Further Complications with the US Argument for 'Punishing' Syria for Chemical Attacks: Hypocricy and Lack of Foundation

So, yesterday I had a post pointing to a piece by Udo Schuklenk, rather convincingly picking apart the US case for military attacking Syria as a 'punishment' for the current regime's alleged chemical warfare attacks against civilians. Today, I found two further reasons against any such idea, besides the numerous ones presented by Udo:

1. Articles in The Daily Mail, making public solid evidence to the effect that the UK, whose prime minister David Cameron has apparently swallowed president Obama's argument for an attack whole and unchewed and made motions in parliament to gain support for this line (to no effect, so far), has for many years when Syria was suspected of stockpiling chemical weapons agents, like sarin, exported ingredients for manufacturing exactly such agents to Syria with the government's and relevant agencies' open approval and license. The ingredient in question is one that in other contexts is perfectly innocent or benign, namely sodium fluoride (an ingredient in almost all tooth paste and sometimes added to drinking water to boost population dental health), but as here described, also a necessary bit in the manufacturing of sarin, which is exactly the gas claimed by the US to have been used by the Assad regime (and famous since the terrorist attacks in the Tokyo underground in 1995). It wouldn't surprise me one bit if also other of those countries now contemplating jumping onto the US attack wagon, at least if UN support can be produced, similarly have exported this or some other part of the alleged Syrian chemical weapons arsenal – in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if also the US government can be found to have done the same.

The relevance of this for Obama's argument is the following: If the Syrian regime is to be punished by a military attack (that will most certainly kill lots of people having nothing to do with the matter, besides being unlucky enough to reside inside Syrian territory – nobody believes in the fairy tales about precision warfare anymore), then surely a proportional punishment has to be directed at those that have aided and abetted such a serious act. That is, if the alleged action of the Assad regime is to be seen as a crime worthy of such a degree of punishment (including foreseeable collateral damages of substantial proportion), surely aiding and abetting such a crime must be viewed as deserving a punishment in the same ballpark, although at a more moderate proportion in the same way that assisting a murder deserves less punishment than the murder itself. Note that the argument that the aiding was unwitting does not hold up to scrutiny, since the UK and the rest of the countries here viewed Syria as a danger from the chemical weapons perspective already in those times and were fully well informed about the military application of sodium fluoride.

So, it would seem, that the same legal logic invoked by president Obama to motivate attacking Syria would force him to the conclusion that if, say, Damascus is to be bombed in punishment for the alleged attack, then some more minor part of the UK – say Middlesbrough or Bristol – should be in for a similar treatment.And it doesn't end there, for it would also seem that David Cameron himself, as a matter of legal logic, would have to accept and support such a conclusion. Lovely, isn't it?

2. Now, and this is something that dawned on my today, there's a basic fault of the whole attempt to try to make a legal argument in support of a military attack aimed at punishing a country's leaders or its officer's at lower levels for an alleged crime. This argument requires that due process is applied, and what Obama has suggested is far from that. Due process would seem to require that those that are suspects in the crime are apprehended for subsequent inquiry and investigation by the International Criminal Court – not that Damascus or whatever other place is contemplated by the Washington hawks as a fitting target is reduced to a pile of rubble, possibly killing the Syrian leadership possibly responsible for chemical attacks together with a huge bunch of other people, without anything even resembling trial. There is only one problem: the USA, for entirely selfish reasons, is on record as actively working against the ICC and its underlying idea of installing a legally secure institution for punishing war crimes and crimes against humanity. In conclusion: Obama's argument relies on the idea of applying due legal process and rule of law, while what he suggests is the opposite. Not only that, he represents a country that is an active enemy of the very notion of such rule of law.

So, in the end, it would seem that, even discounting for the blind eye towards those who have made the alleged chemical attack possible and the hypocricy implied by that – the entire attempt of the US regime and president Obama to dress up in legal garment what is, I suppose, in the end the same old 'preventive self-defense' rubbish as usual, fails even more splendidly than argued by Udo yesterday.

Now, should Obama change his mind and accept, as EU leaders now seem keen on, that an ICC-based due process handling of the alleged chemical attack of the Syrian regime is applied, as would seem logical in view of the legal argument made, such a due process would also have to include, of course, the crime of aiding and abetting such alleged criminal behaviour, which in turn would seem to imply that David Cameron and relevant ministers (of security, defense and foreign trade) should, at the very least, be held for questioning and possible a number of other governments should be in for the same treatment. A little something for the EU council of ministers to contemplate in their further musings on this matter.

What to Read to take a Stand on the Syria Military Attack Issue

I'm so happy that my bioethics colleague Udo Schuklenk of Queens University, Canada, and editor in chief of the journal Bioethics got around to writing this post. It's frankly the only thing you need to read to base a decided opinion on the issue of whether or not there should be a military strike against Syria, as has been so eloquently proposed by US president Obama in a recent speech.

Udo hits the head on the nail: if you're all for retribution whatever the consequences on the basis of arbitrary rules, then you should be for an attack - otherwise not. If you're that sort of soft bloke that, together with Udo and myself, actually thinks that what happens to people in Syria and other places should be the main factor to consider when making decisions like these, you might also want to weigh in the factor that Russia today declared that it will use the military capability of its warships , present off the Syrian coast, to rebut any attempt to attack from out side Syria, and muse a bit on the implications of that before picking your side.

Happy thinking!

Exercises in Hypocrisy: USA, Assad and the ICC

It is reported today in The Wall Street Journal, echoed in Swedish media, that the USA is making efforts to build a case against Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, at the International Criminal Court (ICC), located in the Hague. Now, I'm all for having al-Assad gone as Syrian leader and prosecuted for what he has been doing to his people these last months. But, I must confess that I find it grossly hypocritical, bordering on the perverse, that it is the USA that is doing the pushing in that direction.

Why? For two simple reasons that work together (sources for this can be found here, here, here):

First, the USA does not recognise the legitimacy or authority of the ICC. In fact, the USA (together with China, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Qatar and Israel) voted against the Rome Statute, establishing the court, in 1998. There was a brief moment when (through President Clinton), USA was a bona fide signatory (which can be seen as a declaration of intent of a country). However, one of the first actions of G.W. Bush was to "nullify" that executive action, thereby effectively taking the US policy re. ICC back to square one. In any case, even as signatory, the US never ratified this signature (i.e. formally recognising the authority of ICC) and does not seem bent on doing anything in that direction any time soon.

Second, the USA is continuously putting a lot of effort into undercutting the legitimacy and authority of ICC that arises out of its recognition by many other countries), by setting up special agreements of immunity with countries that do recognise ICC. I don't know what's the price for those concessions, but USA being the economically and military most powerful country in the world, I suppose there has been a few offers that couldn't be refused.

Now, I personally think that it is a sad story that a country that is holding out itself as the leading force for freedom, democracy and justice in the world is unable to see the point of having a legal institution for war crimes and crimes against humanity that is not bound to any particular national interest. However, if that is the position of the USA, so be it. However, to hold that position and at the same time make use of ICC whenever it fits the national interest of the USA, that is highly problematic for more profound reasons.

First, it is a shame- and disgraceful attitude. It is the stance of the free-rider and the parasite. It is hypocrisy taking exponential proportions. And it undermines any claim to seriousness of the US ambition to be the world's leading force for the good.

Second, and this should actually worry US citizens, the US position means that – according to US official policy – the prosecution and possible incarceration of people by an alleged legal body that the US does not see as having legitimate authority is quite alright. Feel the taste of that one and think for a bit about how to square it with the condemnation of what al-Assad, Gadaffi and those other chaps have been doing to their citizens......