Are we still to believe that this is self-defence?

national | miscellaneous | news report Monday June 17, 2002 11:46 by Eoin Dubsky - Refueling Peace info at refuelingpeace dot org 087-6941060

Is it Participation in war or appropriate support as called upon by the UN

The Irish government maintained in 1991 and again in 2001 that they didn’t need the assent of the Dáil to allow refueling and use of Irish airspace for US military flights because they were only "[doing] this step under Security Council Resolution".(1)

The government argue that somehow the UN Security Council resolution of 28 November 1990 (678), which authorizes member states to use "all necessary means" to get Iraq out of Kuwait, makes the Gulf War somehow not really a war. And because its not really a war, sure there's no need for the assent of the Dáil for Ireland to participate.

The UN Security Council asked everyone to help out and get Saddam out of there faster than you can say "Oil Interests". So that's what we did. US military traffic raced through our airports and airspace all through the Gulf War-- erm, I mean the Gulf not-really-a-War.

Anyways, *even if* a "UN mandate" to launch a military attack on another country did somehow make such an act not really a "war" for the purposes of the Irish Constitution -- the Security Council resolution which the current Bush administration received after September 11th wouldn't cut it. To explain this point I'll just quote from a paper by Prof. Francis Boyle, an expert in International Law and American Foreign Policy, and one of the people I would anyways just paraphrase if I had to explain it myself. :-) Here goes:

The next day, September 12, the Bush administration went into the United Nations Security Council to get a resolution authorizing the use of military force, and they failed. It’s very clear, if you read the resolution, they tried to get the authority to use force, and they failed.

Indeed, the September 12 resolution, instead of calling this an armed attack by one state against another state, calls it a terrorist attack. And again there is a magnitude of difference between an armed attack by one state against another state – an act of war – and a terrorist attack. Terrorists are dealt with as criminals. They are not treated like nation states. Now what the Bush administration tried to do on September 12 was to get a resolution along the lines of what Bush Sr. got in the run up to the Gulf War in late November of 1990.

I think it is a fair comparison: Bush Jr. to Bush Sr. Bush Sr. got a resolution from the Security Council authorizing member states to use “all necessary means” to expel Iraq from Kuwait (UN Security Council Resolution 678, 28 November 1990 – ed.). They originally wanted language in there expressly authorizing the use of military force. The Chinese objected – so they used the euphemism “All necessary means.” But everyone knew what that meant. If you take a look at the resolution of September 12, that language is not in there. There was no authority to use military force at all. They never got any. Having failed to do that, the Bush administration then went to the United States Congress and, using the emotions of the moment, tried to ram through some authorization to go to war under the circumstances.

…

SELF-DEFENSE? (heading – ed.)

The Bush administration was attempting to get some type of multi-lateral justification for what it was doing when it had failed at the United Nations Security Council to get authorization. The Bush administration tried again to get more authority from the Security Council, and all they got was a presidential statement that legally means nothing. They tried yet a third time, September 29 -- before they started the war -- to get authorization to use military force, and they got stronger language. But still they failed to get any authorization from the Security Council to use military force for any reason.

Then what happened? The new US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, sent a letter to the Security Council asserting Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. Now some of us are familiar with Negroponte. He was US Ambassador in honduras during the Contra War. He has the blood of 35,000 Nicaraguan civilians on his hands, and the only way Bush could get him confirmed was that he rammed him through the Senate the day after the bombings. So whenever you see Negroponte on the television talking to you, remember this man has the blood of 35,000 people, most of whom are civilians, on his hands. That's seven times anything that happened in New York. Seven times.

The letter by Negroponte was astounding. It said that the United States reserves its right to use force in self-defense against any state that we feel is necessary in order to fight our war against international terrorism. So, in other words, they failed on three separate occasions to get formal authority from the Security Council, and now the best they could do is fall back on another alleged right of self-defense as determined by themselves -- very consistent with the War Powers Resolution authorization that Bush did indeed get from Congress on September 14.

I was giving an interview the other day to the San Francisco Chronicle, and the reporter said, "Is there any precedent for the position here being asserted by Negroponte that we are reserving the right to go to war in self-defense against a large number of other states as determined by ourselves?" I said yes, there is one very unfortunate precedent. That's the Nuremberg Tribunal of 1946 where the lawyers for the Nazi defendants took the position that they had reserved the right of self-defense under the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, the predecessor to the UN Charter -- and self-defense as determined by themselves. In other words, no one could tell them to the contrary. So at Nuremberg, lawyers for the Nazi defendants had the hutzpah to argue the entire Second World War was a war of self-defense as determined by themselves, and no one had standing to disagree with that self-judging provision. Well, of course, the Nuremberg Tribunal rejected that argument and said no: what is self-defense can only be determined by reference to international law. That has to be determined by an international tribunal. No state has a right to decide this for themselves.

### Full text available here: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fab112901.html ###

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Footnotes:
1. The Taoiseach said so in Dáil Éireann debates – Volume 404 – 30 January, 1991 – Gulf Conflict (http://www.oireachtas-debates.gov.ie/D.0404.199101300012.html) and in a
statement in in Dáil Éireann on Wednesday, 3rd October, 2001 in regard to the US situation (http://www.irlgov.ie/taoiseach/press/current/03-10-01b.htm).