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Some people think that international law gives the U.S. the right to bomb Afghanistan. It does not. In fact the U.S. has a long history of disregarding international law. The United Nations Charter, under Article 51, gives a state the right to repel an attack that is ongoing or imminent as a temporary measure until the UN Security Council can take steps necessary for international peace and security. This does not include the right to retaliate after an attack. And it certainly doesn't give the U.S. the right to attack Afghanistan in retaliation for a crime it believes (but has yet to prove) was committed by someone living there. The United States remains the only western democracy opposed to the creation of a permanent and independent International Criminal Court (ICC). "The American Servicemembers' Protection Act"(approved by the House on May 10th, 282 to 137) threatens to cut off military aid to countries that ratify the ICC treaty (except for NATO, Israel and Egypt), and forbids the US military from supporting any UN peacekeeping missions unless they were exempted from ICC prosecution. It would prohibit U.S. co-operation with ICC inspectors even in a case of international terrorism and give the U.S. President "all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release from captivity of U.S. or allied personnel detained or imprisoned against their will by or on behalf of the Court, including military force." In other words, if U.S. servicemen were found to be terrorists, the U.S. would not turn allow them to be tried. The U.S. does not even recognize the jurisdiction of the World Court. It withdrew from it in 1986 when the Court condemned the U.S. for attacking Nicaragua, mining its harbors and funding the contras. In that case, the court rejected U.S. claims that it was acting under Article 51 "in defense of Nicaragua's neighbors" and found the U.S. guilty of terrorism. The Bush administration has refused to support the biological weapons treaty being drafted at the United Nations which 143 nations have already ratified. George Bush has announced that the U.S. plans to withdraw from the 30-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and violate a ban on weapons in space with his national missile defence system. The Bush administration has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol to cut emissions of six greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulphur hexafluoride), an important first step toward reversing global warming and climate change. The Protocol only required the U.S. to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by seven percent. With four percent of the world's population, the U.S. accounts for about 25 percent of the Earth's greenhouse gas emissions. Last September, the Bush administration refused to join 163 other nations at the UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa. The United States is the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons during war.
Since
World War II, the United States has bombed the following nations: And now Afghanistan. During the last 20 years the United States has committed the following acts of terrorism: The shooting down of two Libyan planes in 1981; the bombardment of Beirut in 1983 and 1984; the bombing of Libya in 1986; the bombing and sinking of an Iranian ship in 1987; the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane in 1988; the shooting down of two more Libyan planes in 1989; the bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, the latter destroying a pharmaceutical plant which provided for half the impoverished nation's medicine. The government of the United States is the major obstacle to international law and to peace and justice on our planet today.
Join us in opposing the U.S. war on Afghanistan Join us in struggling for a world of peace and justice. (The above list of nations bombed by the United States since World War II was included in an excellent article by Arhundati Roy entitled "War is Peace". The full text may be found on the outlookindia website: http://www.outlookindia.com ) (According to a report written in October of 1993, Instances of Use of United States Forces Abroad, 1798 - 1993 there have been 234 instances in which the US has used its armed forces abroad, including five declared wars: the War of 1812, the Mexican War of 1846, the Spanish American War of 1898, World War I declared in 1917, and World War II declared in 1941. Adding Iraq, Bosnia, Sudan, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan from Arundhati Roy's list brings the total to 239, -if you count the war on the people of Iraq from 1991 to present as one instance.) (Zoltan Grossman recently revised a report entitled, "From Wounded Knee to Afghanistan: a century of U.S. military interventions". It is available on the web: http://www.zmag.org/list2.htm. This list illustrates what indigenous leaders have long called the "longest undeclared war in history": the U.S. war on First Nations.)
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