A
Just War
Yves Roucaute
Translated by Douglas
French original: "Une guerre juste"
(Le Monde, 2003/03/08)Law without the sword is only a word and morality without will is a hollow dream.
Munich's mindset is pacing throughout France. The elites, the media and court intellectuals are hammering "No to war on Iraq!" with such demagoguery, playing on the "nationalism of the poor" (Brecht) and the heart's "proof," on France's "interests" and power, that showing doubt gets you called a traitor to your country for not being one as great as it is itself.
Even of doubts, despite the masses in Paris and Algiers, I have none. No more than those who said "no" with de Gaulle to the Brown legions and then to Communism during the Berlin or Cuba affairs, or with François Mitterrand during the euromissiles matter. The war is just. Just and necessary. Because morality, law and political reason demand it.
Moral necessity would be enough to end the debate. Whether it has any chemical or bacteriological arms, Saddam Hussein's regime, which views humanity as means and not an ends, is immoral. Immoral and criminal.
It is not only a dictatorship but a totalitarianism. Who is unaware of the Baghdad detention center and its basements where people are tortured and shot? The terror of its population, the bloody repression of the opposition among them, who do not themselves have the freedom to demonstrate? The militarization of the populace? Iraq's crimes against Iran or the Kurds? Its will to destabilize its neighbors or destroy Israel? Its support for terrorists?
"The hunt for terrorists is declared open": this banner suits me better than the pacifist processions which yesterday applauded the Munich accords, denounced "Ridgway the plague," hailed Fidel Castro or the installation of Soviet SS 20s and who today seek to prevent the ouster of one of the world's bloodiest dictators under the pretense that anything is better than war.
Freedom and dignity aren't worth war? They do not demand that we liberate a people bound in irons?
When the pacifists retort that there are other shameful regimes and see the choice of Iraq as proof of American duplicity, I almost want to smile. As there are several murderers roaming the streets, should we not demand that the one within the police's grasp be disabled from hurting others? Do we in our erudition propose that he continue to terrorize his own on the sole condition that he not threaten those who live outside his borders?
It is true that our lesson givers are not at all troubled seeing virtually all of the dictatorial regimes (save those restrained by the US) marching masked behind them, from China, which is crushing Tibet, to Osama bin Laden, exporting his hatred, from Russia, which is bombing civilians in Chechnya to the Sudan, which imposes the most horrifying laws on women, not to mention the African dictatorships so irritatingly forgotten.
The law they are skirting doesn't favor pacifists, either. The United States have a UN resolution (1441), unanimously passed, even by France, which authorizes them to act if Saddam Hussein does not furnish proof of the destruction and prohibition of chemical and bacteriological weapons. The Tartuffes of the world pretend to think that it is for the inspectors to prove that such arms no longer exist.
And thus, with this rhetorical twisting of the need for proof, develops the game of cat and mouse that Mohamed ElBaradei and Hans Blix complain of.
When the United States proposes a final resolution before the UN, should they, if it is opposed, allow the previous decisions to be flouted? What would be the value of a variable law that, like Penelope, undid by night what it had woven in the day? Either law is law and must be respected, or the UN is a fleece warn threadbare by international immorality and disarray that must be circumvented.It is because they know this that our "semi-capables" (Pascal) are hiding behind political reason. The United States is supposedly acting out of "financial interests," "for oil," they say.
That financial interest should be the motive for intervention does not suffice to condemn it. It is not necessary, as Kant pointed out, that conduct come from morality to be just, only that it conform to it.
Moreover, every State must assure the conditions for its survival. And petroleum is a primary strategic resource, with which republics can be blackmailed, a blackmail already seen once before, which Saddam Hussein has begun again by threatening to burn 1,500 oil wells. Thus he could make war legitimate.
Of course, France is acting counter to her interests. By not taking part in the coalition, the Iraqi market will pass us by. It remains to be seen that other regional governments, who, unlike their electorates, despise Saddam Hussein and are eager to be rid of him, will thank us for our pusillanimity.
In truth, it is not reason but passion that is guiding our pacifists. And the hateful ones, who ally themselves with the far Left, the far Right and archaic nationalist elements, deny this ad absurdum.
Let's imagine for a moment that the US fails. Everybody would see the proof of a weakness that would destabilize the moderate Muslim movements and governments from the Yemenite shores to some of our troubled slums. If there are no longer any international police, the hopes of "craziest" will be permitted.
On the other hand, if the war is just in its political and humanitarian ends, it is also thus in its means. Blood, you say? No one asked the pacifists "to die for Iraq." We're not talking about sending men from this contingent but professionals. And everything shall be done to ensure that the loss of human life remains as small as possible.
For the Iraqi population, the means used will conform to this principle. Dead? Surely, there shall be some. Because Saddam Hussein is taking his population hostage so as not to give way before morality and law. As for the collateral damage in this war, it will never be greater than the crimes, which are definite and limitless this time, that the Iraqi regime would perpetrate tomorrow in the absence of an intervention.
As for the rest of the world, war will soon appear as a wise decision. May it not displease the apocalyptic, there will be no "resistance" among a population awaiting the elimination of a tyrant. And a few televised images will be enough to reverse an international opinion that has been fooled.
Thus this regional tinderbox may be reformed, security in Saudi Arabia and in the Emirates comforted, the existence of Israel assured and the Palestinian Authority democratized. While the war begun against rogue States in Afghanistan, pursued in Iraq, will continue in order to impose this treaty for international peace throughout the globe that universal conscience demands.
Law without the sword is only a word and morality without will is a hollow dream.
Yves Roucaute is a professor of common law and political science at the law school of Nanterre university.
[Posted 2003/03/10]
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