(no subject)

[tinyjo]

My MP is going to be really fed up with me soon - at the request of Oxfam I have emailed him as well as Tony Blair to let them know my position on Iraq - not that they care, but that's not stopped me up til now.

I am deeply concerned that the human suffering caused by a war against Iraq will be horrific. There are enormous risks to Iraqi civilians' food supply, clean water, and safe sanitation, as well as the danger of many civilian casualties. No-one has shown an imminent threat to outweigh these risks.

While Saddam Hussein has done many appalling things as leader of Iraq, the rules of dealings between nations states mean that we cannot and should not impose a solution of our choosing on Iraq or it's people. We do not have the right to take that decision out of their hands, and we certainly should not be penalising them in the way that any war will for not taking that decision.

Although I have voted for Labour in the past, I regret to say that I cannot support a party or a government prepared to take international law into their own hands.

To Tony: I appeal to you NOT to start this war.
To Andrew Smith: I have also sent a copy of this letter to the Prime Minister.

To my shame, the last bit (having voted Labour in the past) is actually true. Way back in 1997 I was just young enough to vote, desperate to get the Tories out and living in a rural Norfolk constituency where the Labour guy was the only other one with any chance (and he didn't make it in the end). I remember how excited I was, both casting my vote and then the morning after. It was all going to be different.

Comments

hmmmm...

[(Anonymous)]

According to a recent edition of the New York Times, over 200,000 political prisoners have been murdered by Saddam Hussein; maybe the whole notion of Iraqis "taking a decision" about the regime is just wishful thinking. Along with SH deliberately firing the oil fields; draining the Tigris/Euphrates wetlands; gassing Iraqi Kurds; declaring war on Iran and on Kuwait; and starving his own people to build mosques, dams, roads, and palaces in his own honour. All of these are environmental disasters as well as social and moral evils; and this doesn't even enter into the speculations about his possible support for the terrorists who have hijacked Islam, his ability to lob missiles over all his neighbours, and his capacity to use biological warfare.

Maybe it's just too comfortable for all of us in the West to say "well, it's their country and they have the right to deal with it in their own way" when in fact most Iraqis may have that right in theory and have every reason to fear exercising it; maybe it's too comfortable for us to ignore the environmental and social devastation which already exists in Iraq, and to postulate that somehow war is worse. I say "maybe"; but if I were an Iraqi I would be terrified of the war and also terrified that the present state of affairs was going to continue unchecked.

Personally I would prefer dialogue - jaw, jaw instead of war, war - but it is possible that those of us against the idea of the war are both underinformed and a wee bit naive; and willingly blind, to reinforce our own self-issued credentials as enlightened, respectful, tolerant people. Maybe things in Iraq are indeed so awful that the only way, in the long run, to remediate them is to push the guy out through force of arms. Even Hans Blix - no pushover - isn't exactly optimistic about the way in which SH is dealing with this peaceful phase....

just a thought...

Re: hmmmm...

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

declaring war on Iran and on Kuwait

The first one was our fault and we (UK and US) backed him. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have taken steps to deal with the second one, as we did. In international law, that's where the line is drawn - you can do what you wish in your own back yard, but no messing up someone elses.

That attitude, while sometimes harsh, is pragmatic. There are dubious regiemes all over the world who take part in the sort of activities you describe. Why aren't we marching on Harari (sp?) to unseat Mugabe right now? Why aren't we threatening to nuke Saudi Arabia - after all, as well as having a despotic regieme they too have in the past (and presumably still) sold weapons and provided funds to groups like Al-Queda. Hell, Bush himself is doing pretty well for environmental disasters as well as social and moral evils - they'll be drilling up Alaska any day now, he's determined to continue spewing out carbons like there's no tomorrow in defiance of the US' treaty obligations, he's quite happy to continue with the death penalty despite the overwhelming evidence about the racial and sexual bias with which it is applied.

his ability to lob missiles over all his neighbours, and his capacity to use biological warfare

That's true of half the states in the region. It's true of the US, and out of the two of them, which is the one determined to have a war?

