Posted on 04/17/2002 6:58:39 AM PDT by Rule of Law
US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s visit here Monday sparked more than just the wrath of an anti-Washington mob, with some parties demanding that he be prosecuted as a war criminal.
Despite Powell’s moderate position toward the Middle East crisis and his description by many as a “dove” in comparison with Pentagon hawks, activists here have levelled far-reaching accusations against the US diplomat-in-chief.
Two Lebanese lawyers sent State Prosecutor Adnan Addoum an official notification, urging him to strip the visiting Powell of his diplomatic immunity and requesting that he be either arrested or expelled for his alleged role in war crimes and in the Israeli offensive against Palestine.
Similarly, Khat Mubashar (Direct Line), a local leftist student group, has issued a petition requesting that the US envoy be prosecuted in an international criminal court and listing many alleged crimes, including crimes committed during the Gulf War.
The notification by lawyers Mohammed Adib and Nabil Halabi highlights Powell’s role as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War, saying that the “crimes committed against civilians are a secret to no one,” and citing the killing of hundreds of women and children, war prisoners and the use of biological weapons there.
The statement also blames him for US foreign policy, including “the constant US vetoing that blocks any (UN) decision to condemn Israeli crimes,” especially following the 1996 Qana massacre.
“This is a first step; it might just be a symbolic one, but still,” said Halabi, who added that he was disappointed that the judicial authorities did not treat the notification as an urgent one.
Addoum, who received the brief on Monday, described it later in the evening as “not serious from a legal point of view,” calling it a “political statement.”
“We will look into the file and take the appropriate measures,” he said.
Khat Mubashar went further in their indictment, going as far back as the Vietnam War, and claiming Powell had a hand in the 1968 My Lai massacre that claimed the lives of scores of Vietnamese civilians.
According to Yasser Mounif of Khat Mubashar, the group hopes their initiative will gain momentum and transform their accusations from a symbolic step into an actual conviction.
“In light of his visit, and all the misleading images it may carry, we thought that raising the issue now was appropriate,” he said. “But this doesn’t mean that the group is absolving other personalities of their crimes.”
The statement denounced US policy in the region and blamed Powell for the burning alive of Iraqi soldiers during the Gulf War and using depleted uranium warheads, which it said had caused “the disability of 136,000 US soldiers.”
It also claimed that Powell played a role in massacres and other crimes that have taken place in Panama, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
It's time to destroy the UN before it destroys us.
I agree RoL, and further, if something like this quote above is even ATTEMPTED, I expect this US govt to strip diplo-immunity from EVERY ambassador or UN mission in this country. It will have shown just how worthless this immunity is!
I would hope so. I'm not too sure they would. But when the bigwigs are under attack, they tend to be for fighting back. They don't care too much if we "little people" have our freedom destroyed by these one-world thugs, but maybe an attack on one of their own would get a reaction.
Of course, Powell would only be the first target. Bush will be next. Surely, that would get their attention.
I'm not so sure.
I can see their point. Ever since WWI, America has been sticking its nose in everyone else's business. Everywhere you look, we're meddling in everybody else's affairs. Everybody hates a buttinski.
I can truly understand the rest of the world's wanting to get some of their own back. I can understand the rest of the world wanting to tell the US to just leave them the hell alone.
This comment should be placed in the 'humor' forum as it cannot be considered a serious observation.
We finance a part of most of the world's governments, we're the policeman they come running to when threatened and we send more humanitarian aid abroad than any country in the history of the world and we do it on a yearly basis.
America has no colonies, takes no land and tolerates endless abuses of our generosity while still offering more. We accept tens of thousands of immigrants every year and offer them a life they could only dream of in their homelands and we ask nothing but some loyalty and we get terrorism and complaints instead.
Your hatred of America is misplaced and unappreciated here. It's also wildly illogical. Third world countries that embrace dictatorships and socialist governments that fail and then blame the U.S. for the failures are a dime a dozen. So are complainers that live in a land of milk and honey but instead of appreciating it complain about the droning of the bees, instead. Absurd. We'll just asume you were kidding and leave it at that.
