This essay doesn’t really have a title, it’s just an article I slapped together for an anti-war site run by someone I know from another forum. Only really vaguely related to philosophy, but I’d be interested to see what everyone else thinks of it.
On September 11th 2001, the entire world - not least of all the US - became aware of a great evil: an evil that undermined our very pretence to the right to live in a state of peace, our right to feel secure and our right to feel free. The cities of New York and Washington, and the state of Pennsylvania, were the sites of horrendous crimes committed against our common humanity. Here, in these places, thousands of people - thousands of innocent people - died needlessly, victims to a war they did not start, nor - I can be quite certain - that they even knew existed. When the 19 Al Quieda backed terrorists arrested control of four domestic US airlines, they did so in the knowledge that they would be sending thousands of human beings to death. The only crime of the deceased, in all actuality, was to exist in the country of America, a country politically active in the Middle-Eastern region and - as a result of this activity - a country scorned and detested by many of these Middle-Eastern factions.
However, to the faceless terrorists who perpetrated the 09/11 attacks, whether or not the victims were genuinely “guilty” mattered little. They were all “guilty”, so goes the logic, by the very act of being American. That is crime enough.
But we westerners know better. We understand, by simple moral principles, that those who died in the attacks were innocent victims, who had no control over the situation in which they’d been placed. They could not control the anger of those who perpetrated the attacks. They could not control the foreign policy that had incited the anger in the first place, nor could they have any say in how their fate was dealt. They boarded a plane or went to work, with the belief - nay, the with the right to believe - that they could do so without fearing unwarranted attacks on their personhood. They were innocent pawns in a game they had no control over, nor did they have any perception of its existence until it was far too late. We can say, with definite authority, that these people had done nothing to deserve the deaths they all suffered.
At this time then, thirteen months on, we can all look back and pay homage to these individuals, who did nothing to deserve the hand they were dealt. What happened on that fateful day was entirely unjustifiable, and these events can doubtless be described not just as a crime against the United States of America, but as a crime against the entirety of the human race. We should take this opportunity, then, to use the events of 09/11 - one year on - to assess where we stand as a race, as a species, and ask ourselves how to prevent anything similar event from ever occurring again.
As momentum for a US led war an Iraq grows, however, the more clear it is - that so long as we retain the attitudes we now hold towards our fellow peoples, separated by vast geological distances only - that peace will be driven further away. The US has been awoken from its apathy towards foreign affairs by these terrorist attacks, and the direction of its thinking has been scattered as a result. On the one-hand, it maintains the rhetoric that it is committed towards world peace, on the other it preaches that its main priority is to wage war against those who it blames - spuriously in many cases - for undermining this said peace. Saddam Hussein, George Bush believes, is dangerous enough to warrant sending in a US led alliance - made up of soldiers as innocent as those who died in the September 11 attacks - to remove him from office. His reasoning, though, given the likely consequences of a misguided decision - are incredibly blurred.
Firstly, he is quite happy to accept that Saddam Hussein - since his attempt on the life of George Bush Snr in 1993 - has done little to upset world peace. His war on Kuwait - his contempt for human life in that region - was undoubtedly unacceptable, and in this case, where Iraq was the aggressor against a small helpless nation rich with oil, the US - I believe - was right to step in. However, it has to be put in context. This occurred in 1991, and can hardly be used a justification for a war waged in 2002. We can, perhaps, use past behaviour as a litmus test for probable future behaviour, but again the thinking is inconsistent.
Firstly we must acknowledge just how weakened Saddam Hussein’s arsenal really is.
During the UN-led inspections of the Iraqi weapons plants after the Gulf War, in fact, huge amounts of weaponry were destroyed, rendering Saddam Hussein virtually powerless to launch another, similarly potent offensive. Even if Saddam Hussein were stupid enough to wage a war against the US or any other nation (in the knowledge that doing so would lead to US intervention anyway), his capabilities to cause mass destruction are extremely limited. According to UNSCOM, under their own supervision, they were able to affect “the destruction of 38,000 chemical weapons, 480,000 liters of live chemical weapons agents, 48 missiles, six missile launchers, 30 missile warheads modified to carry chemical or biological agents, and hundreds of pieces of related equipment with the capability to produce chemical weapons.” In addition to this, “the International Atomic Energy Agency categorically declared that Iraq no longer has a nuclear program” and “817 of the 819 Soviet-supplied long-range missiles had been accounted for”.
Of course, over the past few weeks, America has stated that it is in the process of compiling a dossier outlining the threat that Saddam Hussein poses. The evidence, it says, points decisively to the conclusion that Saddam Hussein is capable of producing a nuclear weapon within six months. The evidence, by its own admittance, comes largely from satellite photographs of locations that could be used for the purposes of researching the production of nuclear weapons and the fact - as stated repeatedly - that Hussein is refusing to allow UN weapons inspectors into his country to ascertain, with any degree of certainty, that he is not is the process of building Weapons of Mass Destruction. On this latter point, however, the UNSCOM team’s work was cut short, not on the insistence of Hussein himself, but by the directive of then US president Bill Clinton in 1998, as he ushered them out in anticipation of US led bombings on the country that ended up lasting four days. Since then, the US offered Iraq absolutely no incentives to resume the inspection program, by stating - unequivocally - that even if he were to open his doors to the UN, no sanctions would be lifted (not even those which could be described as “non-military”) and that no guarantee would be given that the UN inspectors would not be used, wittingly, as a means to obtain intelligence for the United States.
