Have you ever stopped to ask yourself this: How come, in all the long history of warfare, very, very few leaders engaging in a war have ever done so on the basis of a cause that they publicly proclaimed to be any less than perfectly just?
Seems like no ‘unjust war’ has ever been fought. Amazing.
Especially if you consider that any war that has any duration is always engaged in by at least two parties or nations, each of whose leaders is there publicly proclaiming that his cause is perfectly just.
What does this tell us about the nature of war– and about the nature of claims of ‘justice’?
Four years on
It has
been almost four years.
Back in January
2003, I voiced
this warning in my column in the Christian Science Monitor.
Any use of massive violence such as that Washington is now threatening
against Iraq is a terrible thing.
against Iraq is a terrible thing.
Everything we know about violence gives two clear lessons. First, the
use of force always has unintended – often quite unpredictable –
consequences. And second, war in the modern era always
disproportionately harms civilians.
For these two reasons, there is a strong presumption in international
law and international custom against any easy or voluntary recourse to
war. War is still allowed in international law, yes – but only for
self-defense, and only as a very last resort, after all avenues for
peaceful resolution of differences
have been exhausted.
Mr. President, you have no such justification for the war you now
threaten against Iraq. There is still time to stand down the huge US
expeditionary force and return to some version of the mix of
containment and deterrence that has proved successful against Iraq
until now – as it did against the much more threatening Soviet Union in
an earlier era. Turn back from this war before its consequences come
back to haunt you and the rest of the world.
And then, I
noted the consequences that followed the decision that Ariel Sharon had
made, when he was Israel’s Defense Minister in 1982, to invade Lebanon:
That
campaign had two key similarities to the one you now threaten against
Iraq. It was a war of “choice,” not one imposed on Israel by other
powers
like some of its other wars. Secondly, Mr. Sharon’s campaign aimed
explicitly
at bringing about “regime change” in Lebanon, as yours promises to do
in
Iraq.
campaign had two key similarities to the one you now threaten against
Iraq. It was a war of “choice,” not one imposed on Israel by other
powers
like some of its other wars. Secondly, Mr. Sharon’s campaign aimed
explicitly
at bringing about “regime change” in Lebanon, as yours promises to do
in
Iraq.
At the military level, Sharon’s warriors succeeded. Within two months,
they controlled half of Lebanon including the capital Beirut. They
forced
Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian guerrillas to leave the country, and
“persuaded”
Lebanon’s parliament to vote in Israeli ally Bashir Gemayel as their
new
president.
Politically, however, Sharon’s campaign did not go well. The continued
presence of Israeli forces in the country catalyzed the birth of a new,
much
more militant Lebanese Muslim group called Hizbullah. Mr. Gemayel was
assassinated.
Before 1982 ended, Israel was seeking to reduce its footprint in
Lebanon. But it was unable to deal with the resistance that its
presence provoked, and ended up staying in Lebanon an additional 18
years.
Israel (and Lebanon) bled profusely for all those years. (And the
Palestinians? Their national movement simply changed its form. In 1987,
it launched its first serious uprising – “intifada” – inside Gaza and
the West Bank.)
No one in Israel today gives a favorable verdict to Sharon’s 1982
campaign. One can only wonder how Americans 20 years from now will
judge the results of a US war on Iraq.
In February
2003, I wrote this:
Right now, the vast majority of the world’s Muslims strongly oppose the
US launching what they see as a quite avoidable war against Iraq. (Most
non-Muslims worldwide seem to share this view, too.) With his latest
message, bin Laden seeks to insinuate himself into the leadership of
the sprawling collection of societies known loosely as the “world
Muslim community.”
US launching what they see as a quite avoidable war against Iraq. (Most
non-Muslims worldwide seem to share this view, too.) With his latest
message, bin Laden seeks to insinuate himself into the leadership of
the sprawling collection of societies known loosely as the “world
Muslim community.”
If the US blindly goes ahead with the threatened attack on Iraq, will
that bring bin Laden closer to his goal, or further from it?
My judgment, based on more than 25 years of studying Muslim issues, is
that it will bring bin Laden much, much closer.
The tragic irony in this is that, just days before the airing of the
bin Laden tape, Secretary of State Colin Powell, in his presentation at
the UN, significantly inflated the strength of the link between Saddam
Hussein’s regime
and bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. Now, as in the Yiddish folktale “The Golem,”
bad
dreams seem to be taking on real substance.
In his Feb. 5 speech, Mr. Powell laid out the best evidence he had for
the existence of what he called, “the potentially … sinister nexus
between Iraq
and the Al Qaeda terrorist network.”
