August 20, 2003

Sergio Vieira De Mello: Victim of Terror, Or U.S. Foreign Policy?

But for George W. Bush’s illegal and misguided war on Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, would be alive today. Mr. de Mello devoted most of his life to the U.N.’s mission to protect human rights and achieve international peace and security. He served in some of the toughest trouble spots in the world, including Lebanon, East Timor, Yugoslavia, Peru, Bangladesh, Cyprus, Sudan, Cambodia and Mozambique.

Sergio Vieira de Mello went to Iraq at the request of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan for a four-month humanitarian commitment. One month short of his return to Geneva, Mr. de Mello was buried alive in rubble from a suicide truck bomber who targeted the United Nations in Baghdad.

Ignoring the pleas of millions of people around the world and most of the United Nations members, Bush had persisted in his march to war. Contrary to Bush’s assertions, Saddam Hussein never posed an imminent threat to the United States. Until Bush unleashed “almost biblical” firepower on Iraq, al Qaeda was not operating there. Yet since the U.S./U.K. became the occupying power, Iraq has become fertile ground for outside jihadis.

Many Saudi Arabian Islamists have crossed the border into Iraq to prepare for a holy war against the U.S./U.K. forces, according to The Financial Times. The Arab satellite television channel al-Arabiya broadcast a statement purportedly from al Qaeda, which urged Muslims around the world to travel to Iraq to fight the U.S. occupation, and claimed that recent attacks on U.S. forces had been carried out by jihadis.

The blast that killed Mr. de Mello and 19 others, and wounded more than 100 in the U.N. compound in Baghdad Tuesday, was likely the handiwork of the same forces that bombed the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad 12 days before, killing 11 people. Osama bin Laden has long decried the United States’ role in the first Gulf War, the punishing sanctions against the people of Iraq, and the United Nations for “supporting the oppressive, tyrannical and arrogant America [in Afghanistan] against those oppressed who have emerged from a ferocious war at the hands of the Soviet Union.”

In the twisted minds of the terrorists who likely executed the worst attack on a U.N. civilian operation in its 58-year history, the United States and the United Nations are linked. Yet Bush’s new doctrine of “preemptive war” is a clear violation of the U.N. Charter. And in spite of intense pressure by Bush, including threats and bribes, the members of the Security Council refused to hand him a resolution sanctioning his war on Iraq. Bush accused the United Nations of becoming “irrelevant.”

When he was sent to Baghdad, it was Sergio de Mello’s dream “to assist the Iraqi people and those responsible for the administration of this land to achieve … freedom, the possibility of managing their own destiny and determining their own future.” He empathized with the Iraqi people who resented the foreign occupiers. “It is traumatic,” he said. “It must be one of the most humiliating periods in their history. Who would like to see their country occupied?” He wanted “to make sure that the interests of the Iraqi people come first” as they rebuild their country.

Sergio de Mello’s death is an unspeakable tragedy for the cause of world peace. “I can think of no one we could less afford to spare,” observed Kofi Annan. And Salim Lone, Mr. de Mello’s spokesman in Baghdad, said, “He was a wonderful guy. He was the U.N. in a way.” Mr. Lone added, “I grieve most of all for the people of Iraq because he was really the man who could have helped bring about an end to the occupation. An end to the trauma the people of Iraq have suffered for so long.”

We must emerge from this tragedy by redoubling our support for the United Nations. As Iraqis, Americans, and many from other countries continue to die in Iraq, Bush must relinquish control of Iraq to the United Nations. It is the arrogance of occupation that creates roiling hatred against the occupier. Mr. de Mello was confident that Iraqis distinguished between the U.N. and the foreign occupiers. The end of the occupation would empower the people of Iraq to take control of their own destiny. Then Sergio Vieira de Mello will not have died in vain.

July 30, 2003

Why Iraq and Afghanistan? Cheney Tells All: It’s About the Oil

Now that the rationale provided by Bush & Co. for attacking Iraq is unraveling, it’s time to ask what the true motivation was for the rush to war. Many dismissed the signs of antiwar protestors, which read “No blood for oil.” But if we connect the oily fingerprints, beginning with Vice President Dick Cheney’s, it appears those protestors were right.

