The Drums of War are Beating: Killing Civilians to Protect Civilians in Syria
Global Research, August 28, 2013
Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-drums-of-war-are-beating-killing-civilians-to-protect-civilians-in-syria/5347187
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-drums-of-war-are-beating-killing-civilians-to-protect-civilians-in-syria/5347187
The drums of war are beating
again. The Obama administration will reportedly launch a military strike to
punish Syria’s Assad government for its alleged use of chemical weapons. A
military attack would invariably kill civilians for the ostensible purpose of
showing the Syrian government that killing civilians is wrong. “What we are
talking about here is a potential response . . . to this specific violation of
international norms,” declared White House press secretary Jay Carney. But a
military intervention by the United States in Syria to punish the government
would violate international law.
For
the United States to threaten to and/or launch a military strike as a reprisal
is a blatant violation of the United Nations Charter. The Charter requires
countries to settle their international disputes peacefully.
Article 2(4) makes it illegal for any
country to either use force or threaten to use force against another country.
Article 2(7) prohibits intervention in an internal or domestic dispute in
another country. The only time military force is lawful under the Charter
is when the Security Council approves it, or under Article 51, which allows a
country to defend itself if attacked. “The use of chemical weapons within Syria
is not an armed attack on the United States,” according to Notre Dame law
professor Mary Ellen O’Connell.
The
United States and the international community have failed to take constructive
steps to promote peace-making efforts, which could have brought the crisis in
Syria to an end. The big powers instead have waged a proxy war to give their
“side” a stronger hand in future negotiations, evaluating the situation only in
terms of geopolitical concerns. The result has been to once again demonstrate
that military solutions to political and economic problems are no solution at
all. In the meantime, the fans of
enmity between religious factions have been inflamed to such a degree that the
demonization of each by the other has created fertile ground for slaughter and
excuses for not negotiating with anyone with “blood on their hands.”
Despite U.S. claims of “little doubt
that Assad used these weapons,” there is significant doubt among the
international community about which side employed chemical weapons. Many view
the so-called rebels as trying to create a situation to provoke U.S.
intervention against Assad. Indeed, in May, Carla del Ponte, former
international prosecutor and current UN commissioner on Syria, concluded that
opposition forces used sarin gas against civilians.
The
use of any type of chemical weapon by any party would constitute a war crime.
Chemical weapons that kill and maim people are illegal and their use violates
the laws of war. The illegality of chemical and poisoned weapons was first
established by the Hague regulations of 1899 and Hague Convention of 1907. It
was reiterated in the Geneva Convention of 1925 and the Chemical Weapons
Convention. The Rome Statute for
the International Criminal Court specifically states that employing “poison or
poisoned weapons” and “asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and all analogous
liquids, materials or devices” are war crimes, under Article 8. The prohibition
on the use of these weapons is an international norm regardless of whether any
convention has been ratified. As
these weapons do not distinguish between military combatants and civilians, they
violate the principle of distinction and the ban on weapons which cause
unnecessary suffering and death contained in the Hague Convention. Under the
Nuremberg Principles, violations of the laws of war are war crimes.
The
self-righteousness of the United States about the alleged use of chemical
weapons by Assad is hypocritical. The United States used napalm and employed
massive amounts of chemical weapons in the form of Agent Orange in Vietnam,
which continues to affect countless people over many generations.
Recently declassified CIA documents
reveal U.S. complicity in Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons during the
Iran-Iraq war, according to Foreign Policy: “In contrast to today’s wrenching debate
over whether the United States should intervene to stop alleged chemical weapons
attacks by the Syrian government, the United States applied a cold calculus
three decades ago to Hussein’s widespread use of chemical weapons against his
enemies and his own people. The Reagan administration decided that it was better
to let the attacks continue if they might turn the tide of the war. And even if
they were discovered, the CIA wagered that international outrage and
condemnation would be muted.”
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States used cluster bombs, depleted
uranium, and white phosphorous gas. Cluster bomb cannisters contain tiny
bomblets, which can spread over a vast area. Unexploded cluster bombs are
frequently picked up by children and explode, resulting in serious injury or
death. Depleted uranium (DU) weapons spread high levels of radiation over vast
areas of land. In Iraq, there has been a sharp increase in Leukemia and birth
defects, probably due to DU. White phosphorous gas melts the skin and burns to
the bone.
The Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in time
of War (Geneva IV) classifies “willfully causing great suffering or serious
injury to body or health” as a grave breach, which constitutes a war crime.
The
use of chemical weapons, regardless of the purpose, is atrocious, no matter the
feigned justification. A government’s use of such weapons against its own people
is particularly reprehensible. Secretary of State John Kerry said that the purported attack by
Assad’s forces “defies any code of morality” and should “shock the conscience of
the world.” He went on to say that “there must be accountability for those who
would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable
people.”
Yet the U.S. militarily occupied over
75% of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques for 60 years, during which time the
Navy routinely practiced with, and used, Agent Orange, depleted uranium, napalm
and other toxic chemicals and metals such as TNT and mercury. This
occurred within a couple of miles of a civilian population that included
thousands of U.S. citizens. The people
of Vieques have lived under the colonial rule of the United States now for 115
years and suffer from terminal health conditions such as elevated rates of
cancer, hypertension, respiratory and skin illnesses and kidney
failure. While Secretary
Kerry calls for accountability by the Assad government, the U.S. Navy has yet to
admit, much less seek atonement, for decades of bombing and biochemical warfare
on Vieques.
The U.S. government’s moral outrage at the
use of these weapons falls flat as it refuses to take responsibility for its own
violations.
President Barack Obama admitted, “If the U.S.
goes in and attacks another country without a UN mandate and without clear
evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether
international law supports it . . .” The Obama administration is studying the
1999 “NATO air war in Kosovo as a possible blueprint for acting without a
mandate from the United Nations,” the New York Times reported. But NATO’s Kosovo bombing also
violated the UN Charter as the Security Council never approved it, and it was
not carried out in self-defense. The UN Charter does not permit the use of
military force for “humanitarian interventions.” Humanitarian concerns do not
constitute self-defense. In fact,
humanitarian concerns should spur the international community to seek peace and
end the suffering, not increase military attacks, which could endanger peace in
the entire region.
Moreover, as Phyllis Bennis of the Institute
for Policy Studies and David Wildman of Human Rights & Racial Justice for
the Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church wrote, “Does anyone really
believe that a military strike on an alleged chemical weapons factory would help
the Syrian people, would save any lives, would help bring an end to this
horrific civil war”?
Military strikes will likely result in the
escalation of Syria’s civil war. “Let’s be clear,” Bennis and Wildman note. “Any
U.S. military attack, cruise missiles or anything else, will not be to protect
civilians – it will mean taking sides once again in a bloody, complicated civil
war.” Anthony Cordesman, military analyst from the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, asks, “Can you do damage with cruise missiles? Yes. Can
you stop them from having chemical weapons capability? I would think the answer
would be no.”
The
United States and its allies must refrain from military intervention in Syria
and take affirmative steps to promote a durable ceasefire and a political
solution consistent with international law. If the U.S. government were truly
interested in fomenting peace and promoting accountability, it should apologize
to and compensate the victims of its own use of chemical weapons around the
world.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at
Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild
(NLG), and deputy secretary general of the International Association of
Democratic Lawyers (IADL). New York attorney Jeanne Mirer is president of the
IADL and co-chair of the NLG’s International Committee. Both Cohn and Mirer are
on the board of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility
Campaign
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