May 2003
Although the war has started this does not mean that we should give up.
For the past few days, more than 27 thousand people from 119 countries have sent letters to their UN ambassadors asking them to support a "Uniting for Peace" resolution in the UN General Assembly to make clear the world's opposition to a devastating and illegal war in Iraq waged by the United States and a small group of allies.
The Uniting for Peace resolution has stopped wars before, even after they've broken out. The United Nations should not accept being relegated to a strictly humanitarian role when it could still play a powerful role in stopping this conflict.
Because more than 30 million people have been out in the streets to say "No" to this war. More than half the Security Council, given a chance, would say "No" to this war, as would the overwhelming majority of the UN General Assembly. But the Security Council has failed us. It's time for the General Assembly of the United Nations, which more thoroughly represents the voice of this world's people, to rise up and demand that Iraq be disarmed peacefully, and that the slaughter of innocent Iraqis cease immediately.
It is with high hopes that I am urging you to promote the awareness to this resolution by spreading the word of such a resolution which is presently being pushed by the UN General Assembly.
In 1950, the United Nations agreed a way to address impasses at the Security Council. The "Uniting for Peace" resolution (resolution 377A) was designed to bring the entire General Assembly together to address a "threat to peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression" when the Security Council failed to reach agreement.
For this reason also I am writing to you as this war takes its course in Iraq to express my concern at the potential use of indiscriminate weapons that may not sufficiently distinguish between military and civilian targets and which will thus contravene customary international humanitarian law.
More so because I believe that by their very nature nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and anti-personnel landmines cannot be used in a manner which does not violate the principle of distinction between civilian and military target.
Although some high-ranking military officials would claim that some weapons such as cluster bombs are designed to be targeted at military objectives, the fact that five per cent and sometimes a much greater proportion fail to explode on impact means that unexploded bomblets are left behind on the ground. They can then be triggered by civilian victims, functioning in exactly the same way as anti-personnel mines, which have been banned by the 1997 Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty. I urge you to support a moratorium on the use of cluster bombs.
The Pentagon should attest their claim of the preciseness of long-range missiles that are inaccurate, such as long range Scuds, which has just recently killed a number of Iraqi civilians when they landed on a market place Basra. Nor should aerial bombing from altitudes of above 15,000 feet, since recent experience in Kosovo has shown that this does not allow for full adherence to international humanitarian law requiring parties to make every effort to distinguish civilians from military targets.
Moreover, given the continuing reports of health and environmental damage that may be caused by depleted uranium, further independent medical evidence should be published showing that uranium-tipped weapons are safe before use of these controversial weapons continues.
Opposition against such should be advocated because it promotes carnage and violates one of the basic rights of people, which is to live and more so to live a life of peace.
Mainly because the American and British invasion of Iraq is both illegal and immoral: illegal because the Iraqi government did not launch an offensive strike against America and Great Britain which doesn't give it ground as a defensive action moreover it is also a clear violation of resolution 1441 which was passed by the UN Security Council to address the issue of Iraq's, alleged harboring of weapons of mass destruction which is as claimed by the US and British government as their primary rationale for launching such an attack. And immoral because it purveys a self-righteous assertion that promotes violence against a particular race and religious tenet. The military action that we are witnessing right now is called aggression, which is a manifestation of their imperialist interests. Foremost for the rich oil reserves that Iraq has kept on hand.
Their moral claim of liberating Iraq from the clutches of Saddam and his tyranny is not worthy of the cause, because genuine liberation comes from the people who are subjected to tyranny not from some foreign self-proclaimed messiah of democracy.
Let the initiative for freedom from the dominion of Saddam come from the Iraqi people not from G.W. Bush, Tony Blair or whoever it is that claims to be the savior of the Iraqi people from the bondage of tyranny.
We cannot entrust the fate of the world from leaders whose perception of war are from that of a Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay motion picture.
Let not be the blood that has been shed and is being continuously being shed be in our apathetic hands as we sit idle in front of our television sets!
Unite for peace!
No blood for oil!
posted by m35b @ Friday, May 28, 2004
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