More ‘Right’ on Israel Than Bush

The moment images of Saddam Hussein’s capture flashed across TV screens around the world, John Kerry and Joseph Lieberman jumped on the opportunity to lash out at Howard Dean for not supporting the war on Iraq, even as they congratulated the Bush White House for a job well done.

It was not, however, the first time that the two Democratic candidates have attacked the former Vermont governor for being too “liberal” on foreign policy. Nor is Iraq the only issue where the Democratic leadership — and its anointed heirs — have revealed an unmistakably rightwing agenda.

It is a less-known fact that when it comes to the Israel/Palestinian issue, the Democratic establishment is virtually indistinguishable from the Bush administration.

The less-than-moderate position was on blatant display back in September when Dean was attacked by two of his principal rivals as well as the House Democratic leadership for calling on the United States to take a more “even-handed role” as the chief mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On Sept. 3, Dean declared that the United States should work to “bring the sides together” and “not point fingers” at who is to blame.

He was immediately attacked during a televised debate on Sept. 9 by Joe Lieberman, who described his comments as a move to “compromise our support for Israel,” arguing that a more balanced position in the peace process was tantamount to “breaking commitments to longtime allies.”

When Dean pointed out that Israel would have to remove an enormous number of settlements in the Occupied Territories to achieve peace, Senator Lieberman strongly objected, insisting that the number of settlements evacuated by Israel should be up to the parties in negotiations. In reality, despite eight years of peace talks in the ’90s, throughout which Palestinians demanded that Israel withdraw from its settlements in the Occupied Territories or even just suspend construction of new ones, the number of settlements has nearly doubled. Sharon’s insistence on incorporating most of these settlements into Israel is, in fact, one of the most important obstacles preventing the negotiation of a final peace agreement.

Senator Kerry, however, claimed just the opposite in his response to Dean’s policy statement, declaring that if Dean called for a more even-handed approach as president, “it would throw this volatile region into even more turmoil.”

Such desperate attacks by two presidential hopefuls who now see the upstart Dean surging ahead of them in public opinion polls should not be surprising. What is far more significant, however, is the decision of leading Democratic members of the House of Representatives to join the fray.

In an open letter dated Sept. 10, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Assistant Minority Leader Steny Hoyer, and House Democratic Caucus Chairman Robert Menendez led dozens of other top Congressional Democrats criticized Dean for his statements. Other signatories included such Democratic stalwarts as Howard Berman, Gary Ackerman, Robert Matsui, Tom Lantos, Nita Lowey, Barney Frank, Patrick Kennedy, Edward Markey, Ellen Tauscher, Linda Sanchez, Jose Serrano, Harold Ford, and Shelley Berkley.

The letter characterized Dean’s call for a more balanced approached by the U.S. government in the peace process as questioning Israel’s right to exist in peace and security. In their letter, the House Democratic leadership also declared that U.S. policy must be “based on unequivocal support for Israel’s right to exist and to be free from terror,” even though Dean has never given even a hint of believing anything to the contrary.

Ignoring Governor Dean’s repeated and categorical denunciation of Palestinian terrorism, the House Democratic leaders also declared that Americans must “raise our voices against all forms of terrorism” and that “this is not the time to be sending mixed messages.”

To have virtually the entire Democratic House leadership openly criticize a policy statement made by their own front-runner is unprecedented. It is also indicative of Pelosi’s determination to make clear that such voices of moderation have no place in the Democratic Party.

Pelosi and other Democratic leaders are essentially pushing the age-old fallacy: support for Ariel Sharon equals support for the state of Israel.

In March, Pelosi and other Democratic leaders signed a letter to President Bush opposing the White House-endorsed Middle East “road map,” which they perceived as being too lenient on the Palestinians. The authors insisted that the peace process must be based “above all” on the end of Palestinian violence and the establishment of a new Palestinian leadership. There was no mention of any reciprocal actions by the Israeli government. The letter also came out in opposition of any other government or other entity monitoring progress on the ground.

In response to widespread reports issued by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other groups charging Israeli occupation forces of committing human rights abuses during its military offensive in the West Bank last year, Pelosi and other Democratic leaders went on record declaring that the Israeli attacks were completely justifiable and were aimed “only at the terrorist infrastructure.” Pelosi also praised President Bush’s “leadership” in supporting Sharon, whom the president declared to be “a man of peace,” In fact, in a speech before the AIPAC convention in April, Pelosi denounced President Bush for suggesting that Israel needed to freeze construction of new settlements in the Occupied Territories, claiming that it gave comfort to Israel’s enemies.

