The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, Oregon

Publications

World Justice or Just U.S.:
National Sovereignty and the 6^th UUA Principle

UUCS February 19, 2006

Over the last 5 months, Rev. Rick Davis has been giving sermons on the 7 UUA principles.  The purposes and principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association are listed in your order of service.  Two Sundays ago he talked about the 5^th Principle, concerning the democratic process.

Today, I will talk about the 6^th UUA Principle, where “we covenant to affirm and promote …  The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all.”  Each of four goals in this principle (peace, liberty, justice and world community) is desirable in its on right.  Achieving each goal involves different challenges.  

Today, I am going to focus on the goal of peace with justice and community being intermediate steps.  I will briefly discuss the role of religion, but my spin on the 6^th Principle will be primarily secular, focusing on international law. Later this year, Rick will give you a different spin on the 6^th Principle. 

Let’s start with justice.  World peace will be hard to attain if parts of the world have no justice. As the bumper sticker says:  “No Justice, No Peace.”  One definition of justice is “determination of rights according to the rule of law.”  The key concept is a set of laws that stands the test of time.  No one is above the law.

For the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths, the 10 Commandments are a central tenet.

Although some of the 10 Commandments might need adjustments, most of them are appropriate even after several millennia.  Three laws relevant to the 6^th Principle are:

1. Don’t covet what others have,
2. Don’t steal and
3. Don’t kill.

Justice and the rule of law are necessary conditions for a peaceable society.  But what about world justice?  Doesn’t that need a set of laws, too?  Yes, and it is called international law.  It is a discipline that is not as old as religion, but it’s older than the United States.

Like English common law, international law is not written down in a single place.  But over the years, the principles of international law have been used many times.  This has established traditions that have reduced warfare and saved lives.

The Treaty of Westphalia was established in 1648, more than three and a half centuries ago.  It is one of the cornerstones of international law.  It says that no country gets to pick the leader of another county.  Each nation is sovereign.  Nor does any country get to decide how another country picks its leaders. 

There is only one justification under international law for invading or bombing another country: an immediate and verifiable threat the other country is about to invade or bomb you or your ally. 

This principle was most recently codified in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal adopted by the United Nations in 1950.  The Nuremberg Tribunal convicted German leaders of crimes against peace for invading Czechoslovakia and Poland.  The crimes against peace are distinct from other war crimes and crimes against humanity.  

To justify the war in Iraq under international law, the Bush/Cheney administration needed to demonstrate an imminent threat against the U.S. or one its allies.  Let’s look at the arguments that they made to justify the war, and see how they stack up against international law. 

The claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) would only be reasonable justification for war if Iraq had the clear intent and capability to attack the U.S. or its allies.  This requires some kind of delivery system.  There was never a serious attempt to demonstrate intent or capability.  Iraq had no air force.  The U.S. enforced a no-fly zone and control Iraqi air space. Sadam Hussein made no threats against the U.S. or other countries.  So how was Iraq going to bomb other countries?

• The connection between Iraq and Al Qaida was quickly disproved and this argument was dropped.
• Sadam Hussein and Osama ben Laden are bitter enemies.  They are no more likely to cooperate that Hillary Clinton and Rush Limbaugh.
• Then the U.S. floated the idea that Iraq had pilotless airplanes (drones) to drop WMDs on nearby countries.  It was quickly shown the drones were the size of model airplanes and could carry only cameras.
• Then shortly before the invasion, the U.S. asserted that Iraq was not cooperating with U.N. inspectors.  Not only was this totally false, it would not be a valid justification for invasion.  Besides, Iraq was destroying its short-range missiles that could barely reach its own borders. 
• Then, the U.N. Security Council soundly rejected the U.S. request for authorization for an invasion., making the invasion a clear breach of international law.   
• A U.S. justification since its invasion is to bring democracy to Iraq.  Under the principle of national sovereignty, the U.S does not have the right to overthrow dictatorships or impose democracy.
• Another Bush/Cheney justification is to protect human rights in Iraq.  While that might seem reasonable, one country cannot be the policeman for human rights.  In Hitler’s letter in1938 to U.K. Prime Minister Chamberlain, he claimed that 120,000 ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia were “being tortured … and forced to flee the country".  Then he invaded.  While international law is moving toward collective enforcement of human rights, it soundly rejects one country taking the law into its own hands.

If Bush/Cheney had originally used democracy or human rights to justify the Iraq War, they would have been laughed out of Congress.  There are dozens of countries to invade if those are the justifications.

Today, the main argument for continued occupation is to keep Iraq from becoming a haven for terrorists.  Well, it is a haven now but it wasn’t before we invaded.  The U.S. occupation of Iraq continues to attract terrorists and is the perfect recruiting tool.  The number of terrorist acts in Iraq continues to grow.  If the purpose of occupying Iraq is to weaken Al Qaida, then it just isn’t working.

In short, none of the reasons given for invading Iraq holds water under international law.  There is only one justification for invading or bombing another country:  to repel an invasion or to respond to an attack on the territory of a sovereign nation.  Under international law, any other war is a war of aggression and constitutes a crime against peace. 

The Iraq War is a crime against peace, just like Japan’s invasion of China and Germany’s invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland at the start of WWII.  The U.S. has violated international law and there is sufficient evidence to indict and convict President Bush of crimes against peace.  Our president is a war criminal. 

Not only is the invasion and occupation of Iraq illegal, it is stupid.  Yet again, we are bogged down in a war in Asia.  We ignore the lessons of our 15 year war against Viet Nam and the Soviet Union’s 10 year war against Afghanistan.

The argument that we remain in Iraq because we care about the Iraqi people is ludicrous.  We cannot prevent a civil war in Iraq, that is happen now.  We are sustaining it by fighting on one side.

