Faulty Judgment
Pfaff, William
we must be still, and allow it to form US, This has to do not only with hierarchy as a principle, but at times with the hierarchy itself. A bishop may not be charismatic, a good...
...But by the time the United Nations' members arrived in Rome to debate the court, the Clinton administration had changed its mind, under heavy pressure from the Pentagon...
...interests, or arose from an American conception of cold-war imperatives which even most U.S...
...As various analysts have documented, the sanctions imposed after the Gulf War created widespread unemployment, skyrocketing inflation, and severe shortages of previously imported commodities, including medicines, medical equipment, farm machinery, electrical generating equipment, and water purification supplies...
...9 Second, there is the dilemma of accurately assessing to what extent the economic embargo has actually imposed hardship on the Iraqi people...
...Cholera, scarcely detected in the 1980s, reemerged at near-epidemic levels...
...It was designed to persuade policy makers to end the comprehensive trade sanctions against Iraq...
...leaders...
...As a result of these and war-related damage to water-supply and sewage-treatment systems, disease and malnutrition have risen sharply...
...The occasions when the United States actually broke international law were in pursuit of narrow U.S...
...If the United States stops being the policeman, the argument goes on, the world will be sorry, because not only is no other nation qualified to play the role, no other would be trusted to do so...
...They certainly did nothing for international order or democracy...
...While no effort should be spared to reduce the suffering of the Iraqi people, proponents for the removal of sanctions have failed to address these ethical quandaries...
...But a good many people, particularly in the military, have been convinced by a certain style of self-avowed "tough-minded" political advocacy that in the "real" world, respect for international law is weakness...
...The record shows that the country would have been better off respecting international law...
...Second, there is Commonweal | 0 September 11, 1998...
...The affair has actually undermined Washington's claim to defend world order and lead the world community...
...and the stunting and wasting of children became widespread...
...The new American position was that it would support the court only if the United States were exempt from its jurisdiction...
...Under the Rome treaty it is imaginable that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger could have been charged with the war crime of international aggression...
...It therefore might find itself, or its soldiers, accused of war crimes, perhaps frivolously or mischievously...
...But I do not share the view of these groups that (1) sanctions constitute a genocide of Iraqis for which the West (read the United States) is to blame, or that (2) the international community (again read the United States) has sacrificed innocents as "acceptable" casualties in the struggle to control Saddam Hussein's ambitions to develop an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction...
...This leads to the claim that breaking the law is essential to advancing the rule of law, and to the notion that the nations of the UN should name Commonweal 9 September11, 1998 the United States the one nation not subject to international law...
...A bishop may not be charismatic, a good administrator, or even very bright, but if he is doing his job he may find it necessary to say of some theological teachings, of some interpretations of Scripture, or of some forms of behavior that they do not correspond with what we have been given in our tradition...
...interests...
...As an analyst of the humanitarian impact of the Iraqi sanctions, and as a supporter of Pax Christi, I share the hope that not one more Iraqi will die a preventable death...
...9 1998, Los Angeles Times Syndicate George A. Lopez THE SANCTIONS DILEMMA Hype doesn't help O n July 25, members of Voices in the Wilderness and Pax Christi began a three-week fast and lobbying effort outside the United States Mission to the United Nations...
...It has not in the past had to break the law to uphold international order...
...Sanctions have gone awry because the Council did not mix carrots (such as the partial lifting of sanctions as rewards) with sticks (keeping sanctions on the free flow of oil) in attempting to close down Iraq's weapons development...
...They did the contrary, even in terms of U.S...
...The affair has done serious damage to the administration's own policies, as well as to the national interest...
...If the United States is to be the world's policeman, the argument says, it must be exempted from being held accountable to the law...
...The Panama and Grenada episodes are national embarrassments...
...opposition to the court...
...Yet Americans would feel better about themselves today had the United States never invaded Cambodia...
...The position taken by the United States in Rome split the policy community, Congress, and U.S...
...The New York Times called it a "shameful performance...
...At its core, then, the question is: Do sanctions kill babies, or do Saddam Hussein's own policies kill them...
...I do not think this is true...
...These included the invasion of Cambodia and the secret war waged in Laos (both ancillary to the Vietnam War), as well as an unhappily long list of military interventions in the Caribbean and Central America, and some CIA strong-arm work elsewhere...
...9 Third, there is the question of whether the international community's actions in the area of humanitarian relief parallel its rightful concern over weapons development...