But the case he made at that time for the existence of this nexus was
thin and deeply unconvincing. To note this is not to stick up for
Saddam Hussein. He’s a very abusive ruler with a long record of
deception on significant weapons-related
issues. But prudence still dictates that the Bush administration needs
to
get its facts straight about the Baghdad-Al Qaeda nexus.
Finally,
as the drumbeats of the approaching war grew louder, on March 13, 2003,
I wrote this:
The
fight-to-the death that the
president is poised to launch against Saddam Hussein’s regime will send
a tsunami of destabilization throughout the Middle East. But beyond
that,
if this war is not authorized by the UN Security Council, it threatens
to unravel not just the 58-year-old UN system, but the whole web of
interstate
relations that has grown up through the past four centuries. We would
be
catapulted back to a Hobbesian world of “might makes right” in
international
affairs. In such a world, as Hobbes warned us, human life can only be
“nasty,
brutish, and short.”
fight-to-the death that the
president is poised to launch against Saddam Hussein’s regime will send
a tsunami of destabilization throughout the Middle East. But beyond
that,
if this war is not authorized by the UN Security Council, it threatens
to unravel not just the 58-year-old UN system, but the whole web of
interstate
relations that has grown up through the past four centuries. We would
be
catapulted back to a Hobbesian world of “might makes right” in
international
affairs. In such a world, as Hobbes warned us, human life can only be
“nasty,
brutish, and short.”
The threat to the UN system is already dire. Yes, the UN has made
mistakes and still has many shortcomings. And yes, the US has sometimes
had rocky relations with the UN over the years. But for the vast
majority of the world’s people, the UN represents an ideal of national
equality, and embodies their desire that international conflicts be
resolved without war. In thousands of places around the world, the UN
delivers basic human services – nutrition, healthcare, water
management, shelter – that governments are too weak or
impoverished to provide. In explosive hot spots – including the
Kuwait-Iraq
border – UN peacekeepers help monitor and defuse otherwise deadly
tensions.
President Bush has repeatedly said, “When it comes to our security,
we don’t need anybody’s permission.” That can only mean he’s prepared
to
go to war against Iraq even without Security Council authorization.
Make
no mistake: If the president does that, he will start a cascade of
actions
and counteractions that could unravel the UN, all its good works and
the
ideals it represents, within months – not years.
… Many Americans remember a previous effort by a well-meaning
president to use the US military’s dominant position to forcibly impose
democracy
on another country. That was President Johnson, in 1968, in Vietnam.
In 2003, a similar effort to impose democracy on Iraq through force
can similarly be expected to fail. This time though, the cost to global
stability and human well-being would be much higher. Mr. President,
turn
back!
All of us
urging Bush to turn back failed, and on March 19-20, 2003 the first
waves of the US invasion force started pounding Iraq.
The carnage and social collapse that Iraq has seen since then have
exceeded even my worst expectations,which had previously been
‘seasoned’ by having experienced six years of Lebanon’s civil
war up close and very personal in the 1970s.
There a number of reasons for that, I think. One is that the
Lebanese have always, as a people relying on trade and on cultivation
in the valleys of inhospitable mountains, been deeply distrustful of
government, so many elements of their society never relied on the
existence of a central government for very much of anything.
Iraq, by contrast, is an ancient riverine culture in which central
government regulation of many aspects of economic life is deeply
engrained into the national culture. Add to that 30 years of
Baathist authoritarianism (and 12 years of tough international
sanctions), which between them deepended Iraqis’ dependence on
government for many basic necessities of life… And you can see how
the collapse of central government had so much more drastic an effect
on the lives of ordinary people in Iraq than an anlogous collapse had
earlier had in Lebanon…
Secondly, the amounts and kinds of weaponry at the disposal of the
local militias and fighting forces have been a quantum leap more lethal
than anything the fighting parties in Lebanon ever had access to.
In both cases, external occupying powers have worked hard to stir the
pot of internal divisiveness in pursuit of their own policies iof
‘divide-and-rule’…
Anyway, just going back to what I was writing there in the early months
of 2003, I’d like to note the following:
1. Very sadly, all
my dire warnings proved correct. The exuberant enthusiasm of
those deeply ignorant souls who promised us ‘cake-walks’ and rapturous
greetings with rice and flowers proved to have no substance at all.
my dire warnings proved correct. The exuberant enthusiasm of
those deeply ignorant souls who promised us ‘cake-walks’ and rapturous
greetings with rice and flowers proved to have no substance at all.