The irony is that moderate Israelis have repeatedly called upon the Bush administration to take a more even-handed approach in the peace process, and to press Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to compromise on the settlements and other issues. Kerry, Lieberman, and the House Democratic leadership, however, demand that Dean should instead follow lock step in support of President Bush’s strident backing of Israel’s rightist government.

The Democratic establishment appear to have adopted the same logic of the Republicans, who insist that only by supporting Bush administration policies can one support America, or in this case, Israel.

Dean’s background makes the charges of anti-Israeli sentiment even more far-fetched. His wife, Judith Steinberg Dean, is Jewish and has close connections with mainstream Zionist circles. Their children have been raised Jewish. His campaign co-chair, Steve Grossman, is the former president of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). His only trip to Israel, which took place last fall, was organized and paid for by AIPAC and he did not meet with any prominent Palestinians or Israeli peace activists. Dean has described his attachment to Israel as “visceral.”

In fact, Dean is widely seen as a hawk on Israel and Palestine. He has stated that his position is closer to the right-wing AIPAC, which allies itself with Israel’s ruling Likud Bloc, than it is to Americans for Peace Now, which identifies with the Israeli peace movement and the more liberal Israeli parties.

Much to the chagrin of peace and human rights advocates, Dean supported the Bush Administration’s recent $9 billion loan guarantee to Sharon without adding conditions, such as freezing new settlement activity in the Occupied Territories. Dean has repeatedly stated his belief that the major issue in the conflict is Palestinian terrorism, not the Israeli occupation that has spawned it. He has told the Washington Post that Israel has every right to assassinate Hamas “terrorists” as “enemies in a war.”

Such positions have led many Democrats concerned about peace and human rights in the Middle East to abandon Dean and back the campaign of Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who supports the position of the Israeli peace movement, and the Zionist Left.

Dean’s perspective is essentially that of former President Clinton and his chief Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross, which corresponded closely to that of former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and the hawkish wing of the Labor Party. While such a position proved inadequate in securing the peace and is well to the right of the Israeli peace movement, the Clinton/Ross/Barak position did at least accept in principle the idea that substantial Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories was necessary and desirable in order to end the violence and make Israel secure.

What is disconcerting about the Democratic leadership is not only that it has rejected the position of the Israeli left, but also that of Israeli centrists as articulated by Dean and other supporters of the Clinton administration.

It is unclear what political advantage the Democratic leadership can gain by attacking Dean’s position on Israel. According to a poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland this May, a clear majority of Americans recognize that the Bush administration is biased towards Israel. Moreover, when asked about what position the United States should have, a full 73 percent stated that the United States should not take either side in the conflict.

In other words, Senators Kerry and Lieberman and the House Democratic leadership have gone on record supporting the policies of the Bush administration against the will of an overwhelming majority of the American people.

In many respects, Howard Dean is a quintessential centrist Democrat. However, he has been able to attract a following that, on average, is considerably to his left in large part because he had the common sense to oppose the U.S. invasion of Iraq and to forcefully articulate the frustration and anger among rank-and-file Democrats against the Bush administration.

Perhaps that is why Kerry, Lieberman, and the Democratic Congressional leaders hope to use Israel to undermine Dean’s extraordinary popularity, since his anti-war stance exposes their own shameless pandering to the Bush agenda.

It is unclear whether Israel as an issue will affect Dean’s chances for the party’s presidential nomination. But the attacks from his own party seem to have blunted his candor. In his first major foreign policy address on Dec. 15, Dean said little about Middle East peace, and took pains to straddle the fence: “Our alliance with Israel is and must remain unshakeable, and so will be my commitment every day of our administration to work with the parties for a solution that ends decades of blood and tears.”

The flap over Israel does, however, make one simple fact painfully evident: when it comes to the Middle East, there is truly no difference between Democratic leadership and the White House.

http://www.alternet.org/story/17438/more_%27right%27_on_israel_than_bush/?page=entire

Israelis and Palestinians Attempt to Jumpstart the Peace Process Despite Washington’s Support for Sharon

The peace plan signed in Geneva December 1 by leading Israeli and Palestinian political figures represents an important step forward. Former president Jimmy Carter who was present at the ceremony may be correct in noting that ‘It’s unlikely we shall ever see a more promising foundation for peace.’

