47 Questions and Answers
Continued...

11. What is the legal way of dealing with terrorism?

In our world, the only alternative to vigilantism is that guilt should be determined by amassing of evidence that is then assessed in accordance with international law by the United Nations Security Council or other appropriate international agencies.

Punishment should be determined by the UN as well, and likewise the means of implementation. The UN may arrive at determinations that one or another party likes or not, as with any court, and may also be subject to political pressures that call into question its results or not, as with any court. But that the UN is the place for determinations about international conflict is obvious, at least according to solemn treaties signed by the nations of the world.

Thus, to pursue a legal approach means assembling evidence of culpability and presenting it to the UN or the World Court. It means those agencies undertaking to apprehend and prosecute culprits. It does not involve victims overseeing retaliation without even demonstrating guilt, much less having legal sanction, much less in a manner that increases the sum total of terrorism people are suffering and the conditions that breed potential future terrorism

See also:

Ratner: A Legal Alternative (http://www.zmag.org/ratnercalam.htm)

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Presumably, if provided proof of culpability, UN agencies would seek to arrest guilty parties. They would first seek to negotiate extradition. If a host government failed to comply, as a last resort they could presumably send in a force to extract guilty parties. But these actions would be taken in accord with international law, by forces led by international agencies and courts, in a manner respecting civilian safety, and consistent with further legitimating rather than bypassing respect for law and justice.

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These acts, among many others, violate international law in many respects, not least because they harm civilians. Presumably, then, were international legal channels strengthened and respected, aggrieved parties could bring these and other cases to legal attention, leading to diverse prosecutions, many of which would be aimed at officials from the U.S.

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To not present evidence, to decide guilt rather than respect institutions of international law, to prosecute not only presumed culprits but a whole population suffering terror and perhaps starvation--of course, international law has been violated. Worse, the mechanism for attaining illegal vigilante prosecution has been a policy which knowingly and predictably will kill many, perhaps even huge numbers of innocent civilians. We take access to food away from millions and then give food back to tens of thousands while bombing the society into panic and dissolution.

Why?

The answer is not to reduce the prospects of terror attacks. The U.S. government and all mainstream media warn their likelihood will increase, both out of short term desire to retaliate, and, over the longer haul, due to producing new reservoirs of hate and resentment. The answer is not to get justice. Vigilantism is not justice but the opposite, undermining international norms of law. The answer is not to reduce actual terror endured by innocent people. Our actions are themselves hurting civilians, perhaps in tremendous numbers.

All rhetoric aside, the answer is that the U.S. wishes to send a message and to establish a process. The message, as usual, is don't mess with us. We have no compunction about wreaking havoc on the weak and desperate. The process, also not particularly original since Ronald Reagan and George Bush senior had similar aspirations, is to legitimate a "war on terrorism" as a lynchpin rationale for both domestic and international policy-making.

This "war on terrorism" is meant to serve like the Cold War did. We fight it with few if any military losses. We use it to induce fear in our own population and via that fear to justify all kinds of elite policies from reducing civil liberties, to enlarging the profit margins of military industrial firms, to legitimating all manner of international polices aimed at enhancing U.S. power and profit, whether in the Mideast or elsewhere.

For more on U.S. Motives, see also:

Mandel: Illegal War (http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/mandelillegal.htm)
Albert: What's Going On (http://www.zmag.org/whatsgoing.htm)
Chomsky Answers Albert (http://www.zmag.org/albintchom.htm)

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The press refers to the "U.S.-led" war on Afghanistan, but in fact, only British military forces have so far joined the United States in combat. Various nations -- in Europe, Canada, and so on -- have offered troops if the U.S. so requests. So far there has been no U.S. request, presumably because Washington wants to maintain control of the operation.

No Arab nation has offered troops or even allowed its territory to be (openly) used for offensive military operations. While many regimes do not support the Taliban, they fear public reaction if they should participate in an attack on a Muslim country. Pakistan is providing bases that may in the future be used for helicopter raids. This was a reluctant response to U.S. cancellation of its debt, lifting of sanctions (for its nuclear weapons program), and an apparent U.S. guarantee that it would have a say in the future government of Afghanistan. Uzbekistan, which at first offered bases only for humanitarian operations, seems to have agreed to let the U.S. use the bases as it wishes, in return for a U.S. security guarantee.

Various other nations -- such as Russia and China -- have offered support, though non-military, to the United States, hoping thereby to have U.S. support as they battle their own domestic secessionist movements which they accuse of terrorism (in Chechnya and China's western Muslim Xinjiang province).

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The Security Council passed two strong resolutions following September 11, but neither one authorized the use of military force, and especially not unilateral military force. The New York Times reported (7 Oct. 2001): "A sign of Washington's insistence that its hands not be tied was its rejection of United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan's entreaties that any American military action be subject to Security Council approval, administration officials said." Still less has the United States been willing to have the United Nations have control over the response to terrorism, including over any military operations.