2. Where has been ‘accountability’ in all this?? The thing that
rankles for me, most of all, is that the ‘international community’
(whatever that is) rewarded
Paul Wolfowitz, who had been one of the pleading architects and
implementers of the war, with an appointment as President of the World Bank.
This is madness, madness– if the ‘world community’ wants to say
anything serious at all about (a) the strength of the norm it places on
the avoidance of war, and (b) the value it places on the work of the
World Bank.
The World Bank does much-needed work in many areas of the world where
war is recent, or is a current and recurring threat. How can it
have any credibility working in such zones– on all its programs for
the ‘peaceful resolution of conflicts’, etc etc– if it has at its head
a man so terribly tainted by the forceful role he played in fashioning
and carrying out a policy of unbridled militarism in Iraq?
(I could also ask how much his salary is in that very comfortable and
powerful perch… compared to the pathetic little shreds of income that
I and most other consistent critics of the war policy are currently
able to pull in.)
Of course, most other architects of the war policy have also been well
rewarded, going on to think-tanks, universities, and consultancies
(oftentimes, with arms manufacturers or arms dealers) that pay them
well. Those facts
hurt, yes, but they have less to tell us about the values of the
‘international community’ of which the World Bank is a part than does
Paul W’s continuing employment there.
3. I did write in early 2003 about the dangers that the Bushites’
unilateral and quite unjustified invasion of Iraq posed to the
functioning and integrity of the United Nations system. That is
still a strong concern for me, though the unraveling of the UN has not
been as serious or as speedy as I had feared.
However, the weakness of the UN is already quite serious enough that
the many pleas I have voiced that the UN be given a serious role in
helping to de-escalate the conflict in Iraq and provide a politically
‘legitimate’ framework within which the US can pull out its troops do
seem less convincing, and more problematic, than they otherwise
would. Of course, the fact that the Bushites have been able to
suborn the UN into acting as their junior partner in some key aspects
of Middle East diplomacy– primarily by enlisting the UN as a junior
partner in the time-wasting, doomed-to-failure ‘Road Map’ scheme– has
also considerably underrmined both the integrity of the UN process and
the political credibility it is able to project within the Middle East.
Evidently, the UN is at a slowly evolving turning-point. The
Bushites’ actions have forced the world’s other powers to make a
choice: Do they want a world that is, in fact, ruled by a single
American hegemon, or do they want to try to revive the rules-based,
international equality-based approach of the earlier UN? (Put
crudely: When will the Chnese, the Russians, and the other powers call
in their chips, sell their large stores of US Treasury bills, and push
the US back to punching at its own weight in international affairs–
which on a population basis, is around 5% of the total? This is
unlikely to happen soon– the other big powers are doing nicely with
the world economy the way it is; and they have little interest in
giving Washington too much help to stop the diminution of US military
power that is continuing at a fast rate, day by day, inside
Iraq… It is only the poor bloody Iraqis who are
suffering, for now.)
There is a lot more to write, too. I want to write more about the
historical precedents for the US’s current experience of ‘imperial
over-reach’ inside Iraq… In those early 2003 CSM columns I mentioned
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and the US’s earlier experience
in Vietnam. But I did not mention Britain (and France)’s
experience during the invasion of Gaza, Sinai, and Suez in 1956; and
the role that Britain’s experience there, in particular, had in
catalyzing and hastening London’s withdrawal from (nearly) all the rest
of its imperial holdings around the world, over theyears that
followed… Or apartheid South Africa’s bruising experiences
during its war against Angola in the 1980s… Or the Soviet Union’s
experience in Afghanistan from 1989 on… (or Israel’s experience in
Lebanon in 2006?)
In those other instances, that I had failed to mention in the columns,
the setbacks experienced during one discrete military-imperial
adventure had consequences for the military-imperial power that were considerably broader than in just
that single territory they had attacked.
I definitely need to do a more serious study, sometime, of this
phenomenon of imperial
over-reach leading very rapidly to imperial rollback or even the
collapse of empire.
How far will the rollback of US power extend in the wake of this
still-ongoing debacle in Iraq?
(I have other things I need to write about too… including, what the
exact motors are of the current political developments inside Wasington
DC… something that, I have found in my travels, many non-Americans
seem to have only a rather fuzzy notion about… But for now, I
have to run… Back posting here again soon, I hope.)
Palestinian unity government formed
Congratulations to the negotiators of Fateh and Hamas who have been able to reach agreement on a governmental list that will be presented to the Legislative Council for a (now merely formal) vote of approval on Saturday.
