Category: Foreign Policy in Focus

President George W. Bush’s nationally broadcast speech Sunday evening once again was designed to mislead Congress and the American public into supporting his administration’s policies in Iraq. Despite record deficits and draconian cutbacks in government support for health care, housing, education, the environment, and public transportation, the president is asking the American taxpayer to spend an additional $87 billion to support his invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Iraq is not the first country the United States has intervened in and then tried to have the United Nations try to clean up after it. Never before, however, have the consequences of a U.S. military action been so tragic for the world body and its dedicated civilian workers.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the intelligence cited by President Bush regarding Iraqi military capabilities in the months leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq was in fact neither good, nor solid, nor sound and that the Iraqi regime–while, like a number of Middle East governments, was undeniably repressive–was not a threat to the United States or any other country.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq posed new challenges to peace and justice activists. The growing credibility crisis of the Bush administration with respect to Iraq, as well as the ongoing crisis on the ground in Iraq, provides us with new opportunities. Below I present four theses on one campaign that could use these opportunities in a creative way: a campaign to turn the administration of Iraq over to the United Nations.

There has been a disturbing degree of triumphalism following the overthrow–perhaps “evaporation” is a better word–of Saddam Hussein’s regime in the face of invading American forces. Even putting aside the appropriateness of this kind of gloating in the face of such death and destruction–including thousands of civilian casualties–it is striking that few people are asking whether the U.S. or the rest of the world is safer now as a result of this overwhelming American military victory.

With the apparent willingness of the Iraqi government to cooperate with United Nations weapons inspectors, the Bush administration and its congressional supporters of both parties seem determined to find an excuse–any excuse–to invade this oil-rich country and replace the current regime with one more to its own liking. This eagerness to wage war could not be more apparent than in recent claims out of Washington that Iraq firing upon British and American aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq constitutes a “material breach” of UN Security Council resolutions that could justify a U.S. invasion.

At the House International Relations Committee markup of H.J. Res. 114, U.S. Representative Sherrod Brown (D-OH) put forward an amendment that contained a series of questions he argued the administration must answer in order for Congress to fulfill its constitutional responsibility regarding a prospective war, and to gain the confidence of the American people. The address by President George W. Bush on Monday evening failed to provide answers to these critical questions. Representative Brown’s amendment, as did a previous letter to the president from House Armed Services ranking Democrat, Ike Skelton (dated September 4th) asked a number of important questions, and requested specific information on a number of points.