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1. Guilt hasn't yet been proven.
2. Bombing violates International Law.
3. Bombing will be unlikely to eliminate those responsible for the September 11 attacks.
4. Huge numbers of innocent people will die.
5. Bombing will reduce the security of U.S. citizens.

For in-depth discussion of the 5 points, please see also:

Albert/Shalom 5 Arguments Against War (http://www.zmag.org/fiveargs.htm)

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There are many reasons to suspect bin Laden's responsibility for September 11 and his recent video gloating does not lessen these suspicions. But although Secretary of State Colin Powell initially promised that evidence of responsibility would be presented, the Bush administration "decided it was not necessary to make public its evidence against Mr. bin Laden" (NYT, 7 Oct. 2001). The British government did prepare a document, "Responsibility for the Terrorist Atrocities in the United States, 11 September 2001," (http://www.pm.gov.uk) which summarized real evidence regarding Osama bin Laden's involvement in earlier terrorist acts and noted the similarity of the Sept. 11 acts to the earlier acts (no warning given, intent to kill maximum number of people -- true of many terrorist acts), but provided very little information specifically regarding the events of September 11. The two crucial claims are contained in these statements, presented with no supporting evidence at all:

Since 11 September we have learned that one of Bin Laden's closest and most senior associates was responsible for the detailed planning of the attacks. There is evidence of a very specific nature relating to the guilt of Bin Laden and his associates that is too sensitive to release.

Our guess, having no access to intelligence sources, is that bin Laden does indeed bear responsibility for the horrible deeds of September 11. But wars should not be started on the basis of our, or anybody else's, guess. Certainly public opinion in the Arab and Islamic world is going to want more convincing evidence. "A decent respect to the opinions of mankind," said the Declaration of Independence, required a public statement of the causes which impelled the American colonists to a war of independence. Likewise, a decent respect for the opinion of the international community would require that before any action evidence of responsibility be presented. Washington might be satisfied with the evidence, but many others may not be.

We know of historical cases where U. S. officials have falsified evidence. (For example, in 1981 Washington issued a White Paper claiming to prove "Communist Interference in El Salvador"; Raymond Bonner promptly showed this to be "a textbook case of distortion, embellishments, and exaggeration.") But the issue goes beyond any deliberate manipulation of evidence. It's simply a basic principle of justice that people should not be judges in their own case. We know of other cases where U. S. officials were quick to act on totally inadequate evidence (as when they bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, alleging its involvement in producing chemical weapons, a claim that dissolved when subjected to examination).

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Certainly it would be reasonable for a government to refuse to reveal intelligence sources which could help prevent future terrorist plots. No one is asking for names of informants and so on, but conceivably some evidence might point clearly to a specific informant. Consider, however, the following:

1. the U. S. was able to present evidence in court regarding the 1998 attacks on the U. S. embassies in Africa;
2. even if evidence could not be made fully public, could it not be shared with the Security Council for their assessment? Sharing the evidence with Britain and the rest of NATO is better than nothing, but not the same as sharing it with the body having legal authority for international peace and security;
3. some evidence (its nature and extent unknown) was apparently shared with Pakistan -- before its intelligence chief was sacked for being too sympathetic to the Taliban.

If there is evidence suitable for Pakistan, it's hard to see why that couldn't be made public. Washington, however, does not want to establish the precedent that it has an obligation to present evidence.

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The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan stated on October 5, "We are prepared to try him if America provides solid evidence of Osama bin Laden's involvement in the attacks on New York and Washington." Asked if bin Laden could be tried in another country, the ambassador said, "We are willing to talk about that, but ... we must be given the evidence" (Toronto Star, 6 Oct. 2001, p. A4). One report (AP, 7 Oct. 2001) quoted the ambassador as saying that legal proceedings could begin even before the United States offered any evidence: "Under Islamic law, we can put him on trial according to allegations raised against him and then the evidence would be provided to the court." Washington responded that its demands were non?negotiable and initiated its bombardment of Afghanistan. Was the Taliban offer serious? Could it have been the basis for further concessions? Who knows? Washington never pursued it. But do we really want a world where countries unilaterally issue ultimatums and then unilaterally decide whether the terms of the ultimatum have been met, cut off further negotiations, and open fire?

We might note that some other countries have refused to extradite accused terrorists, even when substantial evidence is presented. For example, Haiti has convicted Emmanuel Constant in absentia for being one of the leaders of paramilitary forces that killed thousands of civilians during the junta years in the early 1990s (with no small measure of U.S. complicity). Washington has refused to turn him over.

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For the most part, you can't, but that is irrelevant to the issues at hand. You can't negotiate with serial killers, either, or with people who go berserk and shoot up their workmates in a post office. We don't deduce from the intransigence of perpetrators that the victims or the victims families should therefore become vigilantes and seek to arrest the culprits. We don't deduce that they should form lynch mobs, seeking the culprits dead or alive. And most important, we don't deduce that they should go after the families of the culprits, or their neighbors families, of the restaurant where they had breakfast.

