The following letter by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark has
been sent to all members of the UN Security Council, with copies to
the UN General Assembly. Please circulate.
September 20, 2002
Secretary General Kofi Annan United Nations New York, NY
Dear Secretary General Annan,
George Bush will invade Iraq unless restrained by the United Nations.
Other international organizations-- including the European Union, the
African Union, the OAS, the Arab League, stalwart nations courageous
enough to speak out against superpower aggression, international
peace movements, political leadership, and public opinion within the
United States--must do their part for peace. If the United Nations,
above all, fails to oppose a U.S. invasion of Iraq, it will forfeit
its honor, integrity and raison d?etre.
A military attack on Iraq is obviously criminal; completely
inconsistent with urgent needs of the Peoples of the United Nations;
unjustifiable on any legal or moral ground; irrational in light of the
known facts; out of proportion to other existing threats of war and
violence; and a dangerous adventure risking continuing conflict
throughout the region and far beyond for years to come. The most
careful analysis must be made as to why the world is subjected to such
threats of violence by its only superpower, which could so safely and
importantly lead us on the road to peace, and how the UN can avoid the
human tragedy of yet another major assault on Iraq and the powerful
stimulus for retaliatory terrorism it would create.
1. President George Bush Came to Office Determined to Attack Iraq and
Change its Government.
George Bush is moving apace to make his war unstoppable and soon.
Having stated last Friday that he did not believe Iraq would accept UN
inspectors, he responded to Iraq?s prompt, unconditional acceptance by
calling any reliance on it a ?false hope? and promising to attack Iraq
alone if the UN does not act. He is obsessed with the desire to wage
war against Iraq and install his surrogates to govern Iraq by force.
Days after the most bellicose address ever made before the United
Nations--an unprecedented assault on the Charter of the United
Nations, the rule of law and the quest for peace--the U.S. announced
it was changing its stated targets in Iraq over the past eleven years,
from retaliation for threats and attacks on U.S. aircraft which were
illegally invading Iraq?s airspace on a daily basis. How serious could
those threats and attacks have been if no U.S. aircraft was ever hit?
Yet hundreds of people were killed in Iraq by U.S. rockets and bombs,
and not just in the so called ?no fly zone,? but in Baghdad itself.
Now the U.S. proclaims its intentions to destroy major military
facilities in Iraq in preparation for its invasion, a clear promise of
aggression now. Every day there are threats and more propaganda is
unleashed to overcome resistance to George Bush?s rush to war. The
acceleration will continue until the tanks roll, unless nonviolent
persuasion prevails.
2. George Bush Is Leading the United States and Taking the UN and All
Nations Toward a Lawless World of Endless Wars.
George Bush in his ?War on Terrorism? has asserted his right to attack
any country, organization, or people first, without warning in his
sole discretion. He and members of his administration have proclaimed
the old restraints that law sought to impose on aggression by
governments and repression of their people, no longer consistent with
national security. Terrorism is such a danger, they say, that
necessity compels the U.S. to strike first to destroy the potential
for terrorist acts from abroad and to make arbitrary arrests,
detentions, interrogations, controls and treatment of people abroad
and within the U.S. Law has become the enemy of public safety.
?Necessity is the argument of tyrants.? ?Necessity never makes a good
bargain.?
Heinrich Himmler, who instructed the Nazi Gestapo ?Shoot first, ask
questions later, and I will protect you,? is vindicated by George
Bush. Like the Germany described by Jorge Luis Borges in Deutsches
Requiem, George Bush has now ?proffered (the world) violence and faith
in the sword,? as Nazi Germany did. And as Borges wrote, it did not
matter to faith in the sword that Germany was defeated. ?What matters
is that violence ... now rules.? Two generations of Germans have
rejected that faith. Their perseverance in the pursuit of peace will
earn the respect of succeeding generations everywhere.
The Peoples of the United Nations are threatened with the end of
international law and protection for human rights by George Bush?s war
on terrorism and determination to invade Iraq.
Since George Bush proclaimed his ?war on terrorism,? other countries
have claimed the right to strike first. India and Pakistan brought the
earth and their own people closer to nuclear conflict than at any time
since October 1962 as a direct consequence of claims by the U.S. of
the unrestricted right to pursue and kill terrorists, or attack
nations protecting them, based on a unilateral decision without
consulting the United Nations, a trial, or revealing any clear factual
basis for claiming its targets are terrorists and confined to them.
