Trampling due process
By
Amr El-Choubaki
It is usual that national leaders, when they announce war, do so having secured the support of their people. US President George Bush, his ally British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar chose to go to the remote Portuguese island of the Azores to make their announcement. To all the world it looked as if they were conspirators in some armed robbery.
The real dilemma posed by the US war against Iraq is a product not of Washington's singular desire to overthrow Saddam Hussein, nor of UN resolutions stipulating that Iraq disarm. The dilemmas accrue from holding a suspect to account outside any legal framework, from the collective punishment of an entire population in retribution for crimes in which they had no hand. Washington seeks to punish a people for the faults of its rulers and to do this outside the boundaries of law, paying no regard to international public opinion, or to the opinions of large segments of its own population.
The criticism often levelled by Third World countries about the lack of democracy within the UN -- that it mostly served the interests of the five permanent members of the Security Council -- is now a quaint historicism. Now that the US has itself dismissed out of hand the opinions of the permanent members of the Security Council little can be hoped for small, powerless Third World states. After trampling democracy, how can the US find an audience when once again it begins to preach its values?
This week's Soapbox speaker is an analyst at the Al-Ahram centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
