Ha, yeah, right.....the bombing will stop...is that the funny part of your joke.
Why not "lighten up" and read this argument?
The Kitchener-Waterloo Record, Final ed.
Insight, Wednesday, October 10, 2001, p. A19
War on Afghanistan is illegal
Peter Eglin And Debbie Chapman
SPECIAL TO THE RECORD
The first phase of Operation Enduring Freedom -- the assault on the Taliban
government and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network in Afghanistan led by the
military forces of the United States and United Kingdom supported by other
coalition countries including Canada -- is immoral, illegal and, in terms of
its announced ends, irrational. In terms of its real ends, however, it may
be seen as rational.
First, the assault is immoral. It is described by its perpetrators as
"retaliation." The Gage Canadian Dictionary defines retaliation as "the
repaying a wrong, injury, etc. with another; return of like for like." It is
an elementary moral principle that to repay one wrong with another is itself
wrong; it is immoral. In games and sports, including professional sports
like soccer and hockey, we penalize acts of retaliation. They are against
the rules, they are wrong.
Civilized societies have banned capital punishment, that is, the taking of a
life for a life by the state. This is not primarily because we have learned
that capital punishment does not deter, or because it is characteristically
carried out in a racially discriminatory way, or because there is no remedy
for mistakes, but because it is immoral. It is wrong to engage in
cold-blooded murder. Capital punishment is cold-blooded murder.
So it is with the bombing and shooting being carried out by the U.S.-U.K.
armed forces, following the orders of their military and political
commanders. These actions are designed to kill Taliban soldiers and bin
Laden followers and to destroy their military property. They are murderous.
Insofar as they are retaliation, they are wrong. Their perpetrators are
acting immorally. The point is elementary, but it is invisible in public
commentary from politicians, state officials, journalists, religious
figures, experts and academic intellectuals.
Second, the assault is illegal. It is against the law. The use of force by a
state or states in pursuit of their political ends is against the law. It
has been so since the end of the Second World War. When the United Nations
was formed, and its charter written and adopted, the use of force by states
for their political ends was outlawed. It was a momentous development in
human history, the outlawing of war.
Of course, all states appreciated that there would be occasion when force
would have to be used in the international arena, say to counter some
aggressor. And so they provided for that possibility by laying out the rules
and regulations for doing so in the UN charter. States agreed that the only
body authorized to order the use of force against some member state was the
Security Council of the United Nations -- not the United States government,
the British government, the government of Canada or the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (whatever its treaty says, in Article 5 or any other
article). The only legal body is the Security Council.
Moreover, it being recognized that to use international force is a grievous
and enormously consequential action, the articles of the charter very
carefully lay out the steps to be followed. It has to be demonstrated that
all other means -- diplomatic negotiations, economic sanctions -- have been
exhausted before there can be recourse to the use of force.
Furthermore, the determination that the originating complaint warrants an
international response at all is to be made in the Security Council alone.
Member states do not have the right to decide that for themselves. As
regards the decision to attack Afghanistan, and the carrying out of that
decision, it has been glaringly obvious that the UN Security Council has
been totally ignored. That is, the only legally constituted body authorized
to use force in such situations has been bypassed. The U.S. and British
governments have taken the law into their own hands. They have reverted to
the pre-civilized principle that might makes right. They have become
vigilantes. They have become rogue states. Their actions are illegal.
It may be countered -- and it has been proposed by the U.S. leadership --
that Operation Enduring Freedom is an act of self-defence. The suggestion is
ludicrous. The UN charter provides for the use of force in situations of
self defence. There are broadly two circumstances in which such defensive
use of force is justified. The one is when the government of a state is
brutally suppressing its population, or some segment of it, and those
oppressed cannot secure their human rights by democratic means because those
means are denied them. Then they are justified in engaging in armed
rebellion. This is the situation of the Palestinians, for example. It is
clearly not the situation of the U.S. and British governments.
The second circumstance, which is the one that would be claimed to be
relevant here, arises when a state is under armed attack from another state.
In such circumstance it may defend itself through the use of force while
waiting for the Security Council to act. The states parties to the charter
had in mind situations in which, for example, a fleet of foreign ships and
submarines is offshore and is shelling targets in your country or firing
missiles at them, or foreign airplanes are bombing such targets, or foreign
ground troops have invaded your territory to carry out operations against
such targets. Thus the military forces of Afghanistan are justified in using
force to defend themselves against the armed attack by the forces of the
U.S.-British, which are acting in just this fashion.
But, the detractor will argue, is not the United States itself under armed
attack by the military forces of a state or terrorist forces "sponsored" by
a state? There are no naval ships or submarines off the coast of the United
States, no military aircraft flying over its territory dropping bombs on it,
no invasive foreign troops carrying out offensive operations against
military or other targets within its borders. But what then of the murderous
hijackings and the 6,000 Americans killed by them, and the threat perhaps of
more such acts?
Well, they are what they have been called, that is, acts of terrorism. They
are crimes, indeed crimes against humanity, named as such by UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson. And there are procedures for
dealing with them, including international co-operation in bringing the
perpetrators to justice. They could be tried in a U.S. federal court.
But mounting a huge and overpowering international assault an
ocean-and-continent away from one's national territory against a bunch of
pirates and the government of the most devastated society on the planet led
by the most powerful state on the planet and calling it self-defence?
Please.
Such an assault is an act of aggression, a crime against peace. Without the
authority of the UN Security Council it is illegal The federal NDP has been
virtually the sole Canadian voice calling for the observance of
international law.
The call has been ignored or dismissed by the aggressor states, the Canadian
government, the other political parties and by the same state officials,
journalists, religious figures, experts and academic intellectuals who
cannot recognize elementary morality when it stares them in the face.
The CBC Radio 1 News yesterday announced that the first reported casualties
of the bombing are four United Nations aid workers engaged in defusing
landmines. On Oct. 5, the September Eleventh Peace Coalition was launched in
Ottawa. Its phone numbers are (604) 839-7543 and (613) 290-2695.
Peter Eglin is a sociology professor at Wilfrid Laurier University. Debbie
Chapman of Kitchener is studying for her master's degree in political
science at York University.