There is already a near epidemic of nations proclaiming the right to
attack other nations or intensify violations of human rights of their
own people on the basis of George Bush?s assertions of power in the
war against terrorism. Mary Robinson, in her quietly courageous
statements as her term as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights ended,
has spoken of the ?ripple effect? U.S. claims of right to strike
first and suspend fundamental human rights protection is having.
On September 11, 2002, Colombia, whose new administration is strongly
supported by the U.S., ?claimed new authority to arrest suspects
without warrants and declare zones under military control,? including
?[N]ew powers, which also make it easier to wiretap phones and limit
foreigners? access to conflict zones... allow security agents to
enter your house or office without a warrant at any time of day
because they think you?re suspicious.? These additional threats to
human rights follow Post-September 11 ?emergency? plans to set up a
network of a million informants in a nation of forty million. See,
New York Times, September 12, 2002, p. A7.
3. The United States, Not Iraq, Is the Greatest Single Threat to the
Independence and Purpose of the United Nations.
President Bush?s claim that Iraq is a threat justifying war is
false. Eighty percent of Iraq?s military capacity was destroyed in
1991 according to the Pentagon. Ninety percent of materials and
equipment required to manufacture weapons of mass destruction was
destroyed by UN inspectors during more than eight years of
inspections. Iraq was powerful, compared to most of its neighbors, in
1990. Today it is weak. One infant out of four born live in Iraq
weighs less than 2 kilos, promising short lives, illness and impaired
development. In 1989, fewer than one in twenty infants born live
weighed less than two kilos. Any threat to peace Iraq might become is
remote, far less than that of many other nations and groups and cannot
justify a violent assault. An attack on Iraq will make attacks in
retaliation against the U.S. and governments which support its
actions far more probable for years to come.
George Bush proclaims Iraq a threat to the authority of the United
Nations while U.S.-coerced UN sanctions continue to cause the death
rate of the Iraqi people to increase. Deaths caused by sanctions have
been at genocidal levels for twelve years. Iraq can only plead
helplessly for an end to this crime against its people. The UN role
in the sanctions against Iraq compromise and stain the UN?s integrity
and honor. This makes it all the more important for the UN now to
resist this war.
Inspections were used as an excuse to continue sanctions for eight
years while thousands of Iraqi children and elderly died each month.
Iraq is the victim of criminal sanctions that should have been lifted
in 1991. For every person killed by terrorist acts in the U.S. on
9/11, five hundred people have died in Iraq from sanctions.
It is the U.S. that threatens not merely the authority of the United
Nations, but its independence, integrity and hope for effectiveness.
The U.S. pays UN dues if, when and in the amount it chooses. It
coerces votes of members. It coerces choices of personnel on the
Secretariat. It rejoined UNESCO to gain temporary favor after 18 years
of opposition to its very purposes. It places spies in UN inspection
teams.
The U.S. has renounced treaties controlling nuclear weapons and their
proliferation, voted against the protocol enabling enforcement of the
Biological Weapons Convention, rejected the treaty banning land mines,
endeavored to prevent its creation and since to cripple the
International Criminal Court, and frustrated the Convention on the
Child and the prohibition against using children in war. The U.S. has
opposed virtually every other international effort to control and
limit war, protect the environment, reduce poverty and protect
health.
George Bush cites two invasions of other countries by Iraq during the
last 22 years. He ignores the many scores of U.S. invasions and
assaults on other countries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas during
the last 220 years, and the permanent seizure of lands from Native
Americans and other nations--lands like Florida, Texas, Arizona, New
Mexico, California, and Puerto Rico, among others, seized by force
and threat.
In the same last 22 years the U.S. has invaded, or assaulted Grenada,
Nicaragua, Libya, Panama, Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Yugoslavia,
Afghanistan and others directly, while supporting assaults and
invasions elsewhere in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
It is healthy to remember that the U.S. invaded and occupied little
Grenada in 1983 after a year of threats, killing hundreds of civilians
and destroying its small mental hospital, where many patients died. In
a surprise attack on the sleeping and defenseless cities of Tripoli
and Benghazi in April 1986, the U.S. killed hundreds of civilians and
damaged four foreign embassies. It launched 21 Tomahawk cruise
missiles against the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum in
August 1998, destroying the source of half the medicines available to
the people of Sudan. For years it has armed forces in Uganda and
southern Sudan fighting the government of Sudan. The U.S. has bombed
Iraq on hundreds of occasions since the Gulf War, including this week,
killing hundreds of people without a casualty or damage to an
attacking plane.