Contrary to initial reports at the time and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s inept diplomacy notwithstanding, then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak’s peace proposal at Camp David in July 2000 did not actually provide the Palestinians with a viable independent state. President Bill Clinton’s amended proposal that December was more reasonable, but still fell short of what even moderate Palestinians could accept.

However, additional Israeli-Palestinian talks in Taba, Egypt in January 2001 — which took place without direct U.S. involvement — came tantalizingly close to reaching a final peace agreement before they were suspended on the eve of the election of right-wing leader Ariel Sharon as Israeli prime minister. Efforts by the Palestinians to resume negotiations where they left off have been rebuffed by both Sharon and by the Bush administration, who have insisted that the Palestinian Authority must first stop terrorist attacks by extremist groups against Israeli civilians as well as armed resistance to Israeli forces in the occupied territories.

The Geneva Initiative, painstakingly negotiated for more than two years despite ongoing violence by both sides, is based upon where the Taba talks left off. In contrast to Washington’s insistence on focusing upon the thus far unsuccessful confidence-building measures described in the Roadmap, the architects of the Geneva Initiative went directly to the issues at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and developed a detailed outline for a permanent-status agreement.

Actively promoted by the Swiss government and with the support of other Europeans, the 50-page document addresses the rights and security concerns of both peoples. It has been endorsed by such prominent international figures as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, former Polish president Lech Walesa, Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov, former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, longtime German foreign minister Hans-Dientrich Genscher and former South African president F.W. DeKlerk, as well as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and his predecessor Boutros Boutro-Ghali.

According to the agreement, Israel would withdraw from virtually all of the Gaza Strip and West Bank, which were seized by Israeli forces in the 1967 War, as well as from most of its settlements in these occupied territories. Jerusalem would be the co-capital of both Israel and Palestine, with Israel controlling the important Jewish holy sites (as well as the Jewish quarter of the Old City) and Palestine controlling the major Muslim and Christian holy sites as well as Arab neighborhoods in the formerly Jordanian-controlled eastern part of the city.

The new Palestinian state would be demilitarized with strict international guarantees for Israeli security, including the disarming and disbanding of private militias and terrorist groups. There would be full diplomatic relations between the two countries, with the Palestinians recognizing Israel as the homeland for the Jewish people.

The exception to a full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories would be the Latrun area in the West Bank and a swath of land around East Jerusalem where a large number of Jewish-only settlements have been built over the past three decades. This constitutes a major concession on the part of the Palestinians, since these settlements are a direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention — which forbids a government from moving its civilian population onto territories seized by military force — as well as UN Security Council resolutions 446, 452, 465 and 471, which call on Israel to withdraw from such settlements.

In return, the Israelis will cede an equivalent amount of uninhabited land to the new state of Palestine.
In perhaps the most significant concession from the Palestinian side, their negotiators have waived the right of return of Palestinian refugees and their descendants into what is now Israel, despite such guarantees under a series of United Nations resolutions as well as the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights and other international treaties.

It appears that even with such major concessions, the agreement has the support of most Palestinian leaders. The head of the Palestinian negotiators was Yasser Abed Rabbo, a close associated of Arafat and a former minister in the Palestinian Authority. He was joined not only by former ministers Hisham Abdel Razeq and Nabil Kassis, but also young Fatah militants like Qadoura Fares and Mohammed Khourani as well as top security officials from the Palestinian establishment.

The Israeli negotiators were led by Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli justice minister who as deputy foreign minister ten years ago played an instrumental role in drafting the Oslo Accords. Other top Israeli officials in the negotiations included such prominent Knesset members as former Labor Party Leader Avram Mitzna and former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg.

A scientific public opinion poll sponsored by the James Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University late last month revealed that a majority of both Israelis and Palestinians support the outline of the agreement. A differently-worded survey by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz showed somewhat less support on the Israeli side, but still indicated a significant minority in support of the Geneva Initiative.

While the Palestine Authority has thus far failed to explicitly endorse the agreement, Arafat wrote a letter that was read at the signing ceremony in which the Palestinian leader called it ‘a brave and courageous initiative’ which ‘opens the door to peace.’ Haaretz reported that the details of the agreement were approved by Arafat, former Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas and current prime minister Ahmed Qureia.

