I am forwarding something I sent to a discussion list on Central
Asia.
Nick Megoran, Cambridge.
--On Sunday, September 30, 2001, 10:47 AM +0200 SOTA <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Turkistan Newsletter Sun, 30 Sep 2001 20:52:34
> Turkistan Bulteni ISSN:1386-6265
> Uze Tengri basmasar asra yer telinmeser, Turk bodun ilining torugin
> kem artati, udaci erti. [Bilge Kagan in Orkhon inscriptions]
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>
> Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2001 17:36:00 +0100 (BST)
> From: Nick Megoran <[log in to unmask]>
> X-X-Sender: <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> cc: <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Submission
>
> Justice amongst the clutter?
>
> Much of the discussion about whether the September 11 attack on the
> Pentagon and the World Trade Centre was 'just' and what a 'just' response
> by the United States would be has hinged on a massive assumption that few
> commentators are questioning: whether violence is justified in any
> situation. I believe that it is not, that the just war theory that is
> being used to legitimise American and British attacks on whoever they
> eventually identify as their enemy can equally well be used to justify the
> recent attacks on the US. The very notion of legitimate violence is
> itself at the crux of the current crisis. Intelligent and workable
> alternatives do exist, but they have been systematically blocked by
> powerful states. The time is right to reconsider them.
>
> The majority of confessors of the creeds of Democracy, Christianity and
> Islam have not, historically, adopted the stance known as 'pacifism' or
> 'active non-violence.' Whilst there have been minorities within each of
> these creeds who have refused to resort to violence under any
> circumstance, they have tended to been vilified as heretical, cowardly, or
> unpatriotic. Some states do not even recognise conscientious objection to
> compulsory military service as a legal right. In a minority of cases
> pacifists are regarded as being admirable. Martin Luther King, Ghandhi,
> and Jesus Christ are examples, but such instances are rare.
>
> Pacifists make two arguments to support their case. The first is ethical
> - a belief that non-violence is an absolute moral good. This is commonly
> held because of personal religious conviction, and is beyond the scope of
> this discussion.
>
> The second argument is that support of violence is ultimately incoherent,
> as the 'just war theories' (JWT) developed by Augustine from Classical
> thinkers that form the basis of modern military philosophy are flawed.
>
> These theories take many forms, but commonly incorporate three tenets.
> Firstly, that violence can only be justified in defence. Secondly, that
> this violence should be proportionate to the original attack and that
> non-combatant causalities should be minimised. Finally, that this
> violence must be approved by some legitimate authority such as a nation
> state or the United Nations. Complicated systems of conventions and
> treaties exist that justify or proscribe certain actions in warfare.
>
> These can be shown to be terrifyingly incoherent in the current crisis,
> offering no solution except further warfare.
>
> Firstly, supporters of JWT suggest that countries have a right to defend
> themselves and retaliate when attacked. But this can be used to justify
> almost any military action. If one state claims to have information that
> it is about to be attacked, it can justify a pre-emptive strike- exactly
> as Israel did in its 1967 war with neighbouring Arab states. Osama bin
> Laden and the Taliban (if indeed they were involved in the US attacks)
> certainly had grounds to fear that America was planning hostile action
> against them, thus a pre-emptive strike against American military and
> financial targets can be legitimised by just war theory.
>
> Advocates of JWT also claim that it is just to defend not only oneself,
> but also one's ally. Thus Britain declared war on Germany in 1939 not
> because it was attacked, but because its ally Poland was invaded.
> Likewise, Saddam Hussain and Osama bin Laden can both justify their
> purported military actions against the US and its allies by claiming to be
> responding to US aggression against Palestine and Lebanon through their
> proxy Israel. Israel in turn can cite Arab aggression against them and
> German persecution before that as a justification for the defence of their
> state by force. As with a school-yard fist-fight, it is always possible
> but rarely profitable to yell, 'he started it!'
>
> Secondly, it is held by JWT apologists that civilians should not be
> targeted in military action, as they should not suffer for the
> consequences of their government. But modern warfare is total warfare,
> between vast state war machines rather than the mercenary armies of the
> Middle Ages. Wars are won now by undermining the will of the opposing
> population to resist by decimating its infrastructure and inflicting
> massive casualties. Thus it was regarded as just for the US and Britain
> to deliberately target and kill vast numbers of civilians during World War
> 2 in Japan and Germany using both conventional and nuclear weapons.
> Likewise in the recent Balkan wars, NATO forces deliberately targeted
> civilian installations such as radio stations and air and rail transport
> facilities because they were deemed important to the overall operation of
> the modern state at war. Nagasaki, Hamburg, and Belgrade prove the
> argument of total war: that if you kill enough people and do enough
> damage, your enemy will surrender. Vietnam, Beirut and Somalia also
> demonstrated this - public opinion in the United States turned against
> involvement in those conflicts as American casualties mounted, resulting
> in an American withdrawal. Northern Ireland taught Britain the same
> lesson: the government abandoned its long-avowed policy of not talking to
> the IRA when it became clear that it could not defeat them militarily.
>
> The same logic that applies to Belgrade, Hamburg and Hiroshima can be
> applied to the World Trade Centre and Pentagon attacks. If enough
> American and European civilians can be killed and, if by targeting
> financial and administrative centres these countries can be paralysed,
> they could eventually be forced to withdraw their troops from the Middle
> East and end support of regimes in the area including Israel and Saudi
> Arabia. In that sense, if US and UK attacks on civilian targets in
> Vietnam, Germany and Japan were justified as they had a military
> objective, the attack on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon can also be
> so justified. The pacifist position is that none of these actions are
> ever justified.