I don't hate America. But I realize why other do.
Take the Middle East as an example. We are over there sticking our nose where it doesn't belong. We are paying terrorists to kill Israelis and paying Israelis to kill terrorists.
We are busily giving both sides reason to hate the US.
Arabs hate the US because we "support" Israel. Israel has reason to hate the US because we fund the PLO and many of the Arab countries that want to destroy them. We have also stepped in on several occassions to keep them from destroying the PLO and other Arab terrorist organizations.
Do we have any business sending money to the PLO? Do we have any business sending money to Egypt? Or even Israel?
And why should we try to keep Israel from defending itself against terrorists?
We do all of these things and it is only natural that the people effected should resent it.
There's probably not a country in the world that we haven't interfered with in some way or another. We resent it if these countries try to interfere with us. Why should we expect to be able to interfere with them without causing resentment?
There's a whole lot to be said for the Golden Rule. "Do unto others as you would have them to do unto you." If the US wouldn't like other countries interfering with how we run our business, then we shouldn't interfere with how they run theirs.
Pretending that the world's richest and most powerful country (if you read the bible, think of the U.S. as Rome around 1 A.D.) can simply ignore billions of other people and the many governments that either love or hate and envy us is simple not realistic, although pretending we can do this is probably comforting, I understand.
America has done a lot more good than harm througout the world and at this late date, we cannot simply abandon our interests abroad, nor will we. You can adopt the Libertarian position that we have no business dealing with any other government in any meaningful way, ('Mind our own business') but that denies human nature as well as human history.
Hold that view if you will but it's not realistic and not useful other than to simply protest American foreign policy and we have lots of folks to do that already, so you'll have to get in line after them. Have fun.
Yes, absolutely. The sooner this monster ICC genie is fully out of the bottle and the U.S. realizes what is, the sooner it can be faced head on.
This is what we all expected, but it is occurring sooner than most thought.
And to people who didn't expect it would happen to them. That's what's so great about this. Powell and Bush and their ilk didn't mind this sort of thing when only the peons were going to suffer from it. But now the shoe is on the other foot and they're finding out just how tight it is.
Not really. If someone attacks Canada, I would be for going to the aid of the Canadians. Same with Mexico. Britian and Australia, probably. But if India and Pakistan get into it with each other, that's really none of our business.
Pretending that the world's richest and most powerful country (if you read the bible, think of the U.S. as Rome around 1 A.D.) can simply ignore billions of other people and the many governments that either love or hate and envy us is simple not realistic, although pretending we can do this is probably comforting, I understand.
We are not Rome. It was the Roman Empire. They owned those countries they controlled or made them pay tribute. And what happened to Rome? They over extended. They bit off more than they could chew, so they choked. They lost everything.
In case you haven't noticed, our government isn't doing such a hot job here. How on earth are they going to run the world? They have bitten off more than they can chew and I'm for them spitting it out before we choke.
America has done a lot more good than harm througout the world
When America was the shining example of what countries could achieve, we did great things for the world. When we became the wet nurse to the world, we screwed up.
Our foriegn aid is poison. Foriegn aid is welfare for countries. We know what welfare does to people. It destroys them. We have created an underclass in this country with welfare. People who lack the motivation to make it on their own because the welfare checks make it so easy to fail.
Foriegn aid does the same thing for nations. Over and over we have seen it. Not only does it make it easy for a nation to fail, it encourages nations to adopt self-destructive policies. Our foriegn aid has encouraged socialism. Foriegn aid has contributed to famines.
Worse, foriegn aid and foriegn intermeddling saps a nation's pride. When we give these countries "aid" and we intermeddle in their internal affairs, we are treating them like children. We are saying, "You just can't make it on your own. You'r not smart enough, wise enough, strong enough. You need someone to look after you."
Bearing the "White Man's Burden" is a thankless job. Ask Britian. In the end, it didn't win them many friends. And it won't win us many either.
and at this late date, we cannot simply abandon our interests abroad, nor will we.