By contrast, Israeli Prime Minster Sharon has denounced the initiative, with his Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert referring to it as ‘shameful,’ ‘pathetic,’ and ‘very grave.’

Given that Arafat has taken a far more moderate position than Sharon, it is ironic that the Bush Administration still insists that Sharon is ‘a man of peace’ and that Arafat is the chief obstacle to a peaceful resolution of the conflict. The United States has provided large-scale military, economic and diplomatic support for Sharon’s occupation policies while demanding that Arafat be marginalized or deposed.

Similarly, the entire Democratic Party leadership in Congress signed a public letter this September declaring that ‘Time and time again, the Israeli people have shown their willingness to take risks for peace’ but that ‘The Palestinians have at best been ambivalent about their willingness to accept Israel’s existence.’

Not surprisingly, Washington has not been terribly supportive of the Geneva Initiative, since it is only through such distortions that the United States can justify its support for Sharon’s rightist government, its occupation forces and its colonization drive in the West Bank.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, who has dismissed this breakthrough as ‘a private effort,’ put forward the administration’s position that it was premature to talk about the substantive issues since they should be reserved for the latter stages of the U.S.-led peace process, which could not even begin until there was a cessation of Palestinian violence.

Principal Israeli negotiator Beilin has stated that he is resigned to the fact that ‘The Geneva Initiative will not be accepted by Washington.’ Despite this, however, he and his Palestinian counterpart were able to arrange a meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell over Sharon’s strident objections. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Senator Diane Feinstein and Representatives Lois Capps and Amo Houghton have introduced a resolution broadly supportive of such peace efforts.

The Geneva Initiative shows that a comprehensive negotiated peace between Israelis and Palestinians is possible. The question is whether the United States will allow it to happen.

Israelis and Palestinians Attempt to Jumpstart the Peace Process Despite Washington’s Support for Sharon

The peace plan signed in Geneva December 1 by leading Israeli and Palestinian political figures represents an important step forward. Former president Jimmy Carter–who was present at the ceremony–may be correct in noting that “It’s unlikely we shall ever see a more promising foundation for peace.”

Contrary to initial reports at the time and Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat’s inept diplomacy notwithstanding, then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak’s peace proposal at Camp David in July 2000 did not actually provide the Palestinians with a viable independent state. President Bill Clinton’s amended proposal that December was more reasonable, but still fell short of what even moderate Palestinians could accept.

However, additional Israeli-Palestinian talks in Taba, Egypt in January 2001–which took place without direct U.S. involvement–came tantalizingly close to reaching a final peace agreement before they were suspended on the eve of the election of right-wing leader Ariel Sharon as Israeli prime minister. Efforts by the Palestinians to resume negotiations where they left off have been rebuffed both by Sharon and by the Bush administration, who have insisted that the Palestinian Authority must first stop terrorist attacks by extremist groups against Israeli civilians as well as armed resistance to Israeli forces in the occupied territories.

The Geneva Initiative, painstakingly negotiated for more than two years–despite ongoing violence by both sides–is based on the point the Taba talks left off. In contrast to Washington’s insistence on focusing upon the thus far unsuccessful confidence-building measures described in the Roadmap, the architects of the Geneva Initiative went directly to the issues at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and developed a detailed outline for a permanent-status agreement.

Actively promoted by the Swiss government and with the support of other Europeans, the 50-page document addresses the rights and security concerns of both peoples. It has been endorsed by such prominent international figures as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, former Polish president Lech Walesca, Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov, former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, longtime German foreign minister Hans-Dientrich Genscher and former South African president F.W. DeKlerk, as well as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and his predecessor Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

The Agreement

According to the agreement, Israel would withdraw from virtually all of the Gaza Strip and West Bank, which were seized by Israeli forces in the 1967 War, as well as from most of its settlements in these occupied territories. Jerusalem would be the co-capital of both Israel and Palestine, with Israel controlling the important Jewish holy sites (as well as the Jewish quarter of the Old City) and Palestine controlling the major Muslim and Christian holy sites as well as Arab neighborhoods in the formerly Jordanian-controlled eastern part of the city.

The new Palestinian state would be demilitarized with strict international guarantees for Israeli security, including the disarming and disbanding of private militias and terrorist groups. There would be full diplomatic relations between the two countries, with the Palestinians recognizing Israel as the homeland for the Jewish people.

