Commentators in the
mainstream US media seem genuinely perplexed over the
polite but notably unenthusiastic reception given to
President George W Bush's September 21 address before
the United Nations General Assembly. Why wasn't a speech
that emphasized such high ideals as democracy, the rule
of law, and the threat of terrorism better received?
The answer may be found through a critical
examination of the assumptions underlying the idealistic
rhetoric of the US president's message. Below are a
number of examples:
"We know that dictators
are quick to choose aggression, while free nations
strive to resolve differences in peace. We know that
oppressive governments support terror, while free
governments fight the terrorists in their midst."
Notwithstanding the clear moral preference of
democracy over dictatorship, this formula fails to
withstand closer scrutiny. There are many dictators in
the past and present - as nasty as they may have been
toward their own people - who have not engaged in acts
of aggression against other nations and have not
supported terrorists. Furthermore, the United States -
one of the world's oldest democracies - has demonstrated
through its invasion of Iraq, as well as its earlier
invasions of Panama, Grenada and other countries, that
it can certainly be "quick to choose aggression".
Similarly, the decision by the Bush administration a few
weeks ago to allow into the country a group of
right-wing Cuban exiles who had been implicated in a
series of attacks against civilian targets - including
an attempt to set off a series of explosions in a
crowded auditorium at a Panamanian university in 1998,
and the blowing up of an airliner in Barbados in 1976 -
as well as the active US support for the Contra
terrorists who attacked civilian targets in Nicaragua
during the 1980s - demonstrate that democracies do
indeed allow "terrorists in their midst".
"We're determined to prevent proliferation,
and to enforce the demands of the world [demanding that
nations] fully comply with all Security Council
resolutions."
In reality, US policy is not
nearly as categorical as this statement implies. For
example, since 1998, India and Pakistan have been in
violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1172, which
calls on these governments to cease their development of
nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Since 1981,
Israel has stood in violation of UN Security Council
Resolution 487, which calls on that country's government
to place its nuclear facilities under the trusteeship of
the International Atomic Energy Agency. The US has
repeatedly blocked the United Nations from enforcing
those resolutions, even as it insisted that Iraqi
non-compliance with similar resolutions required that
the UN authorize an invasion of that country and the
overthrow of its government. It appears that the Bush
administration, like preceding Republican and Democratic
administrations, is only concerned with UN resolutions
regarding non-proliferation if the target of the
resolution is a government they don't like. Such double
standards make a mockery of law-based efforts toward
non-proliferation, however, and will likely encourage,
rather than discourage, regimes to develop weapons of
mass destruction (WMD).
"The Russian children
[in Beslan] did nothing to deserve such awful suffering,
and fright, and death. The people of Madrid and
Jerusalem and Istanbul and Baghdad have done nothing to
deserve sudden and random murder. These acts violate the
standards of justice in all cultures, and the principles
of all religions. All civilized nations are in this
struggle together, and all must fight the
murderers."
All true. Yet the numbers of
innocent civilians killed in recent years by US forces
in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as by US-armed Israeli
forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and by US-armed
Turkish forces in Kurdistan have far surpassed those
killed by all Middle Eastern terrorist groups combined.
While a case can certainly be made that the killings of
civilians by the US and its allies was, in most cases,
not as wanton as the killings in these terrorist
attacks, the callous disregard for civilian lives in
many of these military operations did constitute clear
violations of international humanitarian law.
"The dictator [Saddam Hussein] agreed in
1991, as a condition of a ceasefire, to fully comply
with all Security Council resolutions - then ignored
more than a decade of those resolutions. Finally, the
Security Council promised serious consequences for his
defiance. And the commitments we make must have meaning.
When we say 'serious consequences', for the sake of
peace, there must be serious consequences. And so a
coalition of nations enforced the just demands of the
world."
First of all, the majority of member
states that voted in favor of UN Security Council
Resolution 1441 - which warned of "serious consequences"
for continued Iraqi non-compliance - explicitly stated
that this was not an authorization for the use of force
and that a subsequent resolution would be needed. The
two times in its history that the UN Security Council
has authorized the use of military force to enforce its
resolution - in response to the North Korean invasion of
South Korea in 1950 and to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait
in 1990 - such authorization was quite explicit.
Second, if one were to accept Bush's
interpretation of "serious consequences" as simply
another term for a foreign invasion of a sovereign
nation, it is downright Orwellian to claim that such
"serious consequences" must be inflicted "for the sake
of peace".
Finally, at the time the US launched
its invasion of Iraq, the Iraqi government had allowed
United Nations inspectors back in with unfettered access
to wherever they wanted to go whenever they wanted to,
and they were in the process of confirming the fact that
Iraq had indeed dismantled, destroyed, or otherwise
rendered inoperable its proscribed weapons, delivery
systems, and WMD programs. Therefore, the US-led
invasion did not "enforce the just demands of the world"
since the demands were already being enforced without
the use of military force.
