textfiles/magazines/EUTHANASIA/yellow-ribbon

With NBC showing five-minute infomercials for Tomahawk
cruise missiles on the nightly news, it might be useful to have a
different point of view on the ongoing "diplomacy" in Iraq.
Thus we present one half of a debate between James Woolsey
and Noam Chomsky debate on how far the U.S. can go in
its foreign policy, from March 12, 1998.  We have omitted
Woolsey's convenient fictions not only for the sake of brevity,
but because they are an insult to our intelligence.
They are perhaps best summarized by the following quote:

"Sometimes someone has to do the job of dealing with the killers...
There's no better characterization of the difficulties of working
through this kind of duty than the agonies, decisions, and actions
of the sheriff played by Gary Cooper in High Noon. Some would say
that this means I'm saying we should act like a nation of cowboys.
Like him, yes. Exactly."

If you have the stomach for more such foolishness, see:

www.pbs.org/newshour/march98/intervention_3-12.html

Questions asked
in this forum:

1. Does the U.S. have a moral obligation to intervene in
international affairs?
2. Is America's willingness to use force against Iraq just a
continuation of previous policies?
3. Do you think the U.S. government, including Congress, is
overstepping its limits?
4. Do you believe that the U.S. public has an adequate
opportunity to form rational opinions about U.S. policy given the
quality of media coverage?
5. What does the recent crisis tell us about the direction US
foreign policy is headed in the post-Cold War world?

Could you comment on whether or not you believe the U.S. has a moral
obligation, because of its capabilities, to intervene in international
affairs?

Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at M.I.T., responds:

We should, I think, bear in mind that moral concepts apply at root to
people.  States do have legal obligations, but they are not moral
agents, though their citizens can influence them to act in morally
responsible and legally admissible ways, or can allow them to act
quite differently.

Individuals are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of what
they do, hence for the course of international affairs to the extent
that they can influence events by action, or inaction. We happen to be
citizens of by far the most powerful state in the world.  Our
action/inaction can therefore have unusual influence; and unlike many
others, we are privileged to be able to act without undue fear of
repression.  Accordingly, our moral responsibilities -- sometimes
obligations -- reach far beyond those of others, in general.

Just what these responsibilities are, and whether they extend to the
very serious matter of intervention, has to be determined case by
case.  There are no formulas; each case has to be examined on its
merits, with careful inquiry into the actual facts (which may not be
easy to determine), the options available, the requirements of
international law, and the likely consequences of action or inaction.

The simplest cases are those that fall under a traditional medical
doctrine: First, do no harm.  These include crucial examples of recent
and current history.  Consider two.

One of the world's worst violators of human rights is Indonesian
dictator General Suharto, who came to power with an army-led massacre
that the CIA described as "one of the worst mass murders in the
twentieth century," ranking it alongside the crimes of Stalin, Hitler,
and Mao.  These crimes were carried out with US support, which has not
wavered as Suharto compiled a shocking record of terror against his
own population and invaded a small oil-rich country (East Timor),
killing some 200,000 people and robbing its resources.  The invasion
was in direct violation of a UN Security Council resolution to
withdraw at once.  These crimes too have been carried out with the
decisive military and diplomatic support of the United States.
Accordingly, it was -- and is -- our moral responsibility as citizens
to terminate these crimes.  That would require no "intervention," only
withdrawal of support, a far simpler matter.

During these years, Saddam Hussein has also carried out major crimes.
The worst by far were committed in the 1980s, including his gassing of
Kurds at Halabja in 1988, chemical warfare against Iran, torture of
dissidents, and numerous others.  His invasion of Kuwait, though a
serious crime, in fact added little to his already horrendous record.
Throughout the period of his worst crimes, Saddam remained a favored
ally and trading partner of the US and Britain, which furthermore
abetted these crimes.  The Reagan Administration even sought to
prevent congressional reaction to the the gassing of the Kurds,
including the (failed) plea of Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Chairman Claiborne Pell that "we cannot be silent to genocide again"
as the world was when Hitler exterminated Europe's Jews.  So extreme
was Reaganite support for their friend that when ABC TV correspondent
Charles Glass revealed the site of one of Saddam's biological warfare
programs a few months after Halabja, Washington denied the facts, and
the story died; the State Department "now issues briefings on the same
site," Glass writes (in England).

