As citizens of a democracy, it is our duty to ensure the lawful behavior of our federal, state, and local governments. And to this end, let us be very clear. Whether wise or unwise, a US-led war against Iraq without the approval of the UN Security Council and without convincing evidence of an immediate threat to the territory and people of the United States would be unlawful.

It would be unlawful as breach of our solemn obligations under the UN Charter, a treaty to which the United States is a party and the closest thing we have to a world constitution. We dare not forget former President Ronald Reagan’s indictment of the Soviet Union as “an evil empire” not least because, he said, it could not be trusted to uphold its Charter commitments and other treaty promises.

Because it would constitute a breach of our treaty commitments, a US-led war against Iraq without the approval of the UN Security Council and without convincing evidence of an immediate threat to the territory and people of the United States would be unlawful also as a violation of Article VI of the US Constitution which proclaims “all Treaties made under the Authority of the United States” to be part of “the supreme Law of the Land.” It also would imperil Article 1(8) of the US Constitution which empowers Congress and Congress alone to declare war. This is the stuff of “high crimes and misdemeanors” for which a proper remedy is impeachment.

Indeed, absent convincing evidence of an immediate threat to the territory and people of the United States that would justify our country’s “inherent right to individual and collective self-defense” under UN Charter Article 51, a US war against Iraq without the approval of the UN Security Council would constitute a war of aggression and therefore a “war crime” as defined at Nuremberg following World War II and by the 1949 Geneva conventions and subsequent protocols on the laws of war. This is the stuff of war crimes tribunals for which the architects and to large extent also the executors of such a war can in theory be held accountable as “war criminals.”

To date, the Bush Administration has convinced neither the UN Security Council nor a majority of the American people nor the international community in general that the threat posed by Iraq to the United States constitutes a clear and present danger that immediately threatens the people and security of the United States. The motives behind the rush to war in Iraq, they rightly suspect, have more to due with hegemony than they have to do with weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, or the promotion of human rights. Also, they look askance at the bribes, economic threats, and telecommunication tamperings that Washington is indulging to win Security Council support of its Iraq policy, rightly perceiving them to be violations of the very democratic principles the United States espouses.

As citizens of a democracy, our duty is thus clear. We must condemn the villainy of the Iraqi leadership and work to exhaust all peaceful means for bringing them to account. Of course. But we, the people, must also oppose our government’s headstrong and essentially unilateralist rush to war with Iraq because, as appears likely, it will constitute a war crime. Additionally, it will establish a frightening precedent that can be used by others with devastating consequences for the entire world community, from the most global to the most local. For each of these reasons and more, it is our duty to engage in persuasive discourse and, if necessary, non-violent resistance.

We Americans remain woefully in the grip of a history of manifest destiny and rugged frontier individualism. It is an ethos that goes very deep. Now aided and abetted by evangelistic fervor, it could well be our-and the world’s-undoing. As Yeats once cautioned, even the best of us live by candlelight.

© TFF & the author 2003