Issue #43
Last Update December 24, 2005
International When Bad Things Happen to Bad People - Part I by Gerry Krownstein Unilateral American action, unsupported by international law or international opinion, has toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein. Although no evidence has to date been discovered to confirm the existence of the nuclear, chemical or biological weapons (or close links to Al Qaeda) that were the justification for invading a sovereign country, much evidence has surfaced regarding the cruelty and sadism of the Ba'ath regime.
This has now been seized upon by the President and Secretary of Defense as evidence that the invasion was appropriate and legitimate. While we (and the Iraqi people, if chaos is avoided) may rejoice that such an evil regime has been toppled, this cannot be allowed to set a precedent for this or any other administration to follow. There are two important reasons for this:
• First, entry into war is such a serious business that the framers of the Constitution removed this power from the hands of the executive and placed it in the hands of the people, through their elected representatives in the Senate. To allow a war begun through executive deceit to stand as a model would destroy this basic Constitutional safeguard. Don’t forget that, in a addition to lives lost and money spent, being in a state of war expands the powers of the Presidency and reduces our Constitutional protections.
• Second, it is in our interests, and the interests of the whole world, to establish an international mechanism for dealing with evil regimes. Aggressive war (unless waged by a veto-carrying member of the Security Council) is covered by the UN Charter, which was applied successfully after the invasion of Kuwait, and earlier when North Korea invaded South Korea. Short of aggressive war, however, there is no international law covering those fears that, if proven true, might perhaps have justified the invasion of Iraq this time. In our maturation as a country, frontier justice and vigilantes were replaced by law and police departments. Even if the lynch mob from town A hanged a truly bad person who had caused damage and grief in town B, we knew vigilantism was improper and dangerous to the civilized (and safe) country we were trying to become.
There is no longer room in this shrunken world for vigilante justice. Despite Conservative reluctance to cede any US sovereignty that does not serve economic interests (though quite willing to sign trade treaties that they hold other nations to but do not abide by themselves), we must establish international laws and the means to enforce them that would are binding on all nations, with severe economic penalties for those countries that do not become signatories. These laws must cover the following areas:
• Chemical, biological and nuclear weapons
• Access to fresh water
• Mistreatment of subject populations. This would include citizens, resident aliens and people in administered territories.
• Disease control.
The laws must spell out the responsibilities of nations in each of these areas, the penalties for transgression, and the means of enforcement.
In part II of this article, appearing next month, I will attempt to flesh out the requirements, penalties and means of enforcement for each of the four subject areas.
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