There were no passionate calls for a military strike against this
brutal killer and torturer.  Quite the contrary: much of what was
known, including US support, was downplayed or not reported.

After the Gulf War, the Senate Banking Committee found that the
Commerce Department had traced shipment of "biological materials" of a
kind later found and destroyed by UN inspectors, continuing at least
until November 1989.  A month later, during his invasion of Panama,
Bush authorized new loans for Saddam: to achieve the "goal of
increasing U.S. exports and put us in a better position to deal with
Iraq regarding its human rights record...," the State Department
announced, facing no criticism in the mainstream (in fact, no
report).  The Bush Administration continued to support the mass
murderer up to his invasion of Kuwait, which shifted his status from
ally to enemy, much as the Suharto coup and slaughters of 1965 shifted
Indonesia from enemy to friend. In these and many other cases, the
criterion that distinguishes friend from enemy is obedience, not
crime.

Immediately after the Gulf war ended in March 1991, Washington
returned to support for Saddam.  The State Department formally
reiterated its refusal to have any dealings with the Iraqi democratic
opposition: "Political meetings with them would not be appropriate for
our policy at this time," the Department spokesman declared. "This
time" was March 14 1991, while Saddam was decimating the southern
opposition under the eyes of US forces, which refused even to grant
rebelling Iraqi military officers access to captured Iraqi arms, to
defend the population and perhaps overthrow the monster.  Had it not
been for unexpected public reaction, Washington might not have
extended even weak support to rebelling Kurds, subjected to the same
treatment shortly after.

The official reason for protecting Saddam was the need to preserve
"stability." Administration reasoning was outlined by New York Times
chief diplomatic correspondent Thomas Friedman. While opposing a
popular rebellion, he wrote, Washington did hope that a military coup
might remove Saddam, "and then Washington would have the best of all
worlds: an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein," a return
to the days when Saddam's "iron fist...held Iraq together, much to the
satisfaction of the American allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia," not to
speak of Washington.  Iraqi democrats did not regard this as "the best
of all worlds." A leading figure of the opposition, Ahmed Chalabi,
described the outcome as "the worst of all possible worlds" for the
Iraqi people, whose tragedy is "awesome." The US, he said, was
"waiting for Saddam to butcher the insurgents in the hope that he can
be overthrown later by a suitable officer," an attitude rooted in the
US policy of "supporting dictatorships to maintain stability."

Washington claims to have supported the democratic opposition in later
years.  Their own picture is different, however.  Just last month, the
British press reported Chalabi's observation that "everyone says
Saddam is boxed in, but it is the Americans and British who are boxed
in by their refusal to support the idea of political change."

It was our responsibility, indeed obligation, to compel Washington to
end its support for Saddam's worst crimes when they occurred, perhaps
even to intervene to terminate them had that been necessary.  Quite
possibly, as in the case of Suharto, withdrawal of support would have
sufficed.  Currently the Iraqi Democratic opposition is advancing
concrete proposals for overthrowing Saddam in favor of a popular-based
alternative. They are requesting US support but not military
intervention, which they have consistently opposed.  How realistic
these proposals are it is hard to judge, but we have a responsibility,
I think, to ensure that they receive serious and honest attention, and
to ensure further that Washington abandon the "refusal to support the
idea of political change," apparently still in force.

Again, there are no simple general formulas.  Slogans are easy,
sometimes policy choices too, particularly when we are carrying out or
abetting crimes and can desist.  But choices are often hard and
complex, with unpredictable and possibly extreme consequences.  There
is no alternative to the careful evaluation of each case, on its
merits.

===========================================

Considering U.S. interventions during the Cold War, i.e. Cuba, Iran,
Nicaragua, etc.,  is America's willingness to use force against Iraq
just a continuation of previous policies? Or does it illustrate a
fundamental shift in how the U.S. intervenes, from a covert model to
more overt action?

Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at M.I.T., responds:

The US has often resorted to overt action in past years.  To mention
only one example, in 1961-1962 the Kennedy Administration moved from
support for large-scale state terror in South Vietnam, which had
already killed tens of thousands of people, to a direct attack,
including US Air Force bombing, napalm, crop destruction, and numerous
other crimes.  These assaults -- aggression by any reasonable
standards -- laid the basis for further escalation from 1965, by then
extended to the rest of Indochina.  Millions were killed in the ruined
countries.  Unknown numbers more have suffered and died from the
effects of chemical warfare and from unexploded ordnance, and still
do.  Those were not covert actions.

There have been many other cases.  George Bush's invasion of Panama --
condemned by two UN Security Council resolutions that Washington
vetoed -- was overt.  It is also worth recalling that when Saddam
Hussein invaded Kuwait a few months later, the prime concern of the
Bush Administration was that he would emulate what the US had just
done in Panama.  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell posed the
problem sharply: "The next few days Iraq will withdraw," putting "his
puppet in" and "Everyone in the Arab world will be happy."

If so, the outcome would have been much like the recent US invasion of
Panama, though Latin America was far from happy; it was in an uproar,
bitterly opposed to the US actions, particularly the Group of Eight
Latin American democracies, which expelled Panama (already suspended)
because it was under the rule of a puppet regime maintained by foreign
force.

Overt actions are nothing new.  In fact, because of internal changes
in the US, Washington may be less likely to resort to overt action
than in the past.  The Reagan Administration sought to emulate in
Central America what Kennedy had done in South Vietnam, but quickly
retreated in the face of unanticipated popular reaction; it turned to
clandestine and state terror throughout the region, rather than direct
US assault, and was indeed condemned by the World Court for the
"unlawful use of force" and ordered to desist, a judgment dismissed
here with contempt; its crucial wording was not even reported in the
mainstream press, nor was there any concern when the US vetoed a
Security Council resolution calling on all states to observe
international law, mentioning no one, though all understood what was
intended.  A leaked National Security Policy Review in the first
months of the Bush presidency concluded that "In cases where the U.S.
confronts much weaker enemies, our challenge will be not simply to
defeat them, but to defeat them decisively and rapidly"; delay might
"undercut political support," understood to be thin.  That is part of
the reason why US doctrine shifted to "Low Intensity Conflict" or
quick demolition of a "much weaker enemy."

US military doctrine is unusual in that US casualties are not
tolerated and overwhelming force must be available.  That is why the
US has so rarely taken part in difficult peacekeeping operations,
which involve interactions with civilians that require restraint and
carry risks; these are left to Canada, Ireland, Norway, Fiji, and
others.  In Somalia, for example, US forces were sent only after the
worst fighting had declined, and recovery from famine was underway.
The intervention turned into a disaster because US forces resorted to
massive force, following Pentagon doctrine, as soon as problems
arose.  The US command estimated 6-10,000 Somali casualties in the
summer of 1993 alone, two-thirds women and children.  What happened
was later attributed to UN incompetence, but that is an evasion.

The patterns of US intervention depend ultimately on decisions by
American citizens, including the decision to stay quiet or even not to
know.  In principle such actions are under popular control; in fact
too, if we so choose.

============================================

What do you think about the hearings being held in the U.S. Congress
on assassinating Saddam? Do you think the U.S. government, including
Congress, is overstepping its limits?

Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at M.I.T., responds:

Assassination of Saddam is, in my opinion, a minor issue.  Even
attempts to assassinate Castro, criminal no doubt, are marginal in the
context of the terror attacks against Cuba from 1959.

There is, however, no doubt that "the U.S. government, including
Congress, is overstepping its limits" in the matter of Iraq. Those
limits are clear and explicit.  They are embodied in the Charter of
the United Nations, a "solemn treaty" recognized as the foundation of
international law and world order, and also "the supreme law of the
land" under the Constitution.  The Charter declares unambiguously that
the UN Security Council alone "shall determine the existence of any
threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, and
shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be
taken...." The one exception is the right of self-defense against
"armed attack" until the Security Council acts (Article 51).  The
fundamental principle is that member states "shall refrain in their
international relations from the threat or use of force." These are
the "limits" that bind law-abiding states.