Cheney’s energy task force, in a May 2001 report, called on the White House to make “energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy” and encourage Persian Gulf countries to welcome foreign investment in their energy sectors. In August 2002, Cheney warned a meeting of veterans that Saddam Hussein could seek to dominate the Middle East’s vast energy supplies, and said “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”

Before the invasion of Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sought to decouple oil access from regime change in Iraq, which, he said, had “nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil.” Rumsfeld, Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice all invoked Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and his ties to Al Qaeda, neither of which has materialized to date, as imminent threats to the security of the United States. Three days before the attack on Iraq, Cheney said, “we believe he [Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” That claim, and Bush’s Niger uranium statement in his State of the Union address, were bogus.

When U.S.-U.K. forces took control of Iraq, their first order of business was to secure the oil fields, instead of the hospitals and antiquities museums. Meanwhile, Kellogg Brown & Root was awarded a controversial $7 billion no-bid contract to rebuild Iraq’s oil fields. KBR is a subsidiary of Halliburton, the world’s largest oil services company, formerly headed by Cheney before he was tapped for vice president. In a 1998 speech to the “Collateral Damage Conference” of the Cato Institute, Cheney said, “the good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is.”

The business is in Iraq. Since April 2001, the public interest group Judicial Watch has sought public access to the proceedings of Cheney’s energy task force meetings, under the Freedom of Information Act. Yet Cheney has fought tenaciously to keep them secret. On July 17, however, Judicial Watch secured some of the documents from the task force, which contain the smoking gun: “a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects” and “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” The documents are dated March 2001, two years before Bush invaded Iraq.

The Bush administration’s October 2001 bombing of Afghanistan, although justified as a response to the September 11 attacks, was also part of U.S. oil strategy. Afghanistan never attacked the U.S. Yet, the U.S. and U.K. ousted the Taliban and secured Afghanistan for the construction of an oil pipeline from Turkmenistan, south through Afghanistan, to the Arabian Sea. Bush had been uncritical of the Taliban’s human rights record when Unocal oil company was negotiating for the pipeline rights before September 11. After assuming control of Afghanistan, Bush conveniently installed Hamid Karzai, a former Unocal official, as interim president of Afghanistan. “Operation Enduring Freedom” will allow oil corporations freedom to exploit Afghanistan for profit, while the Afghans continue to live in squalor.

Likewise, “Operation Iraqi Freedom” has enabled U.S. corporations to exploit Iraq’s oil, while thousands of Iraqis continue to die, lose their jobs, and live without electricity. American soldiers are still dying while U.S. taxpayers foot the $3.9 billion monthly bill. Oil has proven to be the most terrible weapon of mass destruction.

July 29, 2003

Assassination and Display in Iraq: The Killings of Uday and Qusai Hussein in International Law

Last week the US military assassinated Uday and Qusai Hussein in a villa in Mosul, Iraq. Hundreds of troops armed with automatic weapons, rockets, rocket-propelled grenades, and tow missiles, and dozens of vehicles and aircraft, attacked four people armed with AK-47 automatic rifles. Mustapha, the 14-year old son of Qusai, was also killed in the operation, along with another individual who was apparently a bodyguard.

The subsequent firestorm of media coverage momentarily diverted public attention from the Bush administation’s failing Iraq war – its vain attempts to find any weapons of mass destruction or link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, the White House’s admission that the President used false information in his State of the Union address, and the continuing deaths of American soldiers in an occupation with no end in sight.

The assassinations prompted chest-thumping and back-slapping all around. Even Senator Ted Kennedy joined British Prime Minister Tony Blair, The New York Times and the Washington Post, in congratulating Bush on the good news. Then, after reportedly reflecting on the pros and cons, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave the go-ahead to display the grisly photographs of the Hussein brothers’ reconstructed bullet-riddled faces. The Pentagon didn’t want to appear to be “gloating,” but Rumsfeld thought the photos would convince skeptical Iraqis that Uday and Qusai were indeed dead, which would reduce the attacks on U.S. troops and encourage informants to come forward without fear of retaliation by the old regime.

Both the targeted assassinations and the photographic display violated well-established principles of international law. Targeted, or political, assassinations are extrajudicial executions. They are unlawful and deliberate killings carried out by order of, or with the acquiescence of, a government, outside any judicial framework. Extrajudicial executions are unlawful, even in armed conflict. In a 1998 report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions noted that “extrajudicial executions can never be justified under any circumstances, not even in time of war.”

