Another socialist blog

Gary Sloan writes of the religious basis of George W. Bush’s crusade against evil.

When militant nationalism is bolstered by religious fervor, the world has reason to be leery. When heads of state view themselves as instruments of the divine will, they tend to be oblivious to mere human opinion, particularly when it differs from their own, since those who have God on their side always (as Henry David Thoreau said) constitute a majority of one. To the anointed, wars are holy crusades. Supporters become saints, protesters reprobates. The virtuous cannot fail to see where simple truth and goodness lie. To squash the foreign devil, collateral damage of cataclysmic magnitude becomes justifiable - devastation of infrastructures, wrecking of world markets, maiming and killing of the innocent.

Good point.

The Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy has condemned the war on Iraq as contrary to the UN Charter and international law.

According to Andrew Lichterman, [Western States Legal Foundarion] program director, “Article 51 of the UN Charter recognizes the inherent right of self-defense ‘if an armed attack occurs’. Under Article 51, a state may not decide for itself alone that a threat that justifies war exists, unless actually attacked, or, in the view of some experts, where there is a threat of attack that is immediate and unavoidable, and where there are no alternatives to the use of force. Because Iraq has not attacked any state, nor is there any showing whatever of an imminent attack by Iraq, self-defense cannot justify U.S. war on Iraq.” Mr. Lichterman added, “There is no basis in international law for dramatically expanding the concept of self-defense, as advocated in the Bush administration’s September 2002 ‘National Security Strategy,’ to authorize ‘preemptive’ - really preventive - strikes against states based on potential threats arising from possession or development of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons and links to terrorism. Such an expansion would destabilize the present system of UN Charter restraints on use of force. Further, there is no publicly disclosed evidence that Iraq is supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. If the Bush administration doctrine is allowed to stand, the next states in line may be Iran and North Korea.”