In the ultra-sensitive post of Interior Minister will be Hani al-Kawasmi. The head of Fateh’s parliamentary bloc, Azzam Ahmed, will be vice-premier to Ismail Haniyeh’s premier. My old buddy Ziad Abu Amr will (as previously agreed) be the Foreign Minister; Salam Fayad will be at Finance. Mustafa Barghouti will be information minister, etc etc…
There are some great choices here.
The Hamas website in Arabic tells us that French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy has sent an official message to Abu Amr congratulating him on the formation of the national unity Government and expressing the hope that the two could hold a meeting soon (no date given), in either Paris or the OPTs.
(The text of the ‘appointment letter’, agreed in Mecca February 9, by which PA Pres Mahmoud Abbas formally invited Haniyeh to form this new unity government, and which sets out the politica parameters for the government, is here.)
I want to recall that almost exactly 12 months ago, when I was in Palestine, the Israelis (and Americans) issued threats “of the most serious nature imaginable” against Ziad Abu Amr, in the event he would agree to join a Hamas-led government; and the threats worked.
This time around, the US has far less coercive power in the region, in general, and Hamas and the Palestinian people have proven that they can’t be broken by the quite inhumane siege that Israel and the US (and also, I note the US-backed governments of Egypt and Jordan, and also nearly all the rest of the international community) maintained around the OPTs. So things are noticeably different.
In Israel, however, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said his government would continue to boycott the PA government and encourage other countries to do the same because its program falls short of the conditions that the US-dominated “Quartet” set for its acceptance:
- “Unfortunately the new Palestinian government seems to have said no to the three benchmarks of the international community,” Regev said. “Accordingly, Israel will not deal with this new government and we hope the international community will stand firmly by its own principles and refuse to deal with a government that says no to peace and no to reconciliation.”
One thing that always strongly puzzled me about the “Quartet” was why on earth the United Nations– which is supposed to be the organization that upholds fairness and the over-arching rule of law at the global level, ever allowed itself to be drawn into acting as the subordinate of the Bush administration in the Bushites’ very one-sided pursuit of a pro-Israeli agenda.
Maybe now, finally, enough European and other powers will be distancing themselves from the one-sided approach of the Bushites that the UN can start playing a much more constructive role in Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy?
In fact, maybe it’s time– coming up as we are for 40 years into Israel’s very damaging pursuit of its settlement projects in the OPTs and in Syria’s Golan region– for the U.N. Secretary-General to convene an authoritative international conference to resolve finally, once and all, all the still-unresolved tracks of the Arab-Israeli conflict, on the basis of international law and the UNSC’s many well-known resolutions.
Why would any sane person want to stand in the way of that?
London, Coventry, (Oxford)
I haven’t posted much here lately… Mostly because I’ve been busy catching up with old friends and colleagues here in England, and also traveling around a little and meeting some interesting new people.
Tuesday night I had dinner with my niece Rachel Clements, who’s what the Brits call an “A&E” doctor (what Americans call an ER doc.) Rachel is extremely smart, fit, and fearless: she works with the London Helicopter Emergency Medical Service, rushing around London in a chopper to rescue people in extremely dire straits … Well, they only use the chopper in the daytime. At night, she rushes around in a car with the paramedic on the team driving her. And okay, though I said ‘rushing around’, she did tell me over a great Italian dinner that a lot of the time on her shifts is spent waiting for the next call.
It was great to reconnect with Rachel, and really interesting to hear her talking with conviction and self-understanding about the challenges of her work, how she deals with the tough emotions it induces, and so on.
I told her how much I admire her, and admire the fact that she actually is out there, every day, saving lives, while as for the rest of us– ?
I would like to think that what I do might help to prevent future wars and all the suffering and death that wars always, without exception, bring in their train… But to be honest our track record in preventing the past ones has been really, really poor.
What more can we do to prevent the launching of a US war-of-choice against Iran?
We’re coming up to the fourth anniversary of launching the war-of-choice against Iraq, and I’m planning to write something to mark that occasion. A good time to reflect.
And later in the year, we’re coming up to the 40th anniversary of Israel’s launching of the ‘pre-emptive’ war of 1967 that set in train 40 years of rule-by-military-occupation over Golan and Palestine…
Anyway, yesterday I came to Coventry, in the heart of England,. where I spent the afternoon teaching a class for Prof. Andrew Rigby, the Director of the Centre for Peace & Reconciliation Studies at Coventry University. I talked mainly about my work on the Amnesty After Atrocities book, the conclusions I had drawn from it, etc. The student body was amazing! About two dozen of them, nearly all overseas students, with a very broad range of life experiences and all very articulate, thoughtful, and smart. It seems like an amazing center they have here.
