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quote:The best way to deal with terrorism is to address its root causes. Perhaps some terrorism would exist even if the grievances of the people of the Third World were dealt with -- grievances that lead to anger, despair, frustration, feelings of powerlessness, and hatred -- but certainly the ability of those who would commit terror without grievances to recruit others would be tremendously reduced. As a second step, we might help establish a real international consensus against terrorism by putting on trial U.S. officials responsible for some of the atrocities noted earlier.
Of course, these are long-term solutions and we face the horror of terrorism today. So we must consider what we want the United States government to do internationally right now.
The U.S. government's guiding principle ought to be to assure the security, safety, and well-being of U.S. citizens without detracting from the security, safety, and well-being of others. A number of points follow from this principle.
First, we must insist that any response refrain from targeting civilians. It must refrain as well from attacking so-called dual-use targets, those that have some military purpose but substantially impact civilians. The United States did not adhere to this principle in World War II (where the direct intention was often to kill civilians) and it still does not adhere to it, as when it hit the civilian infrastructure in Iraq or Serbia, knowing that the result would be civilian deaths (from lack of electricity in hospitals, lack of drinking water, sewage treatment plants, and so on), while the military benefits would be slight. We would obviously reject as grotesque the claim that the World Trade Center was a legitimate target because its destruction makes it harder for the U.S. government to function (and hence to carry out its military policies). We need to be as sensitive to the human costs of striking dual-use facilities in other countries as we are of those in our own country.
We must insist as well that any response to the terror be carried out according to the UN Charter. The Charter provides a clear remedy for events like those of September 11: present the case to the Security Council and let the Council determine the appropriate response. The Charter permits the Council to choose responses up to and including the use of military force. No military action should be carried out without Security Council authorization. To bypass the Security Council is to weaken the foundations of international law that provide security to all nations, especially the weaker ones.
Security Council approval is not always determinative. During the Gulf War, the U.S. obtained such approval by exercising its wealth and power to gain votes. So we should insist on a freely offered Security Council authorization. Moreover, we should insist that the UN retain control of any response; that is, we should oppose the usual practice whereby the United States demands that the Council give it a blank check to conduct a war any way it wants. In the case of the Gulf War, although the Council authorized the war, Council members learned about the opening salvos from CNN; the war was run out of Washington, not the UN. To give the United States a free hand to run a military operation as it chooses removes a crucial check.
And we should insist that no action and no Security Council vote be taken without a full presentation of the evidence assigning culpability. We don't want Washington announcing that we should just take its word for it -- as occurred in 1998, when the U.S. bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, asserting that it was a chemical warfare facility, only to acknowledge some time later that it had been mistaken.
If -- and it's a big if -- all these conditions are met, then we should no more object to seizing the perpetrators than we object to having the domestic police seize a rapist or a murderer to bring the culprit to justice. And what if a state determines to use military means to protect bin Laden from seizure? The dangers of harm to civilians are much greater in the case of action against a state. Military action would be justified only insofar as it did not cause substantial harm to civilians. In addition, if the goal of a proposed military action is to enhance U.S. security rather than to wreak vengeance, such envisioned benefits would have to be weighed against the prospects of driving thousands of others in the Islamic world into the hands of terrorism. In other words, military action needs to be the smallest part of the international response. More important are diplomatic pressures, cutting off funding sources for terrorist organizations, reducing the grievances that feed frustration, and so on.
It is critically important to also note, however, that even non-military actions can cause immense civilian suffering and that such options too must be rejected. Calling for Pakistan to cut off food aid to Afghanistan, for example, as the United States has already done, would likely lead to starvation on a huge scale. Its implications could be even worse, perhaps far worse, than those of bombing or other seemingly more aggressive choices.
- as proposed by ZNet. |
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