HOW A WORLD PEACE FORCE
WOULD HANDLE SITUATIONS LIKE IRAQ
BETTER THAN THE UNITED STATES AS
POLICEMAN
SYNOPSIS:
Now—
in March 2003—
we are at war.
This war is being committed by one nation
that sees itself as policeman of the world.
Will that nation attempt similar actions in other countries?
If there were a functioning World Court and World
Peace Force,
then the problem of countries possibly possessing illegal weapons of
mass death
would be settled by a rational examination of objective, verifiable
facts
rather than by suspicions, denials, claims, & counter-claims.
Ideal methods for eliminating weapons of mass death
do not yet exist.
But we can avoid warfare committed by one nation on another
by making use of the limited methods that we do have.
Slow, methodical disarmament of nations like Iraq
by means of day-by-day inspections
is better than massive bombing and military occupation.
We can achieve the same end—
disarmament—
without killing thousands of human persons.
OUTLINE:
I. A WORLD PEACE FORCE
WOULD BE NEUTRAL AND NON-PARTISAN.
II. A WORLD PEACE FORCE WOULD BE DIRECTED
BY A NEUTRAL COURT OF WORLD LAW.
III. CITIZENS OF ALL COUNTRIES WOULD SUPPORT
THE WORLD COURT AND THE WORLD PEACE FORCE.
IV. SINCE WE HAVE NO FUNCTIONING WORLD COURT
OR WORLD PEACE FORCE,
WHAT IS OUR BEST APPROXIMATION FOR NOW?
V. UPDATE: NO WEAPONS OF MASS DEATH
DISCOVERED AS OF JUNE 2003.
VI. FURTHER UPDATE, NOVEMBER 2005:
WHAT WAS THE REAL REASON FOR THE WAR ON IRAQ?
{Historical note: This
cyber-sermon was created in March 2003,
as can be confirmed by checking
Internet files that show dates of posting.
The text has not been changed.
But updates have been added on
the dates indicated.}
HOW
A WORLD PEACE FORCE
WOULD
HANDLE SITUATIONS LIKE IRAQ
BETTER
THAN THE UNITED STATES AS POLICEMAN
by James Park
If the
world had already created a World Peace Force
for the purpose of enforcing disarmament,
Iraq would have been disarmed with a minimum of force and killing.
When the United States tries to be the policeman of the world,
its first actions are to kill armies
and to destroy military equipment from a distance.
We have experience with the following two means of
disarmament:
(1) inspections with destruction of illegal weapons
and (2) warfare to destroy all military forces and equipment.
Between 1991 and 1998, international inspectors
oversaw the destruction of tons of weapons of mass death in Iraq.
These inspectors, authorized by the United Nations,
were able to oversee the destruction of far more
of the weapons then possessed by the military of Iraq
than were destroyed in the brief war in 1991
between Iraq and the Allies who joined to force Iraq out of Kuwait.
I. A WORLD PEACE FORCE WOULD BE NEUTRAL AND NON-PARTISAN.
When the United States acts as the policeman of the
world,
everyone knows that it is the USA that is doing the bombing, etc.
And the survivors of the people who die in any such warfare
will always blame the United States for those deaths.
A correctly-constituted World Peace Force
would have no such national identification.
The soldiers who would work for the World Peace Force
would not be the employees of any one nation.
They would not be known as the military forces of this or that country.
The soldiers of every unit of the
World Peace Force would be drawn from many nations.
The countries that are policed by the World Peace
Force
might still resent the fact that their illegal weapons
were discovered and destroyed,
but this resentment would be directed at the whole world
rather than any one identifiable nation or group of nations.
II. A WORLD PEACE FORCE WOULD BE DIRECTED
BY A NEUTRAL COURT OF WORLD LAW.
When the United States decides that another nation
is an outlaw,
there is no way to examine this claim before a neutral third body.
It is just the will of one nation being imposed on another.
When the United States acts as world judge and policeman,
it often tries to get support from other nations.
But if no such support is forthcoming,
the self-appointed world enforcer
is willing and able to act alone
—because he is
the biggest kid on the block.