I disagree that it's too comfortable for us to say "Stay out" - it's actually much more uncomfortable to sit here and stick to the rules while Hussein has his way in Bagdad. The problem is that according to international law and convetion that's the right thing to do. If we concede the principle that it's OK for one country to invade another to try and change it's regieme from something they don't approve of to something they do without at the very least the overwhelming approval of the international community, we open the door to all sorts of problems, religious states attacking secular states for example.

Re: hmmmm...

[applez.livejournal.com]

That attitude, while sometimes harsh, is pragmatic.

Quite right. Extrapolated to Kosovo ... horrible as it was, the international community really couldn't act *until* there was a cross-border refugee situation. Early interdiction may be seem easier/better, but you're right on that nasty slipperly slope. More importantly the lesson to be learnt from 11 September, and the Oklahoma City bombing for that matter, is that the opinion of a few backwoodsmen in the hinterlands in reaction to your (inter-) national IS important.

A crying need for ethical behaviour - not roughshod application of 'universal' democratic values (Napolean complex?).

There are dubious regiemes all over the world who take part in the sort of activities you describe. Why aren't we marching on Harari (sp?) to unseat Mugabe right now? Why aren't we threatening to nuke Saudi Arabia - after all, as well as having a despotic regieme they too have in the past (and presumably still) sold weapons and provided funds to groups like Al-Queda.

Or far older and equally important situations in Burma, Tibet, Xinjian, Chechnya? Convenient to ignore still it seems ... even when the light of bona fide democracy refuses to die in places like Burma.

Or, for all our worry over Iraq's attempts to acquire nuclear weapons and Israel pre-emptive strikes on potential breeder reactors, what about Japan? They have breeder reactors all over the bloody place with credible missile technology to boot. Besides being massively armed by the Americans and have been amid a slow shift to more and more proactive military missions.

It's no mistake the Chinese, Koreans, Taiwanese, and even Thais are arming themselves with blue water navies!

Hell, Bush himself is doing pretty well for environmental disasters as well as social and moral evils - they'll be drilling up Alaska any day now, he's determined to continue spewing out carbons like there's no tomorrow in defiance of the US' treaty obligations, he's quite happy to continue with the death penalty despite the overwhelming evidence about the racial and sexual bias with which it is applied.

The fundamental problem, as TinyJo has identified, is that international law is valueless if the sole remaining superpower refuses to abide by its conventions. Under those circumstances power relationships of real politik are the only veritable alternative. In which case the rest of the world had better fucking arm themselves pronto! A nuclear weapon for everyone I say. Liberation through armament & confrontation ... everything the UN and international law exists to prevent.

Now, a transgression of international convention *might* be permissible if the risks are distributed evenly, that is to say the majority of international opinion agrees that this rule should be set aside in favour of a more pressing need. This American administration has utterly failed to build this kind of support.^

Frankly, whilst it's easy to rubbish Bush for being a REAL SHIT, the fact is all US administrations have bent or broken international law - I remember Clinton's punitive missile strikes on Sudan (a fellow member state of the General Assembly) and Afghanistan most poigniantly. Perhaps it's just that this administration lacks the basic finesse required to carry it off without too many ruffled feathers...

----

^ Now this does pose a very real argument against a system that requires a crime of cross-boundary nature to occur BEFORE action is taken, and then is a necessarily slow process. However, since no one has bothered to actually set up an alternative everyone can agree to, or even basic principles with agreed-upon application that one might build an alternative from - WE MUST KEEP what we have and works, for the most part.

In the US case, using American democratic values as the model of international living under US military hegemony IS NOT sustainable.

Try as this administration might, Iraq has nothing to do with terrorists ... until they provide better proof, to their own Congress, let alone the public.

Re: hmmmm...

[applez.livejournal.com]

Something to add:

While the past decade+ of sanctions has failed to disarm Saddam, it has certainly contained him, has released a buyer's-market control of Iraqi oil, and has kept Saddam's more exotic punishments against his own citizenry in check.

All in all, a successful campaign.

The West can afford to wait, Saddam is an old man, and he can't afford the slow mouldy deterioration Pinochet or Ne Win or Pol Pot could and did.