The exception to a full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories would be the Latrun area in the West Bank and a swath of land around East Jerusalem where a large number of Jewish-only settlements have been built over the past three decades. This constitutes a major concession on the part of the Palestinians, since these settlements are a direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention–which forbids a government from moving its civilian population onto territories seized by military force–as well as UN Security Council resolutions 446, 452, 465, and 471, which call on Israel to withdraw from such settlements. In return, the Israelis will cede an equivalent amount of uninhabited land to the new state of Palestine.

In perhaps the most significant concession from the Palestinian side, their negotiators have waived the right of return of Palestinian refugees and their descendants into what is now Israel, despite such guarantees under a series of United Nations resolutions as well as the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights and other international treaties.

Support for the Agreement

It appears that even with such major concessions, the agreement has the support of most Palestinian leaders. The head of the Palestinian negotiators was Yasser Abed Rabbo, a close associate of Arafat and a former minister in the Palestinian Authority. He was joined not only by former ministers Hisham Abdel Razeq and Nabil Kassis, but also young Fatah militants like Qadoura Fares and Mohammed Khourani as well as top security officials from the Palestinian establishment.

The Israeli negotiators were led by Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli justice minister who–as deputy foreign minister ten years ago–played an instrumental role in drafting the Oslo Accords. Other top Israeli officials in the negotiations included such prominent Knesset members as former Labor Party Leader Avram Mitzna and former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg.

A scientific public opinion poll sponsored by the James Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University late last month revealed that a majority of both Israelis and Palestinians support the outline of the agreement. A differently worded survey by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz showed somewhat less support on the Israeli side, but still indicated a significant minority in support of the Geneva Initiative.

While the Palestine Authority has thus far failed to explicitly endorse the agreement, Arafat wrote a letter that was read at the signing ceremony in which the Palestinian leader called it “a brave and courageous initiative” which “opens the door to peace.” Haaretz reported that Arafat, former Palestinian Prime minister Mahmoud Abbas, and current Prime minister Ahmed Qureia approved the details of the agreement. By contrast, Israeli Prime Minster Sharon has denounced the initiative, with his Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert referring to it as “shameful,” “pathetic,” and “very grave.”

Given that Arafat has taken a far more moderate position than Sharon, it is ironic that the Bush administration still insists that Sharon is “a man of peace” and that Arafat is the chief obstacle to a peaceful resolution of the conflict. The United States has provided large-scale military, economic, and diplomatic support for Sharon’s occupation policies while demanding that Arafat be marginalized or deposed. Similarly, the entire Democratic Party leadership in Congress signed a public letter this September declaring that “Time and time again, the Israeli people have shown their willingness to take risks for peace” but that “The Palestinians have at best been ambivalent about their willingness to accept Israel’s existence.”

Not surprisingly, Washington has not been terribly supportive of the Geneva Initiative, since it is only through such distortions that the United States can justify its support for Sharon’s rightist government, its occupation forces, and its colonization drive in the West Bank. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, who has dismissed this breakthrough as “a private effort,” put forward the administration’s position that it was premature to talk about the substantive issues since they should be reserved for the latter stages of the U.S.-led peace process, which could not even begin until there was a cessation of Palestinian violence. Principal Israeli negotiator Beilin has stated that he is resigned to the fact that “The Geneva Initiative will not be accepted by Washington.”

Despite this, however, he and his Palestinian counterpart were able to arrange a meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell over Sharon’s strident objections. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Senator Diane Feinstein and Representatives Lois Capps and Amos Houghton have introduced a resolution broadly supportive of such peace efforts. The Geneva Initiative shows that a comprehensive, negotiated peace between Israelis and Palestinians is possible. The question is whether the United States will allow it to happen.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/israelis_and_palestinians_attempt_to_jumpstart_the_peace_process_despite_washingtons_support_for_sharon

Saddam’s Arrest Raises Troubling Questions

The capture of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein by U.S. occupation forces is likely to result in one of the world’s most brutal tyrants of recent decades finally facing judgment for his crimes against humanity. It has also boosted morale in an administration desperately trying to justify its invasion and occupation of Iraq–which they initially justified on false pretenses. While U.S. allegations that Iraq actively supported the al Qaeda terrorist network and possessed weapons of mass destruction in the months prior to the U.S. invasion appear to have been deliberate falsehoods, no one can challenge the fact that Saddam Hussein was a ruthless dictator.

Unfortunately, Saddam’s capture will not likely improve the situation for U.S. occupation forces or for those seeking justice against war criminals.