Andrew’s on the editorial board of Peace News, too.
Today I’m returning to London via Oxford, where I’m having lunch with Avi Shlaim, at St. Antony’s College.
West’s relations with Syria starting to thaw
US Assistant Secretary of State for Migration Affairs Ellen Sauerbrey was in Damascus yesterday, discussing the situation of the million-plus Iraqi citizens who have found a temporary refuge there.
The Kuwaiti news agency reported that State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said that,
- Sauerbrey called on Syria to work with the Iraqi government and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) “to provide protection and assistance for refugees from Iraq that are in Syria.”
This hortatory tone sounds particularly inappropriate, given that Syria’s 20 million people and their government have given, on balance, a remarkably warm welcome to the displaced Iraqis who have fled there, while the USA, a very rich country with 15 times Syria’s population has admitted something like 450 Iraqi refugees over the whole of the past four years.
Also, it was the US invasion and occupation of Iraq that sparked the strife that has sent so many millions of Iraqis fleeing. And the US, as occupying power there, still bears the responsibility under international law to assure the protection of the safety of all Iraqis… which they have notably failed to do.
Sauerbrey’s visit is the highest profile visit by any Bush administration official to Syria since the US “recalled” its ambassador from Damascus in the aftermath of the killing of former Lebanese PM Rafiq Hariri in Beirut in February 2005. There ensued two years of a strong attempt by the Bushites to encircle and isolate the Syrian regime, an attempt that was punctuated by periodic calls from powerful neocons for outright “regime change” in Damascus …
Now, finally, the admninistration has concluded that it needs to start engaging with Damascus, at least to some extent. (On Saturday, Syrian, Iranian, and US representatives all took part in the 12-party regional stabilization meeting held in Baghdad.)
When I interviewed Syrian FM Walid Mouallem in Damascus on February 28, he was modestly optimistic about the prospects of a thaw in US-Syrian relations. (See also the latter two portins of this interview, here and here.)
For his part, Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Shara has seemed a little more cautious than Mouallem. He told reporters in Cairo that
- “This is just a start. And we cannot predict how this start would end but we hope the end and the coming steps will be positive and constructive…
“Warming relations need deep talks and a long time for mutual doubts to be removed. That is why we should not pin huge importance on what happened in Baghdad, but we must not ignore it either because it has brought the dialogue back.”
In another sign of the slow thaw in Syria’s relations with the west, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, is expected in Damascus any moment now.
Meanwhile, Josh Landis is carrying on his blog the full text of an article that the Syrian ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha, recently penned.
Moustapha gives quite a lot of details about various overtures the Syrian government made to Washington, offering to provide security coordination regarding Iraq, but says at least two of these offers– made in March and September 2004– were brusquely rebuffed by the Bushites.
He concludes:
- Syria firmly believes that the only way to achieve progress in Iraq is through the political engagement of all parties, without exception or exclusion. This includes all Iraqi factions, regional neighbors of Iraq, and international players with interest in stabilizing the situation in Iraq. A strategy of consensus and dialogue is the only way forward. Syria can play a constructive role if such a path is adopted.
Let’s hope everyone else can also start to play a constructive role?
Reidar Visser on Basrawis and oil; other oil questions
Our esteemed friend Reidar Visser has another great writing now available on the question of the thorny relationship between the people of the Shiite-dominated ‘Deep South’ of Iraq and their co-religionists in the more central Shiite heartland, especially over the issue of oil.
Visser’s excellent training as a historian– and a historian of southern Iraq, in particular– stands him in good stead there as he teases apart and analyzes the recent and current political trends at work in the Iraqi Deep South… which just happens to be the part of the country in which the vast bulk of the country’s proven oil reserves are located.
In regard to questions of oil location and potential versions of decentralization vs. centralism in Iraq, I just note that at a session on Iraq that I attended last Friday at Chatham House here in London, the point was underlined that with or without Kirkuk, the Kurdish-dominated north of the country still has far, far less oil in its land than the south (especially the Deep South)… And that therefore there are some Kurds who quite credibly argue that from the economic point of view their people would do better to count on having a population-proportionate amount of revenue from the oil resources of a still centralized Iraqi state than by getting the revenue only from “their own” oil resources up there in the north.
