America will have to reassess its conduct, by Nassim Zehra aljazeerah.info

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America will have to reassess its conduct
By Nassim Zehra, Gulf News Islamabad | | 26-03-2003

In the annals of international relations U.S. President George W. Bush's war on Iraq has been recorded as an illegal war, fought for the wrong reasons against an innocent people.

It violates the United Nations charter. It was planned within two days of 9/11, by U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Wolfowitz, as the 'insider' Washington journalist Bob Woodward writes on page 49 of his recent book Bush At War.

Woodward writes: "Before the attacks, the Pentagon had been working for months on developing a military option for Iraq. Rumsfeld was raising the possibility that they could take advantage of the opportunity offered by the terrorist attacks to go after Saddam immediately." Bush's war will leave innocent Iraqis and obedient soldiers of the invading army dead or maimed.

Even a short, swift and 'successful' war will not change this reality. Neither will Saddam Hussain's rapid removal. The world disagreed with the Bush administration's methodology to tackle the Saddam problem. As far as reducing the threat to regional peace from a one-time invader and a proven tyrant is concerned, the global community realised it was necessary. UN Security Council resolution 1441 calling for militarily 'de-fanging' reflected this near global consensus.

Contentious issue

However, the role of force in achieving this objective became the contentious and divisive issue. A bitter divide replaced the earlier consensus. Cries of "double-standards" reverberated through the corridors of power even within Europe.

In stark contrast to the "force only" approach towards Iraq, Washington's indulgent mentoring of the tyrannical Israeli state too has earned it global criticism.

This was starkly illustrated in his resignation speech by the dissenter within Britain's ruling Labour party, Robin Cook, who comprehensively articulated his criticism.

Cook argued: "I have heard it said that Iraq has had not months but 12 years in which to complete disarmament, and that our patie-nce is exhausted. Yet it is more than 30 years since resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. We do not express the same impatience with the persistent refusal of Israel to comply.

"I welcome the strong personal commitment that the prime minister has given to the Middle East peace, but Britain's positive role in the Middle East does not redress the strong sense of injustice throughout the Muslim world at what it sees as one rule for the allies of the U.S. and another rule for the rest."

Key figures

In early September, key figures even within the U.S. administration involved with the Middle East crisis publicly argued against a war on Iraq. Bush's special envoy to the Middle East, former CENTCOM chief General Anthony Zinni, criticised those who believed war with Iraq might help the Middle East peace process. "I don't know what planet they're on," he had said during a public talk in Washington.

More recently addressing a meeting convened by the Diakonia Council of Churches, Swa-nee Hunt, the former U.S. ambassador to Vienna under the Clinton administration, said: "This is a time for great American leadership. War will do long-term serious damage to our international relations. I don't like what he (Bush) is doing to the soul of our country."

As is in the nature of habitually unchallenged power, Washing-ton remained untouched by criticism from powerful nations, diverse cultures, different religions and influential sections of societies have been unable to stop the war. Nothing could stop the illegal American war on Iraq. As Washington charges ahead we are left praying that Bush's war on Iraq ends with minimal casualties.

That there will be no deployment of chemical or biological weapons; that sandstorms will blunt the lethal American war machine; that too many Iraqi children will not go running towards the deceptively colourful yet lethal bombs being dropped on their territory by U.S. fighter pilots. Confident, Washington's men argue the technologically advanced nature of its killing machines will prevent civilian deaths.

The American war machine also believe that in confronting the invaders' deadly killing machines, the dictator Saddam Hussain's terror will force the Iraqi fighting forces to surrender.

Whichever way this war goes, the pre-war circumstances have shaken the post-Cold War hegemony of the United States, Europe's blind following on Middle East issues has ended, the limits of power exercised without reference to credibility and legitimacy have been exposed.

In recent decades the "religionisation" of analysis related to conflicts involving Muslims has been an easy way to refute the legitimacy of a political resistance to state oppression, occupation and opposition in case of Palestine. Militarisation of Muslim resistance to serve a U.S.-led Western strategic goal was, however, "legitimised" during the Afghan resistance against the "evil Soviet empire".

Washington's stark refusal to engage in inter-state relations by any rules has been comprehensively resisted for the first time since WWII. Pakistan, in the Nineties, experienced this refusal to play by the rules when after receiving millions of dollars under a legal agreement for the delivery of F-16 fighter jets Washington simply refused. It was no less than highway robbery.

Finally as relations warmed up, soya bean products instead of F-16s were delivered!
Washington's war on Iraq will have put into practice for the second time its National Security doctrine of pre-emptive strike. The term "doctrine" gives respectability to Washington's decision to undermine what until Washington's October attack on Afghanistan was known to be the "highest morality" in international politics - the "statist morality".

Governments and analysts had since decades argued that state as the guardian of a collective existence has to be preserved. This was enshrined in the UN charter calling for territorial integrity and sovereignty of nations states. Indeed, major violators of internationally accepted human rights had to be challenged.

When Slobadan Milosevic did not concede to demands of conscience he had to be bombed. But when Saddam Hussain begins to concede to international dem-ands he must be given time. Especially by the state that has "parented" the Israeli state involved in terrorism against the primarily unarmed resisting Palestinians.

Washington had believed it could be on a roll‚ engineering regime changes and political deaths of those it identifies as "evil". In the run-up to the war, the international community has seen some positives also emerge.

Come into its own

For once the UN has come into its own. Even though the U.S. has gone ahead with the war it was unable to legitimise the illegal war by throwing its weight around at the United Nations.

Key members of the international community are beginning to understand that reconciliation, upholding the rule of law even if with the threat of force are the wiser approaches to conflict resolution as opposed to use of force.

Washington believed that kun fa ya kun - a Quranic saying that means 'be, and it is' - was now its destiny. But Washington was pushed on the defensive. With its war machine pounding away at Iraq and its people, Bush and his men must realise that unilateralism and unipolarity are unsustainable in a world in which centres of power are proliferating, not shrinking.

In addition to state actors there are numerous and powerful non-state actors that will challenge the powerful. The banality of self-righteous yet accountable power is no answer. Lethal military machines even less so.

Washington will have to reassess its conduct in world affairs after the Iraq war is over. A weak and divided leadership of the Muslim world have so far not challenged Washington but Europeans with a sense of history and realpolitik have.

This perspective is by Nasim Zehra, an analyst on Pakistani affairs based in Islamabad. The writer can be contacted at nzehra@gulfnews.com

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