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty ratified by the United States, prohibits the arbitrary denial of the right to life, a right so fundamental, there can be no derogation from it even in “time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation.” The U.N. General Assembly and Human Rights Commission, as well as Amnesty International, have all condemned extrajudicial executions.

After the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence disclosed in 1975 that the CIA had been involved in several murders or attempted murders of foreign leaders, President Gerald Ford issued an executive order banning assassinations. Although every succeeding president has renewed that order, the Clinton administration targeted Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, but narrowly missed him.

In July 2001, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel denounced Israel’s policy of targeted killings, or “preemptive operations.” He said “the United States government is very clearly on the record as against targeted assassinations. They are extrajudicial killings, and we do not support that.”

Yet after September 11, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer invited the killing of Saddam Hussein: “The cost of one bullet, if the Iraqi people take it on themselves, is substantially less” than the cost of war. Shortly thereafter, George W. Bush issued a secret directive, which authorized the CIA to target suspected terrorists for assassination when it would be impractical to capture them and when large-scale civilian casualties could be avoided. In November 2002, Bush reportedly authorized the CIA to assassinate a suspected Al Qaeda leader in Yemen. He and five traveling companions were killed in the hit, which Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz described as a “very successful tactical operation.”

Nearly sixty years ago, the U.S. government opposed the extrajudicial executions of Nazi officials who had committed genocide against millions of people. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who served as chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, told President Harry Truman: “We could execute or otherwise punish [the Nazi leaders] without a hearing. But undiscriminating executions or punishments without definite findings of guilt, fairly arrived at, would … not set easily on the American conscience or be remembered by children with pride.”

Americans should not feel pride in the public display of the gruesome photos of the assassinated Hussein brothers. The First Geneva Convention requires combatants to ensure that the dead are not despoiled. Reconstruction of their faces violates this treaty, which also provides that the dead be honorably interred; Islamic law requires immediate burial. When Iraqis displayed images of captured U.S. troops, Bush demanded that the POWs be treated humanely, and he warned that anyone who mistreated them would be tried for war crimes. But Bush didn’t complain when American media outlets featured Iraqi prisoners down on their knees, blindfolded and handcuffed. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Uday and Qusai Hussein should have been arrested and tried in Iraqi courts or an international tribunal for their alleged crimes. George W. Bush cannot serve as judge, jury and executioner. This assassination creates a dangerous precedent, which could be used to justify the targeted killings of U.S. leaders. The display of the photographs may backfire and turn the brothers into martyrs who stood against the foreign invaders. It could also result in even more violence against U.S. troops.

July 17, 2003

Bush, Lies, and Impeachment: The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Revelations that the Bush administration sold us a bill of goods about Iraq’s weapons program are growing faster than the imaginary mushroom cloud George W. Bush used to whip up support for his invasion of Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction provided the excuse to distract Americans from the real reasons Bush and his men were itching to get into Iraq.

Two days before he invaded Iraq, Bush declared there was “no doubt” the Iraqi regime possessed and concealed “some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” That claim has proved specious. If he had those horrible weapons, Hussein surely would have used them in self-defense, which he did not. Systematic searches by hundreds of weapons inspectors have failed to turn up any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Indeed, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in Vanity Fair, described the weapons of mass destruction rationale as a “bureaucratic” excuse for war, upon which everyone could agree.

Before the war began, Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee asked the C.I.A. to make intelligence available to Congress; but only findings supportive of the Bush administration’s position on Iraq were declassified, according to Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.). The Defense Intelligence Agency’s classified assessment of Iraq’s chemical weapons program concluded “there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or whether Iraq has–or will–establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.” Nevertheless, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld unequivocally told the House Armed Services Committee shortly thereafter, “We do know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons.”

Another reason we were given for going to war with Iraq was that Hussein would share weapons with Al Qaeda. The Iraq-Al Qaeda link has also been thoroughly discredited. A United Nations panel found no such connection. The F.B.I. determined that Mohammed Atta, the lead September 11 hijacker, was in the United States when he was reputed to have met with an Iraqi official in Prague. And the senior Al Qaeda leader whom Secretary of State Colin Powell accused of operating out of Baghdad turned out to be in Kurdish, not Hussein-controlled, territory.

Now the lies are being revealed and Bush is busy shifting the blame and trying to change the subject. When confronted with the false uranium report in his State of the Union address, Bush blamed the C.I.A. and repeated his mantra that the world is a safer place without Saddam.

