Editorial

Where is the Justification for War?

The Bush administration has been claiming for almost a year that war with Iraq is not only justified, but essential. The rationale given for this position has been altered depending on the audience and the prevailing mood. At first the administration talked openly of "regime change", that is the need to install a regime in Iraq which would do the bidding of the United States. However, invading a sovereign country for the purpose of changing its government is clearly a violation of international law. So "regime change" was dropped from the American rhetoric and a succession of other equally illegal justifications was given. Eventually the Bush propaganda machine settled on the unproven claim that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction. If that were a valid justification for war, then the UN Security Council would have to begin with authorization to attack the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council), as well as Israel, India and Pakistan, since those are the countries with the largest arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. They also happen to be the countries most responsible for the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Until 1991, Iraq also possessed a large arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, most of them supplied by the United States, Germany, Britain and Saudi Arabia for use against the people of Iran. Following Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War, UN weapons inspectors found and destroyed the vast majority of those weapons. In addition, a U.S.-imposed embargo has made it almost impossible for Iraq to import the materials necessary to reconstruct a nuclear, chemical or biological arms industry. Therefore, the threat to Iraq's neighbours from weapons of mass destruction is negligible; the threat to the United States or Europe is non-existent.

Despite these facts, the Bush administration insists that, not only does Iraq possess weapons of mass destruction, it intends to use them against the "West" and, therefore, the Iraqi regime must be disarmed. If the actual objective of the U.S. were the disarming of the Iraqi regime, then the discovery and destruction of weapons of mass destruction should mean the end of any threat and, therefore, the end to any necessity for war. However, the U.S. states that if the weapons inspectors find and destroy such weapons, then war is justified because Saddam Hussein will be proved a liar. If telling lies is a justification for war, then the UN Security Council will have to throw its net even wider to include just about every country on earth, but this logic seems to be lost on the Americans. The Bush administration goes on to claim that war against Iraq is justified even if the UN weapons inspectors fail to find any prohibited weapons, because this just proves that Iraq is good at hiding such weapons.

In other words, the Bush administration is unable to either explain why it is necessary to go to war with Iraq, nor can it justify such actions, so it is left with its phoney "logic". If the real aim of the U.S. was the disarming of the Iraqi regime, then it has accomplished that goal with the return of the UN weapons inspectors to Iraq with expanded powers and unrestricted access to both suspected sites and individuals connected with the Iraqi arms industry. Given time they will either confirm that Iraq no longer possesses weapons of mass destruction or will find and destroy such weapons. However, the fact that the Americans have declared that they will go to war with or without the discovery of prohibited weapons and with or without UN Security Council authorization, proves that they have a different agenda than disarmament. That agenda is to impose a puppet regime on Iraq which will not only give the Americans increased control over world oil supplies, but can also be used to attack any other country in the Middle East which may resist America's dictate. There is already talk in Washington that "regime change" in Iraq will be followed by "regime change" in Saudi Arabia, Syria and various other Arab states. Such an agenda not only constitutes a gross violation of international law, but also represents a real threat to the peace and security of the entire region.