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Congress can stop our lawless wars
 Jack Dresser

Molly Ivins recounts an interview with a West Texas rancher.  About politics he said, “I feel like I’m about equal parts good and bad.  It’s just that there’s no one talkin’ to the good in me.”

The good in us dictates many things, but as citizens requires that we must respect the United States Constitution, its Bill of Rights, and all international treaties to which the United States is a signatory.  This is more than just good, it is the Law of the Land under Article IV of the Constitution:

“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States, which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land.”
 
This “Supremacy Clause” makes clear that our treaty agreements are not only binding internationally but are also the highest laws of the United States.  Like any other contract, the Constitution requires that we honor our international agreements. The requirement is absolute and the language is plain, intended to be readily understood by all citizens.  It has no disclaimers in fine print and wasn’t intended to require a law degree.

There are many government outrages across our land today in need of reversal, and many worthy “goods” deserving pursuit.  However, looming vastly larger in gravity than any other issue is the war in Iraq.

The invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq are illegal wars of aggression and “crimes against peace,” violating American law by violating the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928 (under which Nazis were tried and executed at Nuremberg), the U.N. Charter of 1945, and The Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles of 1945.  The United States is a signatory to each of these treaty agreements, and each prohibits aggressive or pre-emptive war.

War is justified under international law only for self-defense.  This is why the administration falsely defined 9/11 as an act of war, and invented a fantastic structure of lies to define Iraq as an ominous and immediate threat to American and world security.  Their fraudulent representations were designed to evade international and American law and their future indictment as war criminals.

Most Americans now oppose the Iraq war but believe the attack upon Afghanistan was justified by 9/11.  However, terrorist attacks are defined under international law as actions of individual criminals, not actions of states.  Terrorists are therefore subject to arrest by law enforcement authorities and are tried in criminal courts –  some 3,000 to date in 170 countries.

In accordance with internationally established protocols for dealing with terrorism suspects, the Taliban requested evidence to support the administration’s demand for extradition of bin Laden and offered to negotiate such extradition.  The Bush administration failed to provide convincing evidence and refused to negotiate, instead re-defining terrorism as “war” – which is without basis in international law – and launching a war of aggression against another U.N. member state.

The Iraq War, which has killed far more people on both sides, is even more clearly illegal.   Not only is this a completely unprovoked war, but abundant evidence documents that the Bush administration “fixed the intelligence” to fraudulently force this war upon Congress and the American people.  Therefore, every death inflicted – well over 100,000 Iraqis according to the most reliable sources – is a war crime.

The War Powers Resolution provided to President Bush by Congress on October 10, 2002 is riddled with the false assumptions deceptively fed them by the administration, including irrelevant data from before the Gulf War, spurious associations of Saddam with bin Laden, al Qaeda and 9/11, false statements about Iraqi WMDs, WMD capabilities, and aggressive intentions, and irrelevant citations of various U.N. resolution violations that would require Security Council rather than U.S. enforcement action.  It is a document based on fraud, and as such cannot be considered a legally binding contract.

Moreover, this War Powers Resolution authorized use of armed force only to (1) defend national security against “the continuing threat posed by Iraq” – of which there was none, and (2) enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions, for which the administration failed to obtain U.N. authorization.  Having met neither condition, the administration nevertheless launched an illegal war of aggression against another U.N. member state.

With continuing arrogance, the Bush administration has even failed to comply with conditions of the Congressional resolution, including assurance that diplomatic remedies had been exhausted prior to invasion (on the contrary, Saddam had re-admitted U.N. weapons inspectors six months earlier and was fully cooperating), and bi-monthly reports to Congress.  On grounds of both fraud and non-compliance, the Iraq War Resolution cannot be considered binding upon Congress.

In addition, war crimes have been consistently committed in the conduct of both wars. Many prohibited and indiscriminate weapons have been used, causing tens of thousands of civilian casualties.  These weapons have included cluster bombs, depleted uranium “penetrator” munitions, MK77 napalm, massively concussive thermobaric explosives, and white phosphorous – a chemical weapon legal only for battlefield illumination and causing excruciating, flesh-melting injuries when directed at human targets.

Use of these weapons violates the United Nations Charter, the Hague Rules of Air Warfare, the Hague Regulations on Land Warfare, the Genocide Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment and Principles. The United States is a signatory to all of these agreements that define the standards of the civilized world.

Further, both wars have employed widespread torture and humiliation of prisoners – including torture-by-proxy through “extraordinary rendition” – in violation of  the United States War Crimes Act of 1996, the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, the Convention against Torture, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Not only has the administration repeatedly and flagrantly violated international law, but both wars have been conducted with reckless disregard for the safety of American troops by failure to provide sufficient troops and adequate equipment to protect their safety in a combat theater of operation, failure to heed the strategic and operational advice of military commanders, failure to plan for the aftermath of invasion, and failure to insulate military decisions from political motives.

So what can we do? The executive branch of our national government is in the hands of international outlaws, with no sheriff in town to stop them. Our elected legislators are failing to assert their Constitutionally assigned power to restrain the executive and restore the rule of law. Congress can claim that they were snookered into the original War Powers Resolution, but there is no longer any excuse for ignoring the truth.

Only Congress has the power to stop these wars through fiscal control. By continued votes to finance them, our elected representatives become complicit in war crimes.  We citizens must refuse our own passive complicity in these and any other illegal wars supported by our tax dollars. We should only support candidates for national office who vote or pledge to vote against war funding.

Make them talk to the good in us.
 
 

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Copyright 2006 Jack Dresser, Ph.D.