Interesting…
Anyway, here is the bottom line in Reidar’s piece:
- [E]ven with [the] strong pressures in the direction of territorial sectarianism, signs of local resistance remain. Exhausted by experimentation with regional schemes, many Shi‘i citizens of Basra today simply favor the restoration of a central Baghdad government that can deliver security and services. Others still cling to the “southern region” project, despite a potentially fateful lack of progress in recruiting support among the secularists, Sunnis and Christians of Basra. Even the wild pan-Islamism of Ahmad al-Hasan survives. In the long run, these alternative visions may not derail the sectarian scheme and its powerful sponsors, but they will certainly delay it. In fact, they might prompt experienced actors like Iran, which probably takes a more nuanced view of the Iraqi scene than do many Western analysts, to distribute their bets more evenly, on a wider range of players on the Iraqi scene. In spite of extreme pressures from an increasingly violent political environment, projects like these will carry on an intellectual heritage that discourages many Shi‘a from thinking about their religious community in terms of crescents, rectangles or, indeed, any kind of cartographical projection.
Do go read the whole text. You can post comments and probably engage Reidar in discussion on it here.
What do we mean by ‘Justice’ and ‘Accountability’?
- (This post has been cross-posted at ‘Transitional Justice Forum’)
Two of the key watchwords used by people who argue for war-crimes
prosecutions in the aftermath of atrocity are the need for “justice”
and “accountability.” Yet it seems to me that many of these
people construe both these concepts in a narrow and essentially
backward-looking way that often has the effect of keeping people in
communities that are struggling to escape from very serious recent, or
even ongoing, political conflict mired in the grievances and
blame-games of the past rather than investing their energies in
figuring out how to build a rule-of-law-resecting political system
going forward and then working together to build it.
This is one of the major conclusions I have reached after reflecting
deeply on the findings of my recent book Amnesty After Atrocity?: Healing Nations
after Genocide and War Crimes. In the book I compared
the
effectiveness of the policies that three sub-Saharan countries adopted
at the point, in the early 1990s, when they were trying to bring to an
end long-running political conflicts that had been marked by the
widespread commission of very grave atrocities. The three
countries were Mozambique, whose two major political movements in late
1992 concluded a General Peace Agreement (GPA) that ended the civil war
that had beset their country since 1977; South Africa, whose
major political movements agreed on the holding, in April 1994, of the
country’s first-ever one-person-one-vote democratic election, bringing
to an end 40 years of apartheid and 350 strife-torn years of colonial
rule; and Rwanda, where in July-August 1994 the Rwandan Patriotic
Front (RPF) won a decisive battlefield victory that brought to an end
four
years of armed civil conflict that culminated in the three months of
the anti-Tutsi genocide committed by their ‘Hutu Power’ opponents.
As each of those conflicts came to an end (or, more realistically, a
conflict termination ‘opportunity’), these countries’ new,
post-settlement rulers each pursued a very different approach to the
challenge of dealing with the legacies of the recent atrocities.
In Rwanda, both the national government and the international community
pursued policies dominated by the need for war-crimes
prosecutions. In Mozambqiue, the post-GPA government was bound by
one of the provisions of the GPA that stipulated that a blanket amnesty
be granted to all who had committed criminal acts during the civil
war. Instead of launching any war-related prosecutions, the
government focused on disarming and demobilizing as many as possible of
the former combatants from both sides and reintegrating them as quickly
as possible into normal civilian life. This policy, known as
‘DDR’ in standard U.N. jargon, was enthusiastically supported by the
international community which underwrote most of the funding needed for
it. In South Africa, the post-democratization government was
similarly bound by an agreement concluded during the pre-settlement
negotiations that promised that an amnesty would be provided to all who
had committed criminal acts during the conflict. In South
Africa’s case, subsequent legislation spelled out that these amnesties,
and the resulting immunity from criminal prosecution, would be offered
only to those who individually applied for them to a special committee
that was part of the country’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (TRC), and then only if they could satisfy that committee
that (1) those acts had been been politically motivated, and (2) they
had also shared fully with the committee everything they knew about
such politically motivated criminal acts committed by themselves or
others during the apartheid era. So the deal there was amnesty in
return for truth-telling.
In my book I examined these varying approaches to dealing with the
perpetrators of past atrocities. In addition, since I was doing
this work some dozen years after those respective political
transitions, I sought to to understand and analyze the effectiveness of
those approaches over those crucial post-conflict years. One
early challenge I came up against was to enquire: effectiveness at
doing what?