The problem is, Saddam posed no imminent threat to the United States prior to the war. He was weakened by Gulf War I, years of punishing sanctions, nearly daily bombings in the no-fly zones, and intrusive inspections. American soldiers are still dying in what Senator Ted Kennedy characterized as a “shooting gallery,” with no end in sight. General Tommy Franks predicted that our troops would be in Iraq for years, to the tune of $3.9 billion a month of taxpayers’ money.

So why did we go into Iraq?

Was it the oil and the desire to clinch U.S. control of the Middle East?

Did Bush think he would be vindicated by weapons found after he took control of Iraq?

His new doctrine of “preemptive war” is really a faith-based foreign policy. Bush’s breach of our trust will make it impossible to believe the boy-who-cried-wolf when he claims another country is threatening our national security.

Americans are demanding answers to many questions about why our soldiers were, and continue to be, placed in harm’s way. Why are the Republicans resisting a full and public investigation into “intelligence” about Iraq? Why did C.I.A. Director George Tenet take the fall for Bush’s misstatement about the African uranium? If Tenet is responsible for such a colossal failure, why does Bush express “absolute” confidence in him? Why wasn’t Tenet fired forthwith?

What else has Bush lied about?

An independent commission headed by a special prosecutor should be convened immediately to get to the bottom of this. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about sex. If it is determined that Bush misled American soldiers into war, the House of Representatives should initiate impeachment proceedings against him. There is no higher crime or misdemeanor.

July 10, 2003

Affirmative Action Counteracts Centuries of Racism

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent momentous affirmative action decisions, the talking heads have railed against “reverse discrimination,” a term that entered our vernacular 25 years ago with the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke opinion.

But focusing on equal rights for whites misses the point. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her separate opinions in the Michigan cases, hits the nail on the head. In her dissent in Gratz v. Bolinger, where the court struck down the University of Michigan’s undergraduate admissions program, she decries the majority’s view that judicial inspection of all official race classifications should be judged by the same standard of review. This would be appropriate, she writes, if our country were “free of the vestiges of rank discrimination long reinforced by law.”

Ginsburg documents the large disparities between whites and minorities in earning power, unemployment rates, poverty levels and access to health care and quality education. She also discusses institutional racism. Ginsburg then says that the issue presented in Bakke — where a white man claimed discrimination because blacks were admitted before him — is categorically distinct from the issue presented in Brown v. Board of Education — where the Supreme Court said that black kids have the right to go to the very same schools as white kids.

Ginsburg reinforces this distinction with reference to international treaties, saying “Contemporary human rights documents draw just this line; they distinguish between policies of oppression and measures designed to accelerate de facto equality,” citing the United Nations-initiated Conventions on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee, which administers the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, has determined that affirmative action may involve preferential treatment, and as long as it is needed to correct discrimination in fact, “it is a case of legitimate differentiation.”

Illegitimate differentiations have been maintained for years. The children of alumni — who are primarily white — have always been granted preference in admission at the elite universities (e.g., George W. Bush). This system has served to discriminate against the children of non-alumni, or non-whites.

Justice Clarence Thomas, dissenting in the law school decision, Grutter v. Bolinger, where the court held that race can be used as a factor to achieve diversity in higher education, says “blacks can achieve in every avenue of American life without the meddling of university administrators.” He focuses on the stigma attached to blacks who take positions in “the highest places of government, industry or academia,” saying “it is an open question today whether their skin color played a part in their advancement.”

Thomas apparently wonders whether he himself benefited from affirmative action when he was admitted to Yale Law School and appointed to the Supreme Court. In any event, he disingenuously seeks to slam the door behind him, and deprive future generations of black students the opportunities that were available to him.

Thomas misses the point. As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor writes for the majority in Grutter, “By virtue of our Nation’s struggle with racial inequality, such [minority] students are both likely to have experiences of particular importance to the Law School’s mission, and less likely to be admitted in meaningful numbers on criteria that ignore those experiences.”

In my own criminal procedure classes, the perspectives of African-American students about racial profiling which enrich the classroom discussion could not be duplicated by their white counterparts. Indeed, according to O’Connor, “Effective participation by members of all racial and ethnic groups in the civil life of our Nation is essential if the dream of one Nation, indivisible, is to be realized.”