Sri Lanka imposed on the council,” said Peter Splinter, Amnesty International’s representative in Geneva.
Sen Kandiah, a Tamil community leader in Britain, said: “The Tamil diaspora feel the system is not working. We feel justice is not going to be done.”
The Geneva resolution hailed “the liberation by the government of Sri Lanka of tens of thousands of its citizens that were kept by the LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] against their will as hostages”. It won 29 votes, with six abstentions. Britain’s was one of 12 votes against it. A European diplomat admitted that if EU states had been more organised they might have put forward a more critical resolution that could have been accepted by the council.
Sri Lanka’s foreign minister, Rohitha Bogollagama, todaysaid the government had been able to defeat countries that were “trying to undermine Sri Lanka’s efforts in countering terrorism”.
Colombo was also buoyed by the remarks of Ban Ki-moon after his visit to Menik Farm internment camp, noting the government’s “tremendous efforts”. The comments infuriated aid workers. “It seems to me Ban … didn’t raise the really hard questions about human rights,” Porteous said.
If Iraq was a Mistake, Why are We Still There?
May 30, 2009However one frames the debate, it is apparent to any fair minded and rational person that the invasion of Iraq, based as it was on misinformation at best, lies and deceptions at worst, was a mistake and should never have occurred. Certainly President Obama has made this claim on numerous occasions as well as many who had previously supported (and voted for) the war. After having acknowledged this fact, however, President Obama and others would have us forget the past as it serves, in their view, no practical purpose to rehash and moralize over things that cannot be undone. It will be the work of future historians, legal scholars, and philosophers, they argue, to untangle, interpret, and make judgments regarding the complex events and decisions that led to the invasion and characterize the occupation of Iraq. They warn that it is imperative at this crucial juncture that we deal with the matters at hand, that we act quickly and decisively in our national interest to ensure that our Country remains safe, that our goals in Iraq and Afghanistan are achieved, and that our sacrifice in blood and treasure is not for naught.
What President Obama and others who advocate such a position fail to appreciate is that we live in a Nation that understands and accepts the importance of the Constitution and the rule of law, both moral and International. Accordingly, we determine our behavior, how we conduct ourselves as a Nation, not only by what is in our national interest but also by what is right, not only by what we CAN do, but also by what we OUGHT to do. This is what we stand for as a people, the values we hold sacred as a nation. Consequently, to focus exclusively on “practical considerations” – present conditions and problems – considered in isolation and apart from the causal chain of events that led to the situation as it exists today is morally and legally unacceptable and incoherent and counter to the principles and values we believe must guide and determine our future course of action not only in Iraq, but in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere in the world as well.
By accepting that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a mistake we must accept all that such an admission entails. According to Just War Theory and International Law, the illegal and immoral use of violence and deadly force against a sovereign nation and its citizenry, constitutes aggression. Aggression is morally wrong and a war crime under International Law. Aggressors violate the rights of the aggressed to life, self-determination, and to live in a nation that enjoys political sovereignty and territorial integrity – sometimes referred to as the “rights of nations.” Aggressors are Unjustifiable Combatants. The victims of aggression have the privilege to assert their rights – to act in self and national defense. As such, they are Justifiable Combatants. Consequently, our invasion and occupation of Iraq is aggression, members of our military are aggressors – Unjustifiable Combatants – and those that struggle against us, the “insurgents,” are Justifiable Combatants asserting their right of self and national defense.
This is the reality of our involvement in Iraq, a reality entailed and implied by a recognition that our invasion was a mistake and should never have occurred. The “fact” that we may have had good intentions does not alter the moral and legal value of our involvement. “Mistaken” aggression is no less aggression, no less a war crime. “Mistaken” aggressors are no less liable to be resisted – warred against in self and national defense.
Yet despite the realization that the invasion and occupation in Iraq is aggression and despite our economy bordering on collapse, President Obama, and many of our fellow citizens, argue that we cannot just stop the killing and destruction and walk away. One important reason, they offer, is national security. We must end the chaos created by our aggression and restore stability in Iraq to ensure that it does not become a training ground and sanctuary for terrorists who wish us harm. A second reason, interestingly enough, is a moral one. Paradoxically, we cannot stop the killing and destruction in Iraq because we recognize our moral culpability and responsibility for our aggression. That is, we cannot just abandon the Iraqi people to the endless civil war and sectarian violence that would “inevitably” occur in the power vacuum created by our departure. Consequently, we are morally obligated to continue the killing and the destruction in Iraq for at least a few more years, in order to save the Iraqis from themselves and so they may enjoy the gift of freedom and democracy as recompense for our aggression. While the initial use of violence and deadly force against the Iraqi people may have been aggression, now, however, we are on solid moral and legal ground, as the continued killing and destruction entailed by our remaining, is humanitarian intervention. (General George Casey, the Army Chief of Staff, by the way, said recently that his strategic planning envisions combat troops remaining in Iraq and Afghanistan for as long as ten years).
This argument for the continued occupation of Iraq is clearly incoherent. It is as though our political leaders have accepted that the American public is incapable of rational thought and will accept any reason and justification for war as long as it is presented as furthering our national interest and feeds our national ego regarding our benevolence and moral superiority in the world.
It is time, therefore, long past time, that we show President Obama and the Congress that we will be duped no longer, that we are not a nation of sheep, and that we possess the ability to reason and think critically. It is time, therefore, long past time, that we accept the reality of what we have done and continue to do in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere in the world. We must stop the killing and the destruction now, not later. We must understand that bringing stability to the region is not about escalating violence, increasing the number of troops, or dropping more and larger bombs. Nor is it about searching out and destroying al Qaeda or the Taliban, or even capturing or killing bin Laden. Rather, it is about inclusiveness, diplomacy, understanding and dialogue. It is about doing the difficult work of reconciliation and of addressing the grievances that nourish radicalism. Most important, I believe, should we at long last recognize that the days of US unilateralism and imperialism are over and realize the necessity of involving and soliciting the assistance of area powers such as Iran, Russia, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, China and India, not only will the world be a better and safer place, but perhaps for the first time in many years, we will begin to live according to the principles and values that we claim characterize our nation and of which we are so proud.
Camillo “Mac” Bica, Ph.D., is a professor of philosophy at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is a former Marine Corps Officer, Vietnam Veteran, long-time activist for peace and justice, and the Coordinator of the Long Island Chapter of Veterans for
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Tags: “mistaken” aggression, Camillo Bica, invasion of Iraq, President Obama, United States
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