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Iraq: Use of force is
unavoidable
By Marc Erikson
In two days of sometimes hectic and contentious
negotiations, a bipartisan group of US congressional
leaders and White House aides on Monday and Tuesday
hammered out a resolution (click here for full text)
authorizing US President George W Bush to use military
force against Iraq should diplomacy fail. There may be
some modifications as debate in the US Senate and House
of Representatives continues. But it is certain that at
the end of the day the Congress (early next week) will
pass a resolution with large majorities in both houses
giving Bush a free hand to launch military action
against the regime of Saddam Hussein - unilaterally if
needs be.
Surrounded by key congressional
supporters of the draft resolution, including Democratic
House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, Bush said in the
White House Rose Garden on Wednesday, "Saddam must
disarm. Period. If, however, he chooses to do otherwise,
if he persists in his defiance, the use of force may
become unavoidable."
With that, US Secretary of
State Colin Powell finds his hand greatly strengthened
in UN Security Council negotiations on the need for and
wording of a new resolution on Iraqi disarmament. To get
such a resolution and get it passed, the US must secure
nine out of 16 Security Council votes and avoid the veto
of permanent council members and skeptics China, France
and Russia. That may or may not be doable, but now looks
a great deal more likely. In any case, hopes by UN
opponents of military action against Iraq that the US
Congress might trip up Bush and save them from making a
decision have now vanished.
Contrary to apparent
majority opinion in Europe and Asia, Bush has a strong
case for taking Saddam out by force, and for doing it
now. Iraq has attacked two of its neighbors without
provocation. To find examples for the brutality of
Saddam's domestic rule in contravention of any and all
UN human rights standards one must look back all the way
to Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union or Mao's
China. After a broad UN-authorized coalition chased
Saddam's troops out of Kuwait in early 1991 in what the
grandiloquent Iraqi dictator had termed the "Mother of
all Battles", Iraq signed surrender terms laid out in UN
Security Council Resolution 687 (April 3, 1991) which
unambiguously stated that,
(Section 8) "Iraq
shall unconditionally accept the destruction, removal,
or rendering harmless, under international supervision,
of: (a) All chemical and biological weapons and all
stocks of agents and all related subsystems and
components and all research, development, support and
manufacturing facilities; (b) All ballistic missiles
with a range greater than 150 kilometres and related
major parts, and repair and production facilities;" and
(Section 12) "Iraq shall unconditionally agree
not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons or
nuclear-weapons-usable material or any subsystems or
components or any research, development, support or
manufacturing facilities related to the above; ... [and]
accept ... urgent on-site inspection and the
destruction, removal or rendering harmless as
appropriate of all items specified above; ..."
To all but Iraqi government spokesmen it is as
unambiguously clear that Iraq is in flagrant material
breach of the 1991 surrender terms. The only serious
questions are 1) why the UN did not act decisively at
any time over the past 11 years to rectify obvious Iraqi
breaches; and 2) why the US did not prior to the past
several months adopt a pro-active attitude to prod the
UN to do so.
The 1991 surrender
terms as explicated in Resolution 687 could be construed
as a contract under international law. In
commercial law, there exist the concepts of "estoppel by
laches" and "estoppel by conduct" - the notions that undue
delay to take legal action to enforce a right
and, respectively, inducement by course of conduct and dealings
of the belief that certain contractual clauses cease
to be valid "estops" or bars future action. But the 1991
"contract" between Saddam and the UN was hardly
commercial in nature. Nor, of course, did the contract
contain a statute of limitations, a specific date beyond
which the UN could not pursue its aims. Further, the US
and UK have continued to enforce no-fly zones (and been
illegally shot at), so that no Iraqi claim of de facto
lapse of enforcement of UN resolutions could hold water.
But legalisms aside, why now and why, critics
say, with undue haste and lethal force? And where,
critics ask, is the "smoking gun"? The latter question,
a take-off on 1974 US Senate Watergate hearings into
President Nixon's misconduct, is an uncautious one and
has too easy a devastating answer: A smoking gun is one
that has been fired, and we can't wait for that to
happen. The Bush administration argues that September 11
proved that there exist terrorist organizations and
states supporting them and their aims and that this
unique and uniquely horrifying event imparts the urgency
to its pursuits and the need to go to war if unfettered
inspection and destruction of Iraqi
weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities is not complied
with by Saddam. Bush's insistence on a new UN resolution
giving greater powers and enforcement capabilities to UN
weapons inspectors follows the same logic and, of
course, references numerous 1991-98 efforts of Iraqi
obstruction.
Former US vice president Al Gore,
who criticizes Bush's course, has said that "Iraq does,
indeed, pose a serious threat." Senator Edward Kennedy,
another nay-sayer, says that Saddam Hussein "must be
disarmed". They both said, too, that "we may reach the
point where our only choice is conflict" (Kennedy), and
that UN authorization is not absolutely necessary since
"there's no international law that can prevent the
United States from taking action to protect our vital
interests" (Gore). Thus, in principle, neither of these
two leading Democrats disagree with Bush. The only
alternative to Bush's policy they propose is a "go slow"
approach and a return to the Clinton days of looking the
other way when facing clear and present danger proves
somehow politically inconvenient.
This will not
happen. "Delay, indecision and inaction could lead to a
massive and sudden horror," said Bush in his Rose Garden
address. The great majority of the US Congress agrees
with him. Bush has also challenged the UN to either act
decisively or find itself consigned to the role of the
ignominious League of Nations in the period between the
two world wars. At this juncture, there are only two
possible outcomes: Either the UN Security Council
significantly tightens the weapons inspection (and
destruction) regime and Saddam fully and unconditionally
complies with that regime, or the US (and UK) will go it
alone and remove Saddam from power.
(©2002 Asia
Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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