Acts of Aggression, by Noam Chomsky: on War & Peace

US chartered UN & must follow UN decisions on Iraq

There are legitimate ways to react to the many threats to world peace. If Iraq’s neighbors feel threatened, they can approach the Security Council to authorize appropriate measures to respond to the threat. If the US and Britain feel threatened, they can do the same. But no state has the authority to make its own determinations on these matters and to act as it chooses.

Anyone threatened by Iraq can approach UN Security Council

UN authorizing US force in Iraq allows Iran to use force

Iran is a neighbor and victim of U.S.-backed Iraqi aggression and chemical warfare, and could claim, not implausibly, that its invasion would have some local support; the United States and Britain can make no such claim.

Such Iranian actions, if imaginable, would never be tolerated, but would be far less outrageous than the plans of the self appointed enforcers. It is hard to imagine such elementary observations entering public discussion in the United States and Britain.

Iraq: Sanctions kill children

In a bitter condemnation of the sanctions (January 20, 1998), 54 Catholic Bishops quoted the Archbishop of the southern region of Iraq, who reports that “epidemics rage, taking away infants and the sick by the thousands.”

The United States and Britain have taken the lead in blocking aid programs--for example, delaying approval for ambulances on the grounds that they could be used to transport troops, barring insecticides to prevent spread of disease and spare parts for sanitation systems.