The Impact on the U.S. Occupation

Saddam Hussein’s capture is not likely to reduce armed resistance to U.S. occupation forces. While some of the guerrillas have clear ties to Ba’athist elements associated with the former regime, Saddam was not directing guerrilla operations against American forces. He has no experience in guerrilla warfare and his military titles were exclusively those he awarded to himself. (As a young man, he was denied admittance into Iraq’s military academy.) Furthermore, there are no indications that the hide-out from which he was captured had any communications equipment capable of directing military operations.

Furthermore, most independent observers believe that the vast majority of the ongoing Iraqi resistance is based upon popular opposition to the U.S. occupation, not out of support for the former regime. Therefore, Saddam Hussein’s capture will not likely dampen the opposition.

Nor will it lead to greater cooperation by Iraqis with American occupation forces. The failure of more Iraqis to cooperate is not, as U.S. officials have asserted, because they feared Saddam Hussein would return to power. After alienating the vast majority of his own people through years of brutal and arbitrary rule before going down in ignominious defeat, it was hard to imagine him ever returning to power, even if U.S. occupation forces were eventually driven out.

The biggest fear among Iraqis is not what Saddam might do to those who work with U.S. forces but what other Iraqis might do to them if they are perceived as being collaborators with a foreign occupier. An even bigger reason why more Iraqis are not cooperating with Washington is simply their widespread opposition to the U.S. occupation itself. Saddam’s capture will not likely change that situation either.

While in power, Saddam cynically manipulated the Iraqi people’s sense of nationalism and resentment toward Western imperialism as key components in his effort to build a totalitarian state and his cult of personality. That does not mean, however, that that sense of nationalism no longer has widespread appeal among ordinary Iraqis. While Saddam Hussein may have been to Ba’athism what Josef Stalin was to Marxism, that doesn’t mean that the U.S. occupation of Iraq won’t end up looking like the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

This is why even Saddam Hussein’s harshest critics in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world are experiencing such mixed emotions–joy and relief that the tyrant is in custody, but a great uneasiness that his capture was engineered by U.S. occupation forces that illegally invaded and occupied a sovereign Arab nation.

What Kind of Justice?

As one of the most notorious dictators and war criminals of recent decades, international human rights groups and prominent jurists have called upon the United States to hand over Saddam Hussein to a United Nations-sponsored international tribunal to be tried for crimes against humanity.

Such a UN-backed tribunal, consisting of both local and international jurors, has indicted former Liberian President Charles Taylor, the notorious African war lord who is responsible for at least as many deaths as Saddam Hussein. Special UN-sponsored war crimes tribunals have also been set up to prosecute leaders and perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide as well as those responsible for ethnic cleansing and other war crimes in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s, including former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.

However, the Bush administration has refused to consider such an option in this case, instead stating its intent to turn Saddam Hussein over to a special tribunal set up by the Iraqi Governing Council, a group of pro-Western Iraqi exiles and local representatives of the country’s various ethnic communities appointed by U.S. occupation authorities. The regulations for the five-person tribunal were drafted largely by U.S. government lawyers who pointedly ruled out any direct role for the United Nations in the process.

Furthermore, while the death penalty would not be an option in the proposed international tribunal, it would be a likely outcome in the U.S.-organized proceedings. In virtually every country in recent decades where a dictatorship was overthrown in a popular uprising, one of the first acts of the new government has been to abolish the death penalty. This is not likely to occur in Iraq, however, where the government was thrown out by invading forces from the United States, the only Western industrialized democracy that still executes its prisoners.

Even though a trial as U.S. occupation authorities envision may be procedurally fair and even though Saddam Hussein certainly deserves to be brought to justice, he will likely be tried under a body set up by an occupation authority of a foreign government that illegally invaded the country. As a result, Saddam’s eventual punishment–however well-deserved–will not advance the cause of justice. It will be widely seen as a kind of “victor’s justice,” where Saddam Hussein is perceived to be tried not because of an objective assessment of the seriousness of his crimes–such as a prosecution under the International Criminal Court or some other UN-sponsored tribunal–but because he was on the losing side of a war.

For example, one of the principal war crimes for which Saddam is likely to be prosecuted is the genocidal Anfal campaign against Iraq’s Kurdish minority in the 1980s, which resulted in deaths of more than 80,000 civilians and the destruction of more than 4,000 villages.

