Pre-emptive war ok; “preventive war” is a war crime
The [Bush administration’s] strategy asserts the right of the US to undertake “preventive war” at will: Preventive, not pre-emptive. Pre-emptive war might fall within the framework of international law. Thus if bombers had been detected
approaching the US from a military base in Grenada, then, under a reasonable interpretation of the UN Charter, a pre-emptive attack destroying the planes and perhaps even the Grenadan base would have been justifiable.
But the justifications for
pre-emptive war do not hold for preventive war, particularly as that concept is interpreted by its current enthusiasts: the use of military force to eliminate an imagined or invented threat.
Preventive war falls within the category of war crimes.
[Bush’s revision after discovering no WMDs in Iraq] suggests that the administration will act against a hostile regime that has nothing more than the intent and ability to develop WMDs. This revision grants Washington the right of arbitrary aggression.
US & UK have regularly used chemical & biological weapons
Recent US/UK toleration for poison gas and chemical warfare is not too surprising. In 1919, Winston Churchill was enthusiastic about the prospects of “using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes”--Kurds and Afghans--and authorized the
RAF Middle East command to user chemical weapons “against recalcitrant Arabs as experiment,” dismissing objections by the India office as “unreasonable” and deploring the “squeamishness about the use of gas.”
The Kennedy administration pioneered the massive use of chemical weapons against civilians as it launched its attack against South Vietnam in 1961-1962. There has been much rightful concern about the effects on
U.S. soldiers, but not the incomparably worse effects on civilians.
There is also substantial evidence of U.S. use of biological weapons against Cuba, reported as minor news in 1977, and at worst only a small component of continuing U.S. terror.
Powerful states define rogue states according to their needs
The concept “rogue state” is highly nuanced. Thus Cuba qualifies as a leading “rogue state” because of its alleged involvement in international terrorism, but the United States does not fall into the category despite its terrorist attacks against
Cuba for close to 40 years, apparently continuing through last summer.
Cuba was a “rogue state” when its military forces were in Angola, backing the government against South African attacks supported by the United States.
South Africa, in contrast, was not a rogue state then, nor during the Reagan years, when it caused over $60 billion in damage and 1.5 million deaths in neighboring states, and with ample U.S./U.K. support.
The same exemption applies to Indonesia and many others. The criteria are fairly clear: a “rogue State” is not simply a criminal state, but one that defies the orders of the powerful--who are, of course, exempt.
Cold War fear of USSR was played to control US population
The Cold War was a kind of tacit arrangement between the Soviet Union and the US under which the US conducted its wars against the Third World and controlled its allies in Europe,
while the Soviets kept an iron grip on their own internal empire and their satellites in Eastern Europe-each side using the other to justify repression and violence.
Source: What Uncle Sam Really Wants, by Noam Chomsky, p. 80
Jan 13, 1991
Click here for definitions & background information on Homeland Security.
Click here for policy papers on Homeland Security.