I am advocating protecting our interests abroad by rethinking how we do things. Surely you don't think our current policy makes any sense.
Can you see any way that US interests are served by paying both Israel and the PLO? (Please answer that one. I'd love to hear someone explain how it is in our best interest.) Can you explain how telling Israel to stop protecting its citizens against terrorism is in our best interest?
Or maybe you can explain how it is in our best interest to give American taxpayer's money to Arab countries who teach their citizens to hate the US. Our how it is in our interest to prop up socialist regimes in Africa?
You can adopt the Libertarian position that we have no business dealing with any other government in any meaningful way, ('Mind our own business') but that denies human nature as well as human history.
I am not advocating having no relations with other governments. I'm saying that we should stay out of other country's internal affairs. We should stop our foriegn aid poison. We should have a clearly defined, limited foriegn policy and stick to it.
Hold that view if you will but it's not realistic and not useful other than to simply protest American foreign policy and we have lots of folks to do that already, so you'll have to get in line after them. Have fun.
There is a lot to protest because we do a lot of stupid things. Remember, this is the government that brought you the IRS. The same organization that admits they can't collect the taxes owed to the government and that gave away millions for slavery reparations. It is inept. We need to limit the damage it can do as much as possible.
I am not advocating having no relations with other governments. I'm saying that we should stay out of other country's internal affairs. We should stop our foriegn aid poison. We should have a clearly defined, limited foriegn policy and stick to it.
I'm no fan of big government interventions but that's schoolbook foreign policy politics and unrealistic in the real world we live in, as you should understand but apparently do not or will not as it won't fit your anti-government template.
We have a political system that has rotating Presidents every four to eight years as well as hundreds of Senators and Representatives. Each one has a specific agenda and outlook on foreign entanglements and political goals deriving from those associations, be it foreign aid, military aid or whatever. To expect a simplistic, 1795-type foreign policy from a country as politically diverse and powerful as the United States in the twenty-first century is simply not feasible. The big pond doesn't protect us anymore. Foreign aid is misused and should be drastically cut, I agree, but this quaint notion that if we just would 'stay home and mind our own business' all would be well and we wouldn't have terrorists crashing into our big buildings and so on is not a political concept I can subscribe to or take seriously. Isolationism is a dead political issue in this day and age and wishing we could pull the blankets over our heads and shut out the world is naive and not debatable for me, although obviously you feel just as strongly about your isolationist views. Fine.
One minor point before leaving this non-discussion; The U.S. gives humanitarian aid to the Palestinians and military and economic aid to Israel for the simple reason that Israel is our friend, a democracy in a sea of dictators and kings that hate them and wish to kill them and take their land. Helping Israel is the right thing to do. Without it, Israel would have been destroyed and the Jews there slaughtered many decades ago. A moral obligation there although you probably can't or won't recognize it.
The aid to the Palestinians is not military, they get that from other Arab countries. Our justification for giving the aid we give them is, again, morally based (humanitarian) and it also gives the U.S. a position of 'even-handedness' and legitimacy in attempting to broker a political solution to the ongoing 'conflict' between the PLO and Israel. That solution may never actually occur but if we don't try, who else will? It's a political as well as a moral obligation in that specific case, not a 'White Man's Burden'. Speaking of which, you should note that the U.S. has little interest in Africa and most other nation's domestic conflicts, other than to send them (wasted) foreign aid. It's the oil-rich, fanatic-infested mid-east that concerns the U.S. the most and has for some time, for good reason. This foolishness about the U.S. 'meddling' in the mid-east being the cause of all our current problems is a half-truth at best. True in a few cases (Iran in the seventies) but not the easy answer you claim.
Obviously, foreign policy issues are long-ranging and very complex. They cannot be shrunk down to the simplistic 'Stay Home and Mind Our Own Business' bumper-sticker, isolationist mentality you deny but clearly do admire. Neither one of us can realistically effect the U.S. foreign policy except to vote for the people we believe will represent our views most clearly in Washington and make our feelings known in public forums such as this. Thanks for your comments. See you on the forums.
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