When Bombs Fall, U.S. Will Join Ranks of War Criminals
The maiming or killing of a single Iraqi civilian in an attack by the United States would constitute a war crime, as well as a profound violation of the Christian notion of just war. That is because the recent report of the U.N. inspectors has made indelibly clear that disarmament is working and that Iraq at this time poses no direct threat to the well-being of the American people.
Of course, we are not talking about one or two casualties. In seriously considering such war strategies as bringing a city- destroying firestorm down upon a population half made up of children, the U.S. is planning to disarm a nation of its weapons of mass destruction by using weapons that cause mass destruction.
Brutal, preemptive and unilateral war under such circumstances is -- by the standards of any great civilization or religion -- morally indefensible and also seriously damages the reputation of free societies, the principles of which we are trying to market to the rest of the world.
To distract us from this essential truth, the president has shamefully frightened the American people, first with his baseless attempt to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11 and then with unproven claims that Iraq's government and weapons pose an immediate danger to Americans.
The real story is that U.N. inspectors are reporting substantial progress in terms of Iraqi cooperation and the destruction of weapons in Iraq.
George Bush and the 200,000-plus troops he has sent to the Persian Gulf could take some credit for this, but he continues to isolate the U.S. as other leading nations request that the U.N. inspectors be given four more months to complete their work.
Why the unseemly rush to war when the chief U.N. weapons inspector stated: "One can hardly avoid the impression that, after a period of somewhat reluctant cooperation, there has been an acceleration of initiatives from the Iraqi side since the end of January."
Hans Blix went on to cite increased air surveillance using U.S., French, German and Russian planes, the unfettered ability "to perform professional no-notice inspections all over Iraq," rising cooperation on private interviews with scientists, inspections of "mobile units," destruction of 40% of the Al-Samoud 2 missile cache and excavation and analysis of a major weapons disposal site.
