March 2003

LONDON – War, the systematic and organised use of violence with all its bestial destructiveness, is peculiar to the most advanced of animals, man. Writing in the early sixteenth century, Erasmus considered war “unnatural”. “Animals do not make war on one another. Whoever heard of 100,000 animals rushing together to butcher each other, as men do everywhere?” It was the European thinkers of the eighteenth century Enlightenment who saw the issue of war in perhaps more realistic terms. “Want of a common judge with authority puts all men in a state of nature,” wrote John Locke. Or as Michael Howard, the distinguished war historian, has written more recently, “War is an inherent element in a system of sovereign states which lack any supreme and acknowledged arbiter.” There is probably something in this. After all, the few societies which have never practised war appear to have a common ingredient, a homogeneous culture...

I write with a heavy heart. Our cause has shifted from trying to prevent a needless war to seeking to end an illegal war. The audacity of the Bush administration takes one’s breath away.  The United States is bombing Baghdad, engaged in its “shock and awe” strategy. Shock yes, but there is no awe. To suggest awe reflects only the arrogance of the Bush militarists. US attacks on Iraq are shocking and awful.  Shocking that we are at war in violation of international law and our Constitution.  Shocking that our government is committing aggressive warfare, which is a crime. Shocking that a large majority of the US Congress has been so compliant and cowardly, handing over their responsibility to declare war to the president. By giving up their Constitutional powers, Congress is putting the future of our Republic in jeopardy.   Shocking that Bush has demonstrated contempt for the strongly held...

Da Sikkerhedsrådet i 1991, i kølvandet på Golfkrigen, besluttede om inspektioner og sanktioner, må det have lidt af nogen grad af hybris. Irak skulle straffes for invasionen af Kuwait – og Irak invaderede Kuwait og det var tåbeligt og ulovligt at gøre. Sanktioner skulle sætte pres på regimet og, håbede man, få folket til at vende sig mod ledelsen. Så hårde som sanktionerne var, var de beregnet for kun at skulle gælde i kort tid, den tid det formodedes at tage at finde og ødelægge Iraks masseødelæggelsesvåben. Krigens vindere dikterede vilkårene. Irak, taberen, skulle adlyde betingelsesløst. Ophævelsen af sanktionerne blev gjort afhængig af afleveringen til sikkerhedsrådet af en rapport, som fastslog, at alt, hvad der kunne anvendes til fremstilling af kerne- biologiske eller kemiske våben, var fundet og ødelagt, at der ikke var noget af den slags tilbage nogetsteds i Iraq. Her er den fælde, som forårsagedes af sejrherrernes hybris....

“>Christian Hårleman, TFF Boardmember When, in 1991, in the wake of the Gulf War, the Security Council decided about inspections and sanctions it must have suffered from some kind of hubris. Iraq should be punished for the invasion of Kuwait – and it did invade and it was foolish and illegal to do so. Sanctions should put pressure on the regime and, it was hoped, turn the people against the leadership. Hard as the sanctions were, they were designed to last for a short time, the time it was assumed to take to find and disarm Iraq’s weapons of mass-destruction. The winners of the war dictated the conditions. Iraq, the loser, had to obey unconditionally. Lifting the sanctions was made dependent upon the delivery of an inspection report to the Security Council that would state that all that could be used in the production of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons...

, in the wake of the Gulf War, the Security Council decided about inspections and sanctions it must have suffered from some kind of hubris. Iraq should be punished for the invasion of Kuwait – and it did invade and it was foolish and illegal to do so. Sanctions should put pressure on the regime and, it was hoped, turn the people against the leadership. Hard as the sanctions were, they were designed to last for a short time, the time it was assumed to take to find and disarm Iraq’s weapons of mass-destruction. The winners of the war dictated the conditions. Iraq, the loser, had to obey unconditionally. Lifting the sanctions was made dependent upon the delivery of an inspection report to the Security Council that would state that all that could be used in the production of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons had been found and destroyed and...

There comes a time when the prevarications and faulty logic of official policy become so extreme that only satire can shed light on the truth. We have reached such a point with respect to the warmongering of the United States and Britain in relation to Iraq’s alleged possession of a threatening stockpile of chemical and biological weapons. George Bush and Tony Blair are trying to impose a deadline of March 17th, just days away, for Saddam Hussein to prove that he does not have weapons of mass destruction. If Bush and Blair succeed in getting the support of the UN Security Council for this, they are prepared to proceed to war. From their pronouncements, they seem determined to proceed to war even without Security Council approval. But how can Hussein prove that he doesn’t have something? What would the proof be that something doesn’t exist? If he were asked to...