"More than 10
million Afghan citizens - over 4 million of them women -
are now registered to vote in next month's presidential
election. To any who still would question whether Muslim
societies can be democratic societies, the Afghan people
are giving their answer."
Currently in
Afghanistan, vote-buying, intimidation and the
enormously disproportionate resources allocated to
pro-government candidates raise serious questions as to
how democratic these upcoming elections will be.
Currently, there are more Afghan males registered to
vote than there are eligible Afghan male voters;
duplicate voting cards are commonplace and can be sold
on the open market. The regime, which lacks solid
control of much of the country outside the capital
Kabul, was largely hand-picked by the US. The ongoing
violence and chaos in the country, along with extremely
high rates of illiteracy, raise serious questions as to
whether the Western-style election the US is trying to
set up will have any credibility among the Afghans
themselves.
No one should question whether
Muslim societies can be democratic societies (on the
very day of Bush's speech, the world's most populous
Muslim country, Indonesia, was holding a peaceful
presidential runoff election - a fact he did not
mention). However, Afghanistan under US domination, is
no more a model of a democratic society than Afghanistan
under Soviet domination 20 years ago was a model of a
socialist society.
"A democratic Iraq has
ruthless enemies, because terrorists know the stakes in
that country. They know that a free Iraq in the heart of
the Middle East will be a decisive blow against their
ambitions for that region."
This assumes
that the armed resistance in Iraq is not because a
Western power invaded and occupied their country, failed
to provide basic services and security, sold off key
sectors of their economy to foreigners, and installed a
puppet regime, but simply because its members don't want
democracy. It also fails to explain why when other
Middle Eastern states have taken even further steps
toward democracy than Iraq, there has not been this kind
of terror. Indeed, the opposite is true: For example,
there was virtually no terrorism when Algeria
democratized its political system in the late 1980s, but
then saw an enormous rise in terrorism after a military
coup short-circuited its democratic experiment at the
end of 1991.
"Coalition forces now serving in
Iraq are confronting the terrorists and foreign fighters
so peaceful nations around the world will never have to
face them within our own borders."
First of
all, well over 90% of the fighting is by US forces,
hardly a "coalition".
Second, there are indeed
terrorists among the dozen or more opposition groups in
Iraq, but the majority of the armed opposition has been
targeting US occupation forces, not civilians, and
therefore should not be considered terrorists.
Similarly, there are foreign fighters among them, but
most credible sources put the percentage of foreigners
in the various resistance groups - terrorist and
otherwise - at well under 5%.
Third, this idea
that if the US withdrew, these terrorists would suddenly
leave Iraq and start attacking the US and other
countries is specious. This is simply a retread of the
rationalization used during the Vietnam War that "if we
don't fight them over there, we'll have to fight them
here". Despite the US withdrawal and the communist
victory nearly 30 years ago, the Vietnamese have yet to
attack the US. The Vietnamese stopped killing Americans
when American forces got out of Vietnam. One can
similarly assume that the Iraqis will stop killing
Americans when American forces get out of Iraq.
"For too long, many nations, including my
own, tolerated, even excused, oppression in the Middle
East in the name of stability. Oppression became common,
but stability never arrived. We must take a different
approach. We must help the reformers of the Middle East
as they work for freedom, and strive to build a
community of peaceful, democratic nations."
These are noble words, but the reality of US
policy is very different: Under the Bush administration,
US military aid, police training, and financial
assistance to Middle Eastern governments that engage in
patterns of gross and systematic human-rights violations
has dramatically increased. Since the Bush
administration came to office, thousands of reformers
have been jailed, tortured, and murdered by governments
supported by the United States.
"This
commitment to democratic reform is essential to
resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Peace will not be
achieved by Palestinian rulers who intimidate
opposition, tolerate corruption, and maintain ties to
terrorist groups. The long-suffering Palestinian people
deserve better. They deserve true leaders capable of
creating and governing a free and peaceful Palestinian
state."
This statement assumes that if
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian
Authority cleaned up their act, Israel would allow the
creation of a viable Palestinian state, which is the key
requisite for peace. In reality, the right-wing Israeli
government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, with the
support of the United States, has embarked upon a plan
to annex nearly half of the occupied territories and
divide up the remainder into small, non-contiguous
cantons surrounded by Israel, where the Israelis would
control the borders, the airspace, the ports and the
water resources. This will clearly make the
establishment of a viable Palestinian state impossible,
whatever the nature of the Palestinian leadership.
Israel - again, with US support - has also rejected
consideration of withdrawal from occupied Syrian
territory, despite promises by the Damascus government
of strict security guarantees.
It is important
to remember that Kuwait's rulers during the early 1990s
also intimidated opposition, tolerated corruption, and
maintained ties to terrorist groups. That did not stop
the United States, along with the rest of the
international community, from demanding that Iraq end
its occupation of that country. There are no such US
demands, however, that Israel end its occupation.
Stephen Zunes is professor of politics
and chair of the peace and justice studies program at
the University of San Francisco. He serves as Middle
East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus project and
is the author of Tinderbox: US Middle East Policy
and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press,
2003)