>
> Thirdly, proponents of JWT suggest a legitimate authority alone can
> legally perpetrate violence. In the present international order, that
> authority must be either a nation state or a body that has been empowered
> by them such as NATO or the UN. Any other violence is deemed 'terrorism.'
> Thus US training of Nicaraguan Contras to specifically kill doctors and
> teachers in order to destabilise the government was not classed as
> terrorism. Unannounced attacks by the US on civilian targets in the Sudan
> in 1998 was not considered terrorism, but the unannounced attacks on US
> embassies in East Africa that provoked this attack was. The mass
> slaughter of civilians in Cambodia by US 'carpet bombing' is not commonly
> classed as terrorism, but attacks on civilians in Britain by Irish
> Republican groups are.
>
> Indeed, the 2001 UK Terrorism Act has enshrined this principle: state
> agents cannot be indicted under it. Thus if British security services
> send a briefcase bomb to IRA members, that is not terrorism. If they send
> one to British security forces, it is. This is blatantly illogical and
> imbalanced, as it allows states to justify the most appalling massacres of
> civilians but prevents non-state organisations from responding.
> Governments throughout the world have promised more such draconian
> legislation in 'the fight against terrorism', furthering legitimising the
> right of states to commit acts of violence.
>
> What is legally just is not necessarily morally just, as human systems of
> international law are human conventions. Therefore pacifists would never
> argue that the attack on the World Trade Centre was morally justified,
> even though it can demonstrably be justified through an equal application
> of the principles of JWT that the UK and the US espouse. On the contrary,
> it was as unjustified as any other military action, by whomsoever and
> against whomsoever. Violence only breeds more violence: the 'war to end
> all wars' is a deceptive myth that perpetuates war.
>
> But, in the face of the terrible slaughter in New York, does the world
> have real and practical alternatives to solve the current crisis?
>
> In the long term, there must be a just settlement of outstanding disputes
> in the Middle East, and a just distribution of resources between richer
> and poorer countries. As a move towards this, some mechanism of justice
> urgently needs devising that truly applies equal standards to all states,
> a mechanism that could bring Bin Laden to justice and establish
> independently whether he was indeed the perpetrator of the terrible
> attacks we saw on September 11. It would be most unlikely that Bin Laden
> would have a fair trial at the moment should the Taliban hand him over to
> the USA. The current system preferred by the US and Britain of ad hoc war
> tribunals established by military victors is grossly deficient. In the
> Nuremberg tribunals held after the Allied victory in World War 2, UK and
> US politicians and airmen were not indicted for the mass slaughter of
> civilians in German and Japanese cities. Similarly, the UN International
> Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague has not tried
> NATO leaders for the deliberate targeting of civilian installations in
> their war against Serbia. The winners get medals, the losers prison
> sentences. Ultimately, the 'courts' of both the Balkans and World War 2
> deliver nothing other than victor's justice.
>
> Many people across the globe believe that a permanent world criminal court
> would offer some solution to international disputes. In such a forum it
> would be possible for powerless peoples to air their grievances against
> powerful states. Empowered with strong punitive sanctions against any
> state that refused to hand over suspects for trial, it would be a
> mechanism better suited than any currently existing one to ensure equal
> justice for all, and from which no leader, no matter how powerful, would
> be able to escape. Should this type of institution function effectively,
> it would make the leaders of dominant states think twice before backing
> aggression against smaller ones, and allow aggrieved people to feel that
> they truly had some alternative other than desperate acts of suicidal
> carnage to make their message heard.
>
> Such a proposal, the International Criminal Court (ICC), was drafted in
> Rome in 1998. The US quickly lined up alongside some of the world's most
> oppressive states to oppose it. Current US defence secretary Donald
> Rumsfeld rejected the treaty out of hand, warning that "American
> leadership in the world could be the first causality." Right-wing
> Republican Jesse Helms promised to oppose it unless it included a clause
> stating that no American would ever be brought before it.
>
> What is the alternative to this? There is only one voice more frightening
> than that heard from knee-jerk commentators and politicians in the US who
> called for immediate and swift strikes on Afghanistan. That is those who
> have urged a 'considered and careful' military response that minimises
> 'collateral damage' (civilian casualties). In effect, this sets the US
> and UK up as judge, jury and hangman, answerable to nothing but amorphous
> public opinion in a handful of powerful countries, that is largely
> manufactured by a compliant media controlled by a small number of wealthy
> corporations. This dangerous precedent is not justice, but vigilante mob
> rule.
>
> The choice facing the world is stark. George Bush's self-declared
> "crusade" for "infinite justice" will only breed infinitely more injustice
> and more crusaders. There are alternatives, such as the ICC, but they
> mean a loss of hegemony for the most powerful states that their current
> leaders will not subscribe to except under massive and overwhelming
> domestic pressure. Such pressure prevented the German government from
> military involvement in the 1991 war against Iraq. Its jingoistic
> counterpart is currently smoothing the path to war. If enough people act,
> it is possible to force our governments to change. That is the historic
> path of pacifism, an active and inventive but non-violent opposition to
> injustice. At this dark time when extremists on all sides are clamouring
> for war, it is appropriate to recall the words of Martin Luther King as he
> urged his followers to match the violence of legalised racism not with
> more violence but with love, and to seek justice through peaceful civil
> disobedience and reasoned protest: "A voice, echoing through the corridors
> of time, says to every intemperate Peter, 'Put up thy sword!' History is
> cluttered with the wreckage of nations that failed to follow Christ's
> command."
>
>
> --
>
> Nick Megoran is a graduate student at the Department of Geography,
> University of Cambridge, England. He can be contacted at [log in to unmask]
>
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