So why did we invade Iraq?  I’d like to conduct a poll here this morning.  Please raise your hand if you think the U.S. invasion of Iraq had something to do with oil?  Thank you.  I didn’t think I would have dwell on this point. 

A couple of weeks ago while riding home from church, I saw a bumper sticker that said:  “No oil for pacifists.”  This is a bold admission that the war is for economic gain.  We covet their oil, we are planning to steal it and if we have to kill some people, so what!?  I checked the internet and this is not a parody.  The bumper sticker is sold on a right-wing web site. 

Tragically, this attitude is not new.  The U.S. has a long history of illegal invasions and coup d’etats.  Professor Zoltan Grossman of Evergreen University lists 125 U.S. military interventions in the 116 years since 1890. 

http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html

That’s more than one foreign intervention per year. 

The interventions range from WWII to the 1953 coup that overthrew democracy in Iran.  In the latter, the Shah, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, was installed in 1953. He brutally reigned until the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Latin America experienced almost half of the interventions (54).  This reflects the U.S. view of this area as its zone of economic influence since the 1823 Monroe Doctrine.  At its foundation, U.S. doctrine requires developing countries to open their markets and resources to development by international corporations.  This policy was labeled the “Open Door Policy” by President Wilson.  Latin America is not our exclusive colony, but it is still a colony.

More relevant to Iraq are the 22 military invasions and coups in the Middle East and North Africa since 1946.  Oil was discovered well before WWII but the French and the British controlled this area as their colonies.  America took over in 1946 when the Europeans could no longer afford to police the area.

In contrast, over the 116-year invasion history, the U.S. entered Asia and the Pacific only 28 times and Europe suffered 14 interventions.  The U.S. moved into Sub-Saharan Africa a mere seven times starting in 1976.  Interestingly, oil was first discovered in Nigeria in 1956, 20 years before.  Now that West Africa is one of the few regions with growing oil exports, I predict the U.S. will be become more active in protecting human rights there.

Professor Grossman has identified some common themes for these interventions.  One justification is defending the lives and rights of civilian populations, yet U.S. actions have led to more deaths.  Nearly all the post-World War II interventions were carried out in the name of "freedom" or "democracy," yet most defended dictatorships.  The U.S. often portrays itself as a neutral peacekeeper, with nothing but the purest humanitarian motives.  But after deploying forces in a country, the U.S quickly divides the country or region into "friends" and "foes," and takes one side against another. This strategy tends to enflame rather than dampen war or civil conflict.

The pattern is clear.  The U.S. bombs and invades countries or support coups where it is our economic interest. 

Two statistics related to Iraq: 

1.      Currently, international oil companies can only drill into 6 percent of the world’s known oil reserves. 

2.      Iraq has the third largest reserves of any country. 

The Cheney-Bush administration is now talking about moving against Iran.  Iran has the second largest oil reserves.  Only Saudi Arabia has larger reserves. 

When pressed, Cheney and Bush argue that the U.S. and its leaders are not bound by international law.  We can invade any country we want.  The U.S. is becoming a rouge nation.  Our leaders are war criminals. 

U.S. aggressiveness in the Middle East began 26 years ago when U.S. production of oil began a steep decline.  This increased our need for foreign oil. 

The aggressive new doctrine began on January 23, 1980, when President Jimmy Carter said,

“An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” There is no basis in international law for this kind of policy. 

The Reagan Corollary to the Carter Doctrine proclaimed that the United States would intervene to protect Saudi Arabia, whose security was threatened by the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War.  Thus, while the Carter Doctrine targeted outside forces, the Reagan

Corollary pledged to secure internal stability in the Middle East.

This shift in policy is shown in Professor Grossman’s history of interventions.  In the last 25 years, since Reagan was elected, there were 38 worldwide interventions, an average of more than 15 per decade.  That is a 60 percent jump from the average of about 9 per decade for 1950 through 1979. 

We can now add the Bush Doctrine that we will invade Middle East countries with large oil reserves if they are not friendly to us, regardless of what the U.N. Security Council says.

The U.S. has gotten away with this imperial behavior for over a century, but perhaps not much longer.

In recent decades the world has increasingly disciplined rogue nations.  The international boycott of South Africa in the 1980’s successfully ended racial apartheid.  When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the U.N. sponsored an invasion and boycott of Iraq. 

Beginning in March 1998, the U. N. Security Council adopted a series of resolutions on Kosovo that invoked the use of force by the international community to respond to a threat to international peace and security.  Based on this permission, NATO bombed Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

While international sanctions have only been applied to small countries to date, that is no guarantee the U.S. is forever safe.  The ultimate outcome of U.S. violations of international law might be U. N. sanctions. 

The U.S. imports 60 percent of its oil and about 15 percent of its natural gas.  Both of these measures of dependency are growing.  Even if there are not sanctions, the Iraq War is draining the U.S. economy and endangering the value of the dollar. 

The alternative is clear.  The U.S. must rejoin the world community.  The word community is from the Latin word “communis” meaning “in common.”  Communis is also the root word for “communion” which has as its first definition “sharing.”  One of the definitions of community is “social activity: fellowship.”  One of the definitions of fellowship is “a company of equals or friends.”  This requires more than just abiding by treaties and international law.  The 6^th UUA principle requires the U.S. to fully cooperate with and improve the United Nations, the only viable community of nations.  

There are two paths the U.S. can pursue.  We can try to control the Middle East by ourselves through invasions.  That’s not working and no one believes our phony excuses for the Iraq War. 

Or we can rejoin the world community.  The U.S. cannot and should not constantly intervene on the side of international corporations.  The era of the American Empire is coming to an end.  This could be the beginning of a new era of world peace and justice. 

This is the path of the 6^th UUA Principle:  To affirm and promote the goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all.