...armed interventions since the World War II that have been recognized by the international community as in the general interest, from the Korean War through the Gulf War to the intervention in Bosnia, have respected international law...
...The case made by the administration was that because the United States is the sole superpower and the "indispensable nation," which others expect to uphold international order, it may sometimes find it necessary to violate international law--in the line of duty, so to speak...
...typhoid spread alarmingly...
...This is what presents the problem...
...Embedded in this disagreement over sanctions are excruciating ethical issues that Catholic peace circles have not sufficiently addressed...
...The argument is obviously fallacious as well as fatuous...
...Prayer is the beginning of the deep listening which is involved in the only kind of obedience that should matter to Christians...
...Xenophobia is involved, as in Senator Jesse Helms's (RN.C...
...This is defended as a realistic claim, given the way the world works--even if it is absurd in principle...
...In particular, the Council failed to see in the multiple requirements placed on Iraq after the Gulf War an opportunity to mix pressure, pain, and promises in ways that might have sparked more compliance, and which would have rewarded the real progress made on Iraq's compliance with various provisions important to the Council...
...interventions in Panama and Grenada might have led to similar charges against U.S...
...While it is true that a deep listening is required of the hierarchy as it is of all of us, it is in fact traditionally, and for good reason, the job of the bishop and not the theologian...
...First, it is Baghdad itself that has stifled the UN-sanctioned, humanitarian oil-for-food program from its inception in 1991, holding innocent Iraqis hostage as the world community continually tried to get medicine and food relief into the country...
...Specifically, there was neither new bargaining over sanctions, nor "trial balloons" about lifting some of the trade sanctions when Iraq accepted two major provisions of the Security Council resolutions: the creation of permanent UN monitoring facilities in November 1993, and the unqualified recognition of Kuwait's borders and sovereignty...
...Faced with Saddam's intransigence on both weapons inspections and humanitarian relief efforts, the Security Council, though resolute on maintaining sanctions, was fairly unimaginative in executing an effective sanctions policy...
...Its main opponents in this matter are its principal allies, Canada, Germany, and Britain...
...The United States had originally urged that this court be created...
...But, as is often said in Orthodox circles, the true theologian is the one who prays, and the one who prays truly is the theologian...
...It is clear that the sanctions have caused severe health and nutrition problems in Iraq...
...It has made the United States the tacit advocate of illegality and vigilantism...
...ashington's opposition to the international criminal court established by the UN majority at a meeting in Rome in July has revealed the intellectual confusion which prevails in the American government and policy community over America's proper role in the world...
...The Washington Post approved the administration's policy...
...Voices' rallying point has been its claim that between 600,000 and I million Iraqis have died as a result of the UN-supported sanctions, with a large proportion of these being children...
...As Joshua Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute writes, "everyone knows" that the United States is a "righteous nation...
...All of the U.S...
...The vigil follows years of activity by Voices, including civil disobedience in the form of delivery of relief supplies to Iraq...
...I, too, am convinced that the sanctions policy can and should have been managed more effectively and humanely...
...For while there is no question that children in Iraq have died from treatable diseases and afflictions, we must also ask whether the Iraqi government's own policies actually attend to its people's needs...
...He doesn't need to do this in an authoritarian way, but he may very well need to do it...
...If one looks at the past, there is no reason for the United States to make this argument...
...As the UN Secretary General's November 1997 report observed: "The rate of acute malnutrition or wasting among children up to five years old was 11 percent, chronic malnutrition, which results in stunting, affected 31 percent, and 26 percent were underweight...
...Not only was the United States overwhelmingly defeated, but the court, as created, will have jurisdiction over Americans if they are charged with war crimes in a country which has signed the treaty...
...The sanctions are about to enter an unprecedented eighth year...
...None of its past acts of vigilantism produced any useful long-term result...
...opinion...
...This is indefensible and absurd, as serious people in Washington surely see...
...One might say that Washington's arguments are wholly cynical...
...It says that Washington should be allowed to act as an international vigilante, and be trusted because of its self-evident virtue...
...allies refused to accept...
...If we acknowledge that elements of the sanctions policy have been both ineffective and inhumane, why not simply accept lifting the sanctions...
...9 First, there is the problem of what to do about a brutal dictator who attacks not only his neighbors, but his own people with chemical agents, and who repeatedly frustrates attempts to secure full disclosure of Iraq's biological, chemical, nuclear, and other weapons programs...
...Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had spoken with enthusiasm about how it could deter future war crimes by making it possible to bring individuals to justice for war atrocities...
Vol. 125 • September 1998 • No. 15