That one can't sensibly negotiate with bin Laden and Al Qaeda - which may or may not be true - would only tell us that one shouldn't negotiate with them, not that we shouldn't pursue sensible channels of legal redress and prosecution, not that we should become vigilantes, not that we should adopt a lynch mob mentality, and that we should even go beyond that to attacking innocent bystanders in huge numbers, starving and otherwise terrorizing them.

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If under attack, any country has the right to repel the attack, according to international law. But the right of self-defense is not unlimited. The standard precedent is the Caroline case, which held that action in self-defense should be confined to cases in which the "necessity of that self-defense is instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation." Thus, self defense would permit the United States to shoot down attacking enemy planes, but not to wage a war half way around the globe a month after a terrorist attack, a war that U.S. officials say might go on for years. Instead, this is the sort of situation that should be turned over to the United Nations for action.

But let's suppose someone doesn't like the above formulation. What norm would we want instead? If a country's civilian population is attacked, then that country has the right to determine the perpetrator to its own satisfaction, issue an ultimatum, determine on its own the adequacy of the response to the ultimatum, and attack the perpetrator's host country, causing great civilian harm. Would we really want this to be a universal norm? This would mean that Cubans could attack Washington on grounds that Miami harbors support for terrorists who have attacked Cuban civilians. Likewise, Iraqis, Serbs, and now Afghans, not to mention Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, Colombians, Guatemalans, and so on, could all target Washington on grounds that the U.S. government has attacked or abetted attacks on their civilian populations ? and, for that matter, ironically, Washington can attack itself, on the grounds that it abetted the creation and arming of bin Laden's terror network which in turn attacked the U.S.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said that Britain was acting in self-defense because many British citizens died in the World Trade Center. But many Indian citizens also died; do we want India to issue an ultimatum to Pakistan (for its connections to bin Laden and other terror networks)? Do we want India to then decide whether Pakistan has met the terms of its ultimatum and if New Delhi decides no, then war ensues?

On October 14, the Taliban agreed to turn bin Laden over to a neutral country if the U.S. stopped the bombing. (We might note that a proposal to turn bin Laden over to a neutral country is not unreasonable, given the unlikelihood of a fair trial in a country whose president has declared that bin Laden was wanted "dead or alive.") The United States rejected the offer. Is this a decision that should be made unilaterally by Washington.

Is this the morality, legality, and practicality anyone could wish to advocate for international relations?

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There was a vast outpouring of sympathy for the victims of the September 11 attacks. Many nations have indicated their willingness to participate in a campaign against terrorism. But, as indicated above (question 15), only one other nation thus far -- Britain -- has participated in the military actions against Afghanistan. More importantly, a coalition means a group of Washington's friends, which is not the same as obtaining legal international sanction for war.

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No vote in a nation's legislature can permit that nation to behave contrary to international law. The Congressional resolution no more makes U.S. military action "right" than would a vote by India's legislature legitimate an attack on Pakistan or by Russia's legislature legitimate slaughter in Chechnya. Military actions that cause massive civilian harm as is now occurring in Afghanistan are wrong -- they meet our definition of terrorism -- no matter what the vote of a legislature may be.

One might also note how the members of the U.S. Congress -- with one courageous exception -- abdicated their responsibility. They are constitutionally assigned responsibility to provide a check on the arbitrary power of the executive branch. To pass a resolution authorizing the president to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons" is essentially saying that Congress wants no voice in assessing evidence, determining the appropriate way to respond to that evidence, or even whether we will go to war against one or several dozen countries.

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First, if the agent of attack is illegitimate, no target it attacks is a legitimate one, even if the target might be proper were the agent someone else. Suppose Saddam Hussein decided to bomb Afghanistan on grounds he didn't like the role of the Taliban in abetting terror in the world and against the U.S. Even if he confined himself to targets entirely bearing upon the actions of terrorists and not significantly endangering civilians, still, we would say Hussein was acting illegally since he had no UN authorization to act, and we wouldn't temper that claim on the grounds he could be doing worse. The norm is general.

Even if the current U.S. bombings were internationally and legally sanctioned, thus not being carried out in vigilante style, not all targets are legitimate by any means. There is no justification in attacking in a manner that puts people at risk of starvation, that attacks civilian infrastructure, or that carries risk of substantial civilian deaths.

If the attacks had been initiated because bin Laden and his network were demonstrated guilty, and UN legal agencies called for their extradition, and the Taliban refused, and it became necessary to pursue the culprits in order to prosecute them, then yes, there could be a list of legitimate targets for such endeavors, but only if the seven million people at risk of starvation were not endangered, and if means of assault could be found which -- unlike those currently being utilized -- could be well controlled without causing terrible accidents.

On October 12, Mary Robinson, the UN's Commissioner for Human Rights, called on the United States to halt the bombing so that food could reach up to two million desperate Afghan civilians (Independent, 13 Oct. 2001)

See also:

Heikal: No Targets (http://www.zmag.com/heikal.htm)
 

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