4. Why Has George Bush Decided The U.S. Must Attack Iraq Now?
There is no rational basis to believe Iraq is a threat to the United
States, or any other country. The reason to attack Iraq must be found
elsewhere.
As governor of Texas, George Bush presided over scores of executions,
more than any governor in the United States since the death penalty
was reinstated in 1976 (after a hiatus from 1967). He revealed the
same zeal he has shown for ?regime change? for Iraq when he oversaw
the executions of minors, women, retarded persons and aliens whose
rights under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of
notification of their arrest to a foreign mission of their nationality
were violated. The Supreme Court of the U.S. held that executions of a
mentally retarded person constitute cruel and unusual punishment in
violation of the U.S. Constitution. George Bush addresses the United
Nations with these same values and willfulness.
His motives may include to save a failing Presidency which has
converted a healthy economy and treasury surplus into multi-trillion
dollar losses; to fulfill the dream, which will become a nightmare, of
a new world order to serve special interests in the U.S.; to settle a
family grudge against Iraq; to weaken the Arab nation, one people at a
time; to strike a Muslim nation to weaken Islam; to protect Israel,
or make its position more dominant in the region; to secure control of
Iraq?s oil to enrich U.S. interests, further dominate oil in the
region and control oil prices. Aggression against Iraq for any of
these purposes is criminal and a violation of a great many
international conventions and laws including the General Assembly
Resolution on the Definition of Aggression of December 14, 1974.
Prior regime changes by the U.S. brought to power among a long list of
tyrants, such leaders as the Shah of Iran, Mobutu in the Congo,
Pinochet in Chile, all replacing democratically elected heads of
government. 5. A Rational Policy Intended to Reduce the Threat of
Weapons of Mass Destruction in The Middle East Must Include Israel.
A UN or U.S. policy of selecting enemies of the U.S. for attack is
criminal and can only heighten hatred, division, terrorism and lead to
war. The U.S. gives Israel far more aid per capita than
the total per capita income of sub Sahara Africans from all sources.
U.S.-coerced sanctions have reduced per capita income for the people
of Iraq by 75% since 1989. Per capita income in Israel over the past
decade has been approximately 12 times the per capita income of
Palestinians.
Israel increased its decades-long attacks on the Palestinian people,
using George Bush?s proclamation of war on terrorism as an excuse, to
indiscriminately destroy cities and towns in the West Bank and Gaza
and seize more land in violation of international law and repeated
Security Council and General Assembly resolutions.
Israel has a stockpile of hundreds of nuclear warheads derived from
the United States, sophisticated rockets capable of accurate delivery
at distances of several thousand kilometers, and contracts with the
U.S. for joint development of more sophisticated rocketry and other
arms with the U.S.
Possession of weapons of mass destruction by a single nation in a
region with a history of hostility promotes a race for proliferation
and war. The UN must act to reduce and eliminate all weapons of mass
destruction, not submit to demands to punish areas of evil and enemies
of the superpower that possesses the majority of all such weapons and
capacity for their delivery.
Israel has violated and ignored more UN Resolutions for forty years
than any other nation. It has done so with impunity.
The violation of Security Council resolutions cannot be the basis for
a UN-approved assault on any nation, or people, in a time of peace, or
the absence of a threat of imminent attack, but comparable efforts to
enforce Security Council resolutions must be made against all nations
who violate them.
6. The Choice Is War Or Peace.
The UN and the U.S. must seek peace, not war. An attack on Iraq may
open a Pandora?s box that will condemn the world to decades of
spreading violence. Peace is not only possible; it is essential,
considering the heights to which science and technology have raised
the human art of planetary and self-destruction.
If George Bush is permitted to attack Iraq with or without the
approval of the UN, he will become Public Enemy Number One--and the UN
itself worse than useless, an accomplice in the wars it was created to
end. The Peoples of the World then will have to find some way to begin
again if they hope to end the scourge of war.
This is a defining moment for the United Nations. Will it stand
strong, independent and true to its Charter, international law and the
reasons for its being, or will it submit to the coercion of a
superpower leading us toward a lawless world and condone war against
the cradle of civilization?
Do not let this happen.
Sincerely,
Ramsey Clark
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