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CounterPunch
September
18, 2002
Yet Another Bush Doctrine
by William A. Cook
He said it and we must obey! "We (America)
want the United Nations to be effective and respected and successful.
We want (the) its resolutions to be enforced." This is
the third of Dubya's new foreign policy doctrines, each a furtherance
of his unilateral approach to world domination.
Following September 11, the fledging
President, whose foreign policy initiatives up to that date had
been marked by retreat from international and global agreements
in favor of isolationism, announced a declaration of war against
the forces of evil that reside in the world. This Manichean perception
of the world fit logically into his Puritan fundamentalist view
that America represents the forces of good fighting against the
forces of evil, the same America that had been directed to this
new land by the Almighty and blessed with truth and righteousness.
"You are with us or against us," he declared on September
20th. The authorities in power in 1636, the Puritan Divines,
determined who was good and who was evil because they believed
they were God's anointed. They determined that the Natives were
"salvages" working for Satan and that gave them the
right to exterminate the Pequot tribe in 1637, and they praised
God for permitting it and for making the slaughter so thorough!
So today we have a President who believes that he is born-again
in Christ and can interpret His word as to who is good and who
is evil.
Unfortunately, since terrorists cannot
be defined as rulers of nation states as defined by the United
States, he provided to the world's leaders an avenue of justification
for their acts of occupation and slaughter of those opposed to
their regimes or their desires. We have witnessed this in Russia's
justification of the slaughter of the Chechnyans, Melosovic's
defense that he was only subduing "terrorists" in his
ethnic cleansing of the Muslims in Bosnia, Pakistan's and India's
justification of their respective attacks against each other
in Kashmir, and in Israel's defense of its occupation of Arab
territory. The first Bush doctrine has opened the door for anarchy
throughout the world as leader after leader justifies his actions
against his enemies as a "war against terrorists."
But our President didn't stop there.
He annunciated his second doctrine at the West Point military
academy: the right of America to determine and execute "pre-emptive
attacks" against perceived enemies. This doctrine effectively
undermines international law and makes "irrelevant,"
to use a Sharon operative word, the United Nations. But it is
worse than that. It also undermines the basic premises that have
determined how the United States declares war: a determination
that the United States has been attacked before it attacks. It
also shifts responsibility for determination of such action from
the Congress to the Executive branch if the reality of "pre-emptive"
strike is to be effective. The second Bush doctrine augments
the first by giving those in power another "right"
to act without evidence of perceived intention or determination
of "evil" by presentation of evidence before a court
or a congressional or representational body.
Now we have Dubya's third doctrine: resolutions
of the United Nations must be enforced; at least that is how
Dubya defended his desire to bring about "regime change"
in Iraq when he addressed the UN on the 12th. On the surface
this would seem to be a desirable goal for international order.
Unfortunately, neither Bush nor his administration mean what
they say. If they did, they would apply the same doctrine to
Israel. Consider the discrepancies: Iraq has broken UN resolutions
since 1991 according to the President; Israel has broken UN resolutions
since 1948. Bush claims that Saddam has defied the UN and thus
" is a threat to UN authority and to peace." He asks
this question as he presents his arguments before the UN delegates:
"Are UN resolutions to be honored and enforced or cast aside
without consequence?" Will the UN become irrelevant if its
resolutions are not obeyed? The answer applies, of course, only
to Iraq. It is the only argument he could make at the UN.
He could not claim that the United States
has authority to "go it
alone" against his perceived "evildoer." He could
not use the fabrication that Iraq, with only a third of its military
in tact following the other Iraqi war and hobbled with a population
that has suffered ten years of deprivation caused by the US imposed
sanctions, could pose a threat to the US unless they were to
hand-deliver a weapon across 7,000 miles. So he resorts to this
doctrine trusting, I suspect, that no one would notice that Israel
has defied over 55 UN resolutions since 1967 and others prior
to that reaching back to 1948. These resolutions condemn Israeli
intransigence against implementation of fundamental human rights
and illegal occupation of Arab territory.
Consider the wording of these resolutions
and contrast them with the
resolutions condemning Iraq. Resolution 194 (III), dating from
12/11/48, demands that Israel give refugees the right to return.
That right has never been granted. Resolutions 237, dated 6/14/67,
and resolutions 2252, 2341B, Human Rights Resolution 6, and 1336
continue a string of UN resolutions against Israel demanding
"Right of Return" calling "upon the government
of Israel to facilitate return of those inhabitants who have
fled the area of military operations since the outbreak of hostilities."
They further "Expressed its (the UN) grave concern at the
violation of human rights in Arab territories occupied by Israel."
These resolutions "Called upon the Government of Israel
to desist forthwith from acts of destroying homes of the Arab
civilian population inhabiting areas occupied by Israel and to
respect and implement the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and the Geneva Convention of August 12, 1949 in occupied territories."
Israel has defied the UN on each and every one of these resolutions.
But it gets worse. The UN Security Council
passed resolutions 242, 338,
262, 267, 446, and 465 each stating substantially the same thing,
Israel must vacate all their illegal settlements and provide
"land for peace" for the Palestinians. Israel has defied
every one of these resolutions. In wording resolution 56/59,
dated December 10, 2001, the UN deplored "those policies
and practices of Israel which violate Human Rights" Yet
Bush has said nothing about Israel's disobedience nor has he
asserted that its defiance is a threat to the UN authority or
to peace. What hypocrisy.
Bush condemned Iraq for defying the UN
by not acquiescing to resolution
688 of 1991 concerning repression of minorities and the use of
torture. Similar condemnations of Israel have been made by human
rights organizations and accepted by the UN as fact in its resolutions.
Why condemn one and not the other? Bush condemned Iraq for not
returning 600 prisoners of war as demanded by UN resolutions
686 and 687, but he said nothing of the many UN resolutions demanding
that Israel permit Palestinians who number in the million to
return to their homeland. Why? The answer is clear enough: Bush
supports Israel and condemns Iraq. He determines who is good
and who is evil. How else can he implement his first two doctrines?
Bush doctrines as noted provide a blueprint
for US domination of the world agenda regardless of the UN. If
the US demands it, it must be done. It is not a question of equality
of treatment; it's a question of who is with us (US) and who
is not. It is a question of who determines who is good and who
is evil!
William Cook is a professor of English at the University
of La Verne in southern California. He can be reached at: cookb@ULV.EDU
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