The Bush administration appears to be in no hurry, however, to prosecute Turkish officials for their genocidal campaign against that country’s Kurdish minority during the 1990s, where over 3,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed and over two million Kurds became refugees in an operation in which more than three-quarters of the weapons were of U.S. origin. The U.S.-backed war cost over 40,000 lives, primarily Kurdish civilians. President Bill Clinton and congressional leaders of both parties successfully blocked efforts by human rights groups to stop U.S. support for the repression.

Indeed, the United States has repeatedly demonstrated its lack of concern regarding war crimes when the perpetrator is an ally.

For example, Indonesia’s General Suharto, who ruled his predominantly Muslim Southeast Asian nation for 34 years, has even more blood on his hands than does Saddam Hussein. He oversaw the purges of suspected leftists in the mid-1960s, taking over a half a million lives. His invasion and occupation of East Timor ten years later resulted in the deaths of 200,000 people, more than one hundred times the estimated number of Kuwaitis killed under the 1990-91 Iraqi occupation of that oil-rich sheikdom. Yet Suharto was a favorite ally of the United States under both Republican and Democratic administrations until the dictator was ousted by his own people in a largely nonviolent popular uprising in 1998. He currently lives in comfortable retirement with absolutely no efforts by the United States to bring him to justice.

The United States helped stymie efforts to prosecute its one-time ally General Augusto Pinochet, despite widespread crimes against humanity during his bloody rule in Chile. The Bush administration–with bipartisan support in Congress–has also given strong diplomatic, military, and financial support to Israel’s right-wing prime minister Ariel Sharon, who has been responsible for a series of war crimes over several decades.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration–again, with bipartisan congressional support–has consistently sought to undermine the International Criminal Court (ICC), established in July 2002, in the apparent belief that the United States alone has the right to determine who gets to be tried for war crimes and who does not. For example, Congress overwhelmingly passed a law in 2002 that prohibits U.S. cooperation with the International Criminal Court, restricts U.S. participation in UN peacekeeping operations to situations where U.S. forces are explicitly exempt from prosecution for any war crimes, bans the sharing of U.S. intelligence with the ICC, prohibits most foreign aid to countries that ratify the ICC statute, and authorizes the president to use “all means necessary and appropriate” to free from captivity “any U.S. or allied personnel held by or on behalf of the ICC,” including a military attack on The Hague.

The message seems to be that a war criminal will only be brought to justice if he challenges U.S. foreign policy prerogatives. By contrast, if a war criminal is an American ally, he is not only safe but will be openly supported.

Even putting aside the moral and legal questions raised by such a policy, these double-standards are likely to make Saddam Hussein come across to many as more of a martyr and victim of U.S. imperialism than the war criminal that he is. According to Harold Koh, a Yale law professor who served as assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration, “The image of him in the dock day after day will become a human symbol of the humiliation many Iraqis feel their country is being subjected to.”

As long as the United States opposes the International Criminal Court and uses the prosecution of war criminals as a sinister political tool rather than a universal principle of justice, the impact of a trial could be to increase the polarization and resistance in Iraq rather than help mend a nation that has suffered so much from dictatorship, war, sanctions, and occupation.

The United States and Saddam Hussein

Modern Iraq is a creation of British colonialists who established control over the territory following the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, essentially creating the country from three Ottoman provinces. A nationalist coup in 1958 overthrew the pro-British monarch, limiting Western influence in the country and shifting the ideological orientation toward left-wing nationalism. The Baath Party–espousing pan-Arab nationalism, socialism, and anti-imperialism–first seized power in 1963. Saddam Hussein rose to prominence in the late 1970s, purportedly with quiet U.S. support, since he favored shifting Iraq’s foreign policy away from its pro-Soviet position to that of non-alignment.

Despite imposing a brutal totalitarian system and a cult of personality around his leadership, the United States joined the Soviets, French, and British in recognizing Iraq’s importance in the regional balance of power. All maintained a largely cooperative relationship with Saddam Hussein’s exceptionally oppressive regime, much to the chagrin of human rights advocates. While U.S. officials never considered the Iraqi regime an American ally, as some critics have claimed, Iraq was nevertheless seen as a strategic asset with which the United States could cooperate throughout the regime’s dramatic military buildup in the 1980s.

Ironically, many of the organizations and individuals now calling for a UN-sponsored proceeding were active in exposing Saddam’s human rights abuses back in the 1980s while the U.S. government was covering them up.