Now, I know that many lawyers and legal theorists are reluctant to
apply extrinsic yardsticks to the work of juridical institutions, which
they hold somehow to exist in a rarefied zone of pure deontology far
from the grimy world of politics or history. But for my part,
since I am a long-time participant in the international human-rights
movement, I would hope at the very least that the policies adopted by
the government of any country still reeling from a period of widespread
atrocity commission would lead to a measurable and sustained
improvement in the rule of law situation within that country.
As it happens, there is an institution in New York City that, on a
world-wide, country-by-country basis measures this every year.
This is Freedom House, which each year assesses each
country on a two-headed scale, giving it one number for “political
rights” and another for “civil liberties”. It is a very
specialized way of ranking. The best score a country can win is
“1; 1”, and the worst is “7; 7”; therefore, there are potentially
twelve total intervals of variability between the top score and the
bottom score. I checked the Freedom House rankings for the the three
countries I had studied, for the years 1994 and 2006 (and for several years between), and Idiscovered the
following:
Continue reading “What do we mean by ‘Justice’ and ‘Accountability’?”
Halliburton’s Move to Dubai: Reasons?
In our capitalist system, Halliburton ostensibly does what’s best for Halliburton. No doubt… Halliburton (aka HAL on Wall Street) has announced it’s moving its corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates.
This is “richly” ironic on several levels. Halliburton’s current CEO, Dave Lessar, announced in Bahrain that the company wished to be closer to its growing business interests in Asia:
“The eastern hemisphere is a market that is more heavily weighted toward oil exploration and production opportunities and growing our business here will bring more balance to Halliburton’s overall portfolio.”
Balance? As the CNBC talking heads might speculate (for other companies), the statement deserves heavy “discounting.” Halliburton has other reasons for getting out of Dodge.
Remember Halliburton? This is the same oil services giant, ostensibly once run (poorly) by Vice President Dick Cheney. This same Halliburton is widely suspected of underhanded abuse of its connection to Cheney to obtain over $25 billion in lucrative, often no-bid contracts in Iraq.
Ok, sure, 38% of Halliburton’s business now comes from “the eastern hemisphere” – including Iraq… Is this new? Or is something wrong with the airport in Houston?
Just last month, Halliburton was cited by US investigators as responsible for as much as $2.7 billion of an estimated $10 billion in contractor fraud and abuse in Iraq. And last year, Halliburton made $2.3 billion in profits, though profits were down 40% last quarter.
I venture a guess that Halliburton’s reputation with the American people is right down there with Enron.
HAL’s share price is down about 25% off of its highs from last year. To be fair, the Wall Street oil services index is also off about 18% from its high.
Yet shareholder and political heat has been building at HAL. So why not get the exit underway before the party is…voted fully out of office?
On the other side of this intriguing move, remember Dubai? Dubai is the remarkable Arab trading hub that has mushroomed dramatically as a trading portal in all directions, especially to the north with Iran and to the Caspian region beyond.
Dubai is also very tax friendly to foreign corporations. It’s the Delaware of the Arab world.
And remember Dubai Ports World, the international conglomerate that, with Bush family backing, wished to invest heavily in six major American ports? “The Lobby” helped force DPW to agree to sell off those investments last year, on the rather specious argument that DPW, an Arab based company, might not be trustworthy in defending against terrorism. DPW recently threatened to reverse its decision, claiming that the New York Port Authority was trying to blackmail it.
Anybody want to put two and two together here?
Mayan Priests, Bush, Dobson, & St. Newt
Holy Chakotay! (irony alert)
Maybe it’s my native American side, but I rather think these Guatemalan Mayan Priests are on to something. According to the AP, they’ve announced plans to “purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate “bad spirits” after President Bush visits next week.”
“That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture,” Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.”
The Mayans likely will not stop Bush’s visit to the Iximche archaeological site on Guatemala’s high western plateau. However, the
“spirit guides of the Mayan community decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of ‘bad spirits’ after Bush’s visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace…. [T]he rites — which entail chanting and burning incense, herbs and candles – would prepare the site for the third summit of Latin American Indians March 26-30.
Imagine the visuals! I sure hope CNN or at least SciFi covers this ritual cleansing.
Speaking of surreal, how “faith-based” can this Bush tour of Latin America get? Oh sure, he’ll be there to promote trade, listen, and go fishing in Uruguay — while Baghdad burns.
He’s also in Brazil in pursuit of cheap ethanol – albeit with a 54% tariff on it to protect US sugar barons. Whatever happened to promoting free trade? And how much more of the Amazon rain forest must we clear to replace Middle Eastern oil?