If disarmament were handled by a World Court,
then claims and counter-claims from all sides
would be heard by a neutral panel of wise judges.
Before any actions were authorized for the World Peace Force,
the Would Court would have to determine
that a violation of the law of disarmament had actually taken place.
Mere claims and suspicions would not be enough
to send the World Peace Force into action.
And all sides to any dispute would be fully heard
before this neutral World Court.
Evidence would be offered by all sides.
And there would be complete openness to hearing all claims
for as long as it takes to reach a wise conclusion.
Care would be taken to make sure
that the judges hearing any particular case
were not only completely neutral
about the issues and the countries involved
but they would also have the appearance of being completely neutral.
This would mean that none of the judges would be
from any of the nations involved in the dispute.
We know that judges from a certain nation or ethnic
group
can in fact rule against their own nation
or other members of their ethnic group,
but some critics could also raise doubts
about the neutrality of such judges.
So, to preserve also the appearance of being neutral,
the judges would not be from any of the countries involved.
In practice, this means that many cases
would be settled by judges from small countries.
This makes perfectly good sense.
We only need to make sure that all judges
are fully competent to do their jobs.
When the United States tries to police the world,
it uses non-judicial means to win other countries to its point of view.
For example, foreign aid is often tied to
cooperating with the U.S. in some military matter.
If Turkey had permitted the U.S. to use its soil for a war against Iraq,
Turkey would have receive $30 billion in various forms of aid.
Paying cash turns 'justice' into a process of buying friends.
Likewise, when the U.S. wants to get support,
it uses 'diplomatic' pressure to get other nations to agree.
Such methods would never be allowed in a court of law.
All such pressure would be seen as illegitimate attempts
to influence the decision of the judges.
Courts must decide on the basis of facts,
not give in to pressure from any of the contending parties.
Gathering votes for a political position
is a very different process than making rational arguments
based on facts that can be verified or disputed
before a panel of neutral judges.
Experienced judges are well aware of the means by which all nations
attempt to distort the truth for their own national advantage.
III. CITIZENS OF ALL COUNTRIES WOULD SUPPORT
THE WORLD COURT AND THE WORLD PEACE FORCE.
When well-established courts and police forces
thru-out the world
act against criminals of all sorts,
all law-abiding citizens support those efforts.
Thus, in the case of Iraq, even the citizens of Iraq
would cooperate with a World Peace Force
which was duly authorized to disarm that country.
It is very difficult to keep military secrets
from absolutely everyone in a country.
Everyone who has some close connections with soldiers
knows where they are and what they are doing.
And since the World Peace Force
would have a permanent presence in every nation on the Earth,
citizens would have easy ways of letting the World Peace Force know
where any illegal weapons were being hidden.
When the United States becomes the self-appointed
policeman of the world,
then the citizens of the countries under attack necessarily resist
those efforts
because they seem to violate the sovereignty of the nation.
But law-abiding citizens everywhere
cooperate with duly authorized police forces
when these police forces are doing their duties
of locating criminals and taking them into custody
—or, if
necessary, killing them.
IV. SINCE WE HAVE NO FUNCTIONING WORLD COURT
OR WORLD PEACE FORCE,
WHAT IS OUR BEST APPROXIMATION FOR NOW?
Now back to the real world.
It is meaningful and useful to imagine the ideal world we want,
even tho we know that it cannot become a reality for the present.
Our projected ideal can help us to make the interim decisions
that most closely approximate the world we would like to see.
At present we do not have a non-partisan World Peace
Force.
The best we have is an international body known as the United Nations,
which is hampered by the partisan interests
of all the nation-states that make up the membership of the United
Nations.
Nevertheless, the United Nations does sometimes
accomplish great things.
And the disarmament inspectors in Iraq
were doing the best job that could be expected under the circumstances.
They did not have the support and confidence of the surrounding
population.
The military government of Iraq was not cooperating willingly.
But the inspectors were nevertheless finding weapons
that are not supposed to be there.
And they would have disposed of more weapons
if they had been permitted to continue their work.
However, the work of the UN inspectors was brought
to a premature halt
by a violent war committed by the self-appointed world policeman.