The March 1988 massacre at Halabja–where Iraq government forces killed upwards of 5,000 civilians in that Kurdish town by gassing them with chemical weapons–was downplayed by the Reagan administration, even to the point of claiming that Iran, then the preferred American enemy, was actually responsible. The Halabja tragedy was not an isolated incident, as U.S. officials were well aware at the time. UN reports in 1986 and 1987 documented Iraq’s use of chemical weapons, which were confirmed both by investigations from the CIA and by U.S. embassy staff who visited Iraqi Kurdish refugees in Turkey. However, not only was the United States not particularly concerned about Saddam’s ongoing repression and the use of chemical weapons, the United States actually was supporting the Iraqi government’s procurement effort of materials necessary for the development of such an arsenal.

Furthermore, officials from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency were stationed in Baghdad to pass on satellite imagery to the Iraqi military in order to help them target Iranian troop concentrations, in the full knowledge that Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian forces.

During the 1980s, American companies, with U.S. government backing, supplied Saddam Hussein’s government with much of the raw materials for Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons programs. A Senate committee reported in 1994 that American companies licensed by the U.S. Commerce Department had shipped large quantities of materials usable in weapons production in Iraq, noting that such trade continued at least until the end of the decade, despite evidence of Iraqi chemical warfare against Iranians and Iraqi Kurds. Much of this trade was no oversight. It was made possible because the Reagan administration took Iraq off of its list of countries supporting terrorism in 1982, making the country eligible to receive such items. This re-designation came in spite of Iraq’s ongoing support of Abu Nidal and other terrorist groups.

As late as December 1989, just eight months prior to Iraq’s designation as an enemy for having invaded Kuwait, the Bush administration pushed through new loans to the Iraqi government in order to facilitate U.S.-Iraqi trade. Meanwhile, according to a 1992 Senate investigation, the Commerce Department repeatedly deleted and altered information on export licenses for trade with Iraq in order to hide potential military uses of American exports.

Seeking Justice

For many years, human rights activists have called upon the United States to get tough with Saddam Hussein’s regime. Iraq’s invasion of Iran, support for international terrorism, and large-scale human rights violations were all valid grounds for military sanctions. Perhaps most significant was Iraq’s use of chemical warfare against both Iranian troops and the country’s civilian Kurdish population during the 1980s–by far the largest such use of these illegal weapons since World War I. The response of the world’s nations was a major test as to whether international law would be upheld through the imposition of stringent sanctions or other measures to challenge this dangerous precedent. The United States, along with much of the world community, failed. U.S. agricultural subsidies and other economic aid flowed into Iraq and American officials looked the other way as much of these funds were laundered into purchasing military equipment. The United States also sent an untold amount of indirect aid–largely through Kuwait and other Arab countries–which enabled Iraq to receive weapons and technology to increase its war-making capacity and repressive apparatus.

When a 1988 Senate Foreign Relations committee staff report brought to light Saddam Hussein’s policy of widespread killings of Kurdish civilians in northern Iraq, Senator Claiborne Pell introduced the Prevention of Genocide Act to put pressure on the Iraqi government. However, the Reagan administration successfully moved to have the measure killed.

It is also important to note that the devastation to Iraq’s military capabilities caused by the Gulf War bombing, military sanctions, and inspections regime–combined with the safe haven created for the Kurds in northern Iraq by the United Nations–resulted in a substantial reduction in Saddam Hussein’s repression during the past dozen years as compared with the first half of his rule.

In other words, the vast majority of the war crimes committed by Saddam’s regime took place during the period in which he was supported by the U.S. government. This may be the primary reason why the United States objects to any kind of international tribunal, since it would more likely bring the U.S. role in Saddam’s repression to light than a trial set up by the Bush administration’s appointed Iraqi surrogates.

Finally, it should be noted that the twelve-year-long U.S.-led economic sanctions against Iraq, combined with the destruction of much of the country’s civilian infrastructure during the devastating five-week U.S. bombing campaign in early 1991, contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians–primarily children–from malnutrition and preventable diseases.

Given that the public health impact of such policies was well-documented for more than a decade, a case can be made that those U.S. officials responsible for such policies could themselves be guilty of war crimes and should–like Saddam Hussein–face justice in an international tribunal.

http://www.fpif.info/fpiftxt/780