Krig er intet alternativ For mange af os er krig som metode til at løse politiske problemer noget utænkeligt, uciviliseret, forældet. Som Gerhard Schröder sagde i sin begrundelse for at modsætte sig angrebet på Irak: krig må aldrig opfattes som en brugbar politisk metode. Denne holdning præger hele fredsbevægelsen og udtrykkes f.eks. i mange af de over 100 slogans, som findes på en enkelt demonstration for fred i San Francisco i januar 2003: War is stupidNot in my nameBig boys use wordsWar is simply not healthyThis war is wrongBasta, enough Eller, mere alvorligt: put an end to war, or war will kill mankind. Men vi må nu tænke det utænkelige, for krigen er virkelig og den nærmer sig alt for hastigt. Konsekvenserne er dystre. En FN-rapport forudsiger flere hundrede tusinde op til 500.000 døde i krigens første faser. Angsten er der allerede blandt Iraks børn og Amerikas mødre, og derefter lidelser, meningsløs...

Av Håkan Palm 24 mars 2003 Helsingborgs Dagblad 2 mars 2003 Den irakiska regimen står inte och faller med Saddam Hussein. Maktens trådar väver via klanerna djupt ner i samhället på ett komplicerat sätt. Många irakier har mycket att förlora på ett regimskifte. USA kan heller inte skaka fram en trovärdig ersättare över en natt, hävdar Khaled Bayomi, historiker vid Lunds universitet. Takhalof är ett arabiskt ord s om betyder “att hamna på efterkälken”. Det är ett viktigt begrepp i arabismens nationalistiska världsbild som används för politisk mobilisering, berättar Khaled Bayomi, expert på arabstaternas statliga propaganda. Takhalof är den sorgliga fortsättningen på en svunnen guldålder, det tillstånd av dekadens som infann sig sedan det arabiska världsväldet vittrat sönder och överflyglats av Europa och övriga västvärlden. Men tanken på come back i stor stil är ständigt levande. Drömmen om en pånyttfödelse är ett starkt retorisk instrument som arabiska och muslimska ledare...

När säkerhetsrådet i kölvattnet på Gulfkriget beslutade om inspektioner och sanktioner måste det har drabbats av något slags hybris. Irak skulle straffas för invasionen av Kuweit – och invaderade gjorde Irak och dumt och olagligt var det. Sanktioner skulle sätta press på regimen och, hoppades man, vända folket mot ledningen. Sanktionerna var hårda och de var uppgjorda för att pågå en kort tid, den tid som antogs behövlig för att hitta och förstöra Iraks massförstörelsevapen. Krigets segrare dikterade villkoren. Irak, som förlorat, tvingades lyda villkorslöst. Hävandet av sanktionerna gjordes beroende av att en inspektionsrapport inlämnades till säkerhetsrådet som skulle uttala att allt som kunde användas vid framställning av kärnvapen eller biologiska eller kemiska vapen hade påträffats och förstörts och att ingenting fanns kvar någonstans i Irak. Här har vi fällan som gillrats av segrarens hybris. Detta har lett till att sanktionerna är vårt moraliska problem; vi behandlade detta i PressInfo...

Måske er det ikke FNs mest kendte fredsmission, men vi kan være sikre på snart at høre mere om den, idet den befinder sig på grænsen mellem Irak og Kuwait. Navnet er UNIKOM (UN Irak-Kuwait Observation Mission), http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unikom/index.html. Den blev etableret ved FNs Sikkerhedsråds-resolution 687, i 1991. Da TFF var på analyserejse i Irak i januar i år, besøgte vi denne FN-mission på pladsen. Rapporter fra de seneste dage fortæller at bevæbnede USA-marinesoldater er gået ind i denne demilitariserede zone, DMZ, mellem Irak og Kuwait. På Kuwait-siden er indhegningen blevet skåret op og 7 porte sat ind, tilsyneladende for at forberede en invasion og besætelse af Irak. Vi, forfatterne, er ikke eksperter i folkeret og kan ikke bedømme om dette er et brud på en Sikkerhedsrådsbestemmelse og/eller andre internationale love, eller om der et eller andet sted med småt står noget, der kan legitimere dette under visse betingelser. Men vi betvivler...

Perhaps it is not the most well-known peace mission of the UN, but you will be sure to hear more about it soon as it is situated on the border between Iraq and Kuwait. Its name is UNIKOM (UN Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission), http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unikom/index.html. It was established by Security Council Resolution 687 in 1991. During TFF’s fact-finding mission to Iraq in January this year, we visited the UN mission there. Reports from the last few days tell that armed US Marines and vehicles have entered this demilitarised zone, DMZ, between Iraq and Kuwait. On the Kuwaiti side, they have cut down fences and set up 7 gates, presumably in preparation of an invasion and occupation of Iraq. We, the authors, are not experts in international law and shall not judge whether this is a breach of the Security Council Resolution and/or other parts of international law, or whether there is some fine...

The United States is by circumstance and design an emergent global empire, the first in the history of the world. Prior empires have had frontiers and boundaries, although occupying large expanses of territory, and exerting control from a distant center that due to available technologies of communication and transportation were further away in time than is any part of the global from Washington. In purely temporal terms, the American Empire is thus smaller than earlier great empires associated with China, the Ottomans, the Persians, the Austro-Hungarian, and the overseas empires of the British, French, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese. It is important to appreciate the consequences of an empire of global scope. Such an empire, to the extent that it is established and sustained without significant resistance, raise a special challenge to world order. Over the course of modern history, in particular, stability in international relations has been maintained primarily by...