Violent warfare against the military forces of Iraq
does definitely help to get rid of the arms
—both legal and
illegal—possessed
by the nation of Iraq.
But at what cost?
Many people have died, most of them Iraqi soldiers.
But civilians in Iraq who would have preferred to live
are now dead because the United States decided
not to allow any more slow disarmament by inspectors.
The United Nations is a flawed instrument of
international peace,
but it is still the best instrument we have at present.
And we will help it to be more effective
to the degree that we can free its decision-making process
from the partisanship that has been so evident recently.
In the ideal world, the World Court would decide the
facts,
based on full evidence from all sides.
And the non-partisan World Peace Force
would do whatever enforcing needed to be done.
And even tho it did not work in the case of Iraq,
we can learn a lesson from allowing one nation to police the world.
That nation will collect the hatred of all who suffer from its military
violence.
With a World Court and a World Peace Force,
we can make this planet more peaceful.
And all people can live without the threat of war.
drafted
middle March 2003; revised 3-23-2003; 3-31-2003; 4-1-2003;
6-25-2003
V.
UPDATE: NO WEAPONS OF MASS DEATH
DISCOVERED AS OF JUNE 2003.
The war was mercifully brief
in March 2003.
No prohibited weapons were used by Iraq.
And as of June 2003, no prohibited weapons have been found
by the forces of the United States and Great Britain,
which are now occupying Iraq.
This might show that the second war against Iraq
was completely unnecessary.
If the peaceful, non-violent procedures
for searching for and eliminating weapons of mass destruction
had been allowed to continue its course for another year,
thousands of people who are now dead would still be alive.
And the nation of Iraq would not be suffering the aftermath of war
and the problems of military occupation.
update added 6-13-2003
VI. FURTHER UPDATE, NOVEMBER 2005:
WHAT WAS THE REAL REASON FOR THE WAR ON IRAQ?
It has now been two and a half
years since the United States took over Iraq.
Still no weapons of mass death have been discovered in Iraq.
The best the United State as world policeman has been able to uncover
is possible plans for restarting a nuclear weapons program
that was dismantled in 1991 as an outcome of the first gulf war.
Whenever President George W. Bush is asked
about the absence of alleged weapons of mass death,
he admits that no such prohibited weapons were found.
But he almost always adds that the world is better off
without Saddam Hussein ruling Iraq.
A terrible dictators has been removed from power.
And the evils of his reign are now over.
(However, new evils have been created by the occupation,
even when the occupiers did not intend to harm the people of Iraq.)
So we might now conclude that regime change
was the real reason for the war on Iraq.
The men in Washington who had decided (early on) to attack Iraq
used the alleged weapons of mass death as an excuse
for carrying out their policy of getting rid of a dictator they did not
like.
The United States had the military capacity to
overthrow Saddam Hussein.
That part of the task was accomplished easily and quickly.
But much more killing and dying has taken place
after the end of the short war needed to take over Iraq.
However, the Charter of the United Nations prohibits
interference in the internal affairs of another country.
This is a wise policy.
Without it, we would have many more examples of foreign countries
getting involved in the civil wars within member nations.
If regime
change was the real reason behind the war
on Iraq,
it was a totally illegal war
under international law.
Only the United Nations itself has any authority
to do anything even vaguely like what the United States did in 2003
—and has continued to do every
day since.
And the question can now be raised whether
President George W. Bush has committed a "high crime"
in lying to the American people, the United Nations, and the world
in order to carry forward an illegal plan to overthrow a foreign
dictator.
If this is so, perhaps he has committed an impeachable offense.
Further investigation into the lies
needed to convince the Congress to authorize war on Iraq
might show that the President of the United States committed offenses
that would justify removing him from office.
further update written November 5, 2005; revised
11-8-2006
AUTHOR:
James Park is an existential philosopher
and a Unitarian Universalist layperson
with a Master of Divinity degree
from Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
He welcomes feedback on the themes raised in this
cyber-sermon,
especially resources on the Internet that expand these themes
and which might be linked from here.
You can write to him by e-mail: James Park:
PARKx032@TC.UMN.EDU