Outlaw states reject these conditions: Suharto's Indonesia and
Saddam's Iraq, for example.  Washington too rejects them.  Its
position was forthrightly articulated by Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright when UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan undertook his February
1998 diplomatic mission: "We wish him well," she stated, "and when he
comes back we will see what he has brought and how it fits with our
national interest," which will determine how we respond.  When the
Security Council endorsed Annan's agreement, President Clinton
announced that if Iraq fails the test of conformity (as determined by
Washington), "everyone would understand that then the United States
and hopefully all of our allies would have the unilateral right to
respond at a time, place and manner of our own choosing." UN
Ambassador Bill Richardson added that the US retains the right of
"unilateral use of force." Other officials too stated clearly and
unambiguously that the US will resort to the threat or use of force as
it chooses, whatever the UN Security Council decides; and in this
case, in the face of opposition in the region so extreme that only
Kuwait was willing to give even tepid support for the planned military
strikes, while other client states condemned US threats as "bad and
loathsome" and reacted by moves to improve relations with Iran (United
Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia).

The reaction here to Washington's stand was instructive.  At one
extreme, doves praised the Administration for its violation of
international and domestic law; at the other, hawks denounced it for
weak gestures towards our explicit legal obligations. Congressional
leaders warned that the US was "subcontracting" its foreign policy to
the UN Security Council and "subordinating its power to the United
Nations," obligations for all law-abiding states.  No less remarkable
was the fact that the fundamental issues of adherence to "the supreme
law of the land" were off the agenda for the media and commentators.
In the US, that is; elsewhere they were discussed.  Accordingly,
though many words flowed, we can hardly say that in this country there
was a meaningful "debate" over the current Iraq crisis.

Returning to the matter of assassination, we should not forget that
far more serious crimes are being committed daily against the Iraqi
people.  The harsh sanctions policy pursued under US pressure
"enhances the leadership" and "diminishes the people," a UN
administrator observed, reflecting the common view of diplomats and
aid officials in Iraq, and many analysts elsewhere. The sanctions are
a major factor in the rapid increase in disease, malnutrition, and
early death, including 567,000 children by 1995.  UNICEF reports 4500
children dying a month in 1996.  In a bitter condemnation of the
sanctions in January 1998, 54 Catholic Bishops quoted the Archbishop
of the southern region of Iraq, who reports that "epidemics rage,
taking away infants and the sick by the thousands" while "those
children who survive disease succumb to malnutrition." The UN Food and
Agriculture Administration warns further that the epidemics may lead
to "biological disaster" in the region, noting the spread of screw
worm infection, raging in Iraq and now detected in Kuwait. Senior UN
and other international relief officials in Iraq warned that the
planned bombing could have a "catastrophic" effect on people already
suffering miserably.  The head of CARE (Australia) warned that a
military strike "will produce a massive humanitarian disaster." There
is no evidence, to my knowledge, that such factors were a factor in US
planning.

By comparison, assassination of Saddam would be at worst a very minor
crime.

=====================================

Do you believe that the U.S. public has an adequate opportunity to
form rational opinions about U.S. policy given the quality of media
coverage?

Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at M.I.T., responds:

No, I do not.  As noted, the central and most important issue was
simply excluded: namely, the question of Washington's authority to
violate international law and its own laws by the unilateral threat
and use of force.

There were many distortions, though none as striking as this omission,
in my view.  One example was strikingly illustrated at the televised
"Town meeting" on February 18.  Defending US plans to attack Iraq,
Secretaries Albright and Cohen repeatedly invoked Saddam's ultimate
atrocity: he was guilty of "using weapons of mass destruction against
his neighbors as well as his own people," his most awesome crime. "It
is very important for us to make clear that the United States and the
civilized world cannot deal with somebody who is willing to use those
weapons of mass destruction on his own people, not to speak of his
neighbors," Albright emphasized in an angry response to a questioner
who asked about US support for Suharto.  Putting aside the evasion of
the question raised, Albright and Cohen only forgot to mention that
Washington supported and continued to abet the crimes that are now
belatedly condemned.  Reporters and commentators refrained from
mentioning these not insignificant facts, let alone stressing that it
was not Saddam's crimes that turned him into the new Hitler; rather
his disobedience.

There are many other examples.  Thus, the New York Times reported that
"Israel is not demonstrably in violation of Security Council decrees."
That is clearly false.  Israel has violated dozens of Security Council
resolutions, and there would be many more examples if the US did not
routinely veto them.  Of particular relevance here is Resolution 425
of March 1978, which orders Israel to withdraw forthwith and
unconditionally from Lebanon. It remains in Lebanon with US support.
Its most recent proposals continue to violate the Security Council
Resolution.