Now the question must be asked, however, even if Hussein were being stubborn in allowing the return of UN inspectors (that is, even if Bush were to give him the option in the first place) why are the US citing his flaunting of UN protocol (on a hunch it may be added - not on any direct evidence) as justification for a military invasion, when so many other countries are flaunting exactly the same international laws? Isreal has hardly been receptive to UN inspectors in the past, and it is quite clear that other nations (i.e. Pakistan and India to name just two) have been building up large quantities of nuclear weapons, and - in the case of the latter two especially - these countries are far more likely to engage in the use of such weapons than Iraq are. Even North Korea - a country George Bush himself stated as belonging to the “Axis of Evil” - has been building up a powerful reserve of weaponry (both in terms of size and destructive power).
But then, we should not be so surprised that George Bush appeals to International Law when, and only when it suits his cause. This man - the very same man who criticises Hussein for not allowing UN inspectors back into his country, when doing so would mean adhering to strict conditions determined by and wholly suiting the agenda of the US - has the temerity to use international law to support his own, misguided cause when - if you’ve been following the news - he has, on several occasions, directly ignored it.
In the words of William Schulz, head of Amnesty International’s US chapter, "“It is time for this administration to live up to its human rights commitments, rather than expending effort to wriggle out of them or hide their violations” and, in light of recent US policy, it would be hard to disagree with him.
Almost 600 foreign nationals are being held in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, many without valid reason, all without the right to trial. No American national would be held under such conditions, liberated from this possibility by the American Constitution, a revolutionary work that has guaranteed the propagation of human rights on American soil for over 200 years. Yet sadly, as we have seen before, the rights that President Bush seems so desperate to secure for his own people are not being afforded to those of other nationalities - the geographic separation and a paranoid, patriotic fear are apparently justification enough for this disdain of international law. As George Bush continues his militant proselytising in front of the International community, he continues to mock the very people he is trying to win over.
The “United Nations” was first coined in 1942 by then US president Franklin Roosevelt, as he drafted the war-time “Declaration by United Nations”, a work signed by 26 countries who unified under the threat posed by the Nazi Germans and the Japanese amongst others. While the UN charter wasn’t ratified until 1945, it was this declaration the marked the absolute beginnings of the United Nations: the world unified against a common evil.
In this day and age a new common threat has emerged, though its very nature distinguishes it from those of the past. Terrorism is not a state that can be attacked, nor a body of government that can be overthrown: it is the manifestation of an extreme political desire, exercised by not by an organised military, nor a stable body of government, but rather by common men, who require affiliation with neither military or government to wage their war successfully. The fear caused by the 9/11 attacks was born of the uncertainty of how, exactly, these attacks could be avenged, and how similar attacks could be prevented in the future. Even now, 13 months on, this uncertain fear continues to manifest itself in US foreign policy, as it continues to search for a tangible target upon which to launch its new war. But it has to be realised, that a war on “terrorism” is far too broad a war to be waged. As I said earlier, one can continue to overthrow governments and carpet-bomb independent states for as long as one likes, but this will do little to alleviate the threat the terrorism poses. Terrorism is not a government or a state that can be attacked, but more an ideology: an ideology born of extreme, if misguided, hatred. One who is given no reason to hate, it could be suggested, will be one who has no reason to terrorise.
However, it is this ideology that, right now, the world community is united against. Terrorism, surely, constitutes the greatest existent threat that this planet currently faces in its desire to achieve world security. The UN recognises the threat that terrorism poses to the human rights that we should all be afforded. No-one, we recognise out of all this, deserves to die for another’s misguided ideology and this is why we must go to such great lengths in our attempts to prevent and curtail terrorist activity. But this same recognition of the sanctity of human life also represents the reason why our attempts to prevent terrorism must be done in accordance with the same notions of human rights we are striving for in the first place. We should not forgo the rights of another, merely to alleviate our fears about our own.
The world is united in its quest for the upholding of the rights every single human being should be entitled to on birth. The United Nations exists to preserve these said rights on such a scale, and for George Bush to act contrary to the international opinion purveyed in this forum would be to make a mockery of the United Nations itself, and the broader concept of a secure, united globe which we are all striving for. If George Bush wishes for his country to remain a willing member of this organisation, then he must learn to respect it, and must learn to abide by the guidelines his country has ratified. If he wishes to maintain that he is committed to the preservation of human rights - the same human rights that citizens of his own country were denied 13 months ago - then he must act accordingly and weaken his desire for war. A war which, when all is said and done, will kill thousands of innocent human being and destabilise the region occupied by millions more.
Thirteen months on, we must try to make sense of the events of September 11. We must learn from them, try to understand why they happened, and decide what those thousands of American citizens died for. If they died to awaken us to the very real need to push for international security and the preservation of human rights that they, on that day, were denied, then their deaths have a tragic meaning. If their deaths become an excuse for the American government to pursue its own agenda in the Middle-East, however, then they died in vain.
A war on Iraq is a war on the very fundamental things we are trying to preserve. This is reason enough to stand firm in our resolve for a more diplomatic, peaceful solution in the shadow of one of the defining moments of time. War is not the answer.