We’re also told that he’s in Latin America, in part, to counter radicalism and support democracy.
Ah yes. And his next tour of Arab countries will include Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt — from whence to preach the good news of demcracy for Iran.
For now, the Bushistas are complaining that the Latin protest rallies against Bush are being orchestrated and funded by radicals like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. And this from the Administration that until recently loved to put the President before military base crowds — all of them “volunteering” their enthusiasm too. If the President wants friendly crowds, why not a visit to Australia and get Murdoch media to manage the crowds. Snow-jobs melt there.
Back to our theme of “priests” with chutzpah, America’s favorite evangelical shrink, Dr. James Dobson, has been hosting fess-up sessions on national radio with Newt Gingrich. On Thursday, the broadcast focused on “Rediscovering America’s Spiritual Heritage.” (More on that in another post.)
On Friday’s program, Gingrich pontificates about the monstrous “gathering threat” of Islam as a preface (cover?) to addressing “tough questions” about his moral failings “of the past.”
Newt’s moral credentials include dumping his first wife amid her battle with cervical cancer and then cheating on his second wife at the very time he was orchestrating the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
Dobson “appreciated” Gingrich for confessing his indiscretion, and seems to absolve him.
Besides, Gingrich is helping Christians focus on the real enemy – Islam. Lest you think I overstretch that point, I’ve often wondered why Christian social conservatives refuse to consider that they should have considerable common cause with their Muslim neighbors, precisely on family issues. Explanation – the eschatalogical focus within “Christian Likudism” on Israel trumps all.
In any case, Gingrich says he didn’t criticize Clinton for having an extramarital affair, but for perjuring himself before a grand jury. (never mind that Clinton was accused of lying about an affair) Now who is parsing his words?
So how low will Dobson go? Are Dobson & his “focused on the family” audience seriously contemplating support for Saint Newt, the family man, if he runs for President….? G*wd almighty indeed.
And speaking of, if you will, strange bedfellows, I learned yesterday that Pat Robertson’s Regent University will have Mitt Romney – the Mormon Governor – as its commencement speaker on May 7th. I suspect this will go down “hard” among the muzzled faculty and student body there. And this will be after Rudi Guliani – another maritally-challenged Presidential candidate, but staunch Israel defender – returns to Regent on April 17th.
Odd ball prediction: if these “leading lights” from the “Christian-Likudnik” right keep compromising their own principles in the service of an increasingly narrow agenda (Israel and sometimes “the family”), they may energize a backlash of political disbelief from their own followers.
They might even be inclined to take a page out of the Mayan playbook, and “sit out the next two years” while purifying the church’s moral core.
No, I don’t yet see another “great reversal” or “exile” back into the pews. Yet the building “sit-out” threat should be a warning both to the Republicans who have long taken them for granted – and to their own political bishops.
This whole subject has me pondering my Sunday School lessons from long ago on the separationist principles of Roger Williams, the Rhode Island Baptist pioneer and fellow seeker.
The 2008 faith and politics show is just beginning. Keep your “spirit guides” handy.
Kahanist hate-site taken down
Longtime JWN readers might remember this October 2005 post about a hate-spewing website called “Masada 2000“, which incited its readers to many kinds of violence– especially sexual violence– against Jewish people who dared to speak out against the expansionist policies of the government of Israel. They even listed, and incited hate against, Jewish people whose “crime” was to sign petitions against the Apartheid Barrier!
Then, more recently, the M2000 hate-mongers took on Richard Silverstein, a very dedicated Jewish-American peace activist who lives in Washington State and has a number of blogs, including Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place. Richard wrote about it here…
When I had written about M2000, I huffed and puffed that “someone” should try to get M2000 site taken down from the web. Richard did something about it. Today I got this email from him:
- I don’t know whether I can take credit for this but I filed a complaint w. Bsinet.net, Masada2000’s webhost 3 days ago & the site has been down now for 2 days. I’m delighted to report this to you. Of course, I don’t know how crazy the site owners & their allies may get towards me. I guess I should anticipate some kind of reaction at some point. But we’ve got to fight back against this intimidation.
Of course, they’ll be back up again at another host before long. And we’ll be watching, won’t we?
Yes, Richard, we will.
And thank you so much, Richard, for having followed up on contacting the site’s web hosts with your complaint. You have made the WWW a noticeable safer place for all of the 8,000 Jewish people of conscience who were listed on that site. (Who included, as I had written earlier, a number of my other friends.)