Indonesia's extraordinary crimes and the strong US support for them
have also been largely suppressed or distorted, and still are, often
in scandalous ways.

It is easy to go on with a long list.  To return to question (1),
while the US public has a moral responsibility to monitor its
government's actions, quite often only those who undertake or have
access to independent research are in a position to act in a sensible
and informed manner, a serious departure from functioning democracy.

=========================================

What does the recent crisis, namely the US' insistence that it
reserves the "right" to use force against Iraq, tell us about the
direction US foreign policy is headed in the post-Cold War world?
Doesn't this set a dangerous precedent, if not for US policy, but for
the future of the international system?

Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at M.I.T., responds:

My only reservations have to do with the phrases "post-Cold War world"
and "precedent." The US has always insisted on its right to use force,
whatever international law requires, and whatever international
institutions decide: the United Nations, the World Court, the
Organization of American States, or others.  While the World Court was
reaching its (expected) judgment in April 1986, Secretary of State
George Shultz declared that "Negotiations are a euphemism for
capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining
table," condemning those who advocate "utopian, legalistic means like
outside mediation, the United Nations, and the World Court, while
ignoring the power element of the equation." Saddam would surely
agree, along with many others in modern history.

Such rejection of the rule of law has often been dramatically
explicit.  Thus, immediately after the 1954 Geneva Accords on a
peaceful settlement for Indochina, which Washington refused to accept,
the National Security Council secretly decreed that even in the case
of "local Communist subversion or rebellion NOT CONSTITUTING ARMED
ATTACK" (my emphasis) the US would consider the use of military force,
including an attack on China if it is "determined to be the source" of
the "subversion"; the NSC also called for converting Thailand into
"the focal point of U.S. covert and psychological operations in
Southeast Asia," undertaking "covert operations on a large and
effective scale" throughout Indochina, and in general, acting
forcefully to undermine the Accords and the UN Charter.  The wording,
repeated verbatim annually in planning documents, was chosen so as to
make explicit the US right to violate Article 51 of the Charter, which
permits the use of force only in immediate self-defense against "armed
attack."

The US proceeded to define "aggression" to include "political warfare,
or subversion," what UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson called "internal
aggression" while defending JFK's escalation in South Vietnam.  US
attacks were therefore transmuted into "self-defense" against
"internal aggression." When the US bombed Libyan cities in 1986, the
official justification was "self defense against future attack," a
ludicrous distortion of the Charter applauded by legal specialists in
the national press. The US invasion of Panama was defended in the
Security Council by appeal to Article 51, which, US Ambassador
Pickering declared, "provides for the use of armed force to defend a
country, to defend our interests and our people," and permits the U.S.
to invade Panama to prevent its "territory from being used as a base
for smuggling drugs into the United States" -- an astonishing concept
of "armed attack," which passed without criticism.  In June 1993, when
Clinton launched a missile attack on Baghdad, killing civilians, UN
Ambassador Albright appealed to Article 51, explaining that the
bombing was in "self-defense against armed attack" -- namely, an
alleged attempt to assassinate former president Bush two months
earlier.  The claim would have been remarkable even if the US had had
credible evidence of Iraqi involvement, which, officials conceded,
they did not.

These and innumerable other examples illustrate far-reaching contempt
for the rule of law.  The US has always relied on the rule of force in
international affairs.  International law, treaties, the World Court,
War Crimes Tribunals, moral judgment, etc., are regularly invoked
against enemies, often quite accurately.  But the precedent to which
Mr. Whitman refers has long been established.

The US, of course, is not alone in these practices.  Other states
commonly act in much the same way, if not constrained by external or
internal forces.  Hence the enormous moral responsibility of citizens,
particularly in more powerful and free societies.  We may decide to
disregard the historical and documentary record, but it seems to me
hardly wise or honorable to succumb to illusions about it.

END

----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Church of Euthanasia                churchofeuthanasia.org
P.O.Box 261                         ftp.etext.org /pub/Zines/Snuffit
Somerville, MA 02143                        coe@netcom.com