SPOKESMAN BOOKS
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Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation
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Catalogue
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How to Lose a War
The Spokesman, 90
UN:
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Denis
Halliday interviewed by David Barsamian
Denis
Halliday worked for the United Nations for more than 30 years. He rose to the
rank of Assistant Secretary General. In the late 1990s, he was the UN’s
Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq. He resigned his position in protest at the
continuing economic sanctions against the country and the harm they were doing
to the Iraqi people.
David
Barsamian is the Director of Alternative Radio (www.alternativeradio.org),
based in Boulder, Colorado in the United States. His latest books are Imperial
Ambitions with Noam Chomsky and Speaking of Empire and Resistance with
Tariq Ali.
David
Barsamian spoke with Denis Halliday in Istanbul in June 2005, during the
proceedings of the World Tribunal on Iraq. His questions and comments are
printed in italic text, and Mr Halliday’s replies appear in ordinary text.
One
of the arguments that the Bush administration has made since its invasion of
I’m
sure the Iraqis would have been happy that the sanctions had ended, and we all
would have recognized that, if the occupation had been handled correctly and
properly, and if the needs of the Iraqi people had been taken care of, under
the obligations of occupation as defined by international law. But that has
been a total failure. We now see
child mortality and malnutrition on the increase in Iraq. We see almost a
complete breakdown in law and order and the social and educational and health
activities and needs of the Iraqi civilian population. It’s worse now than
it was under sanctions.
Another
argument that is frequently heard is that Iraq is better off without Saddam
Hussein. What is your response to
that?
That’s
an interesting question. But the United States has no right to make that
decision. That’s a decision for the people of Iraq. And had we lifted
sanctions ten years ago, and had the people of Iraq been given the chance to
live their lives and have their employment and look after their children and
all the basic needs that we take care of for ourselves, I think they might
have made the same decision, and they might have overthrown Saddam Hussein.
People think that’s unreasonable. But then I point them to
What
about the historical precedents? In 1945, the Allies convened a tribunal in
I
would have said that the International Criminal Court, in a sense, is a
substitute for a Nuremberg-Tokyo situation, because the Court requires
domestic prosecution. So the right way to deal with a Clinton or an Albright
or a Bush is impeachment, to use the powers that exist under domestic law in
the United States and under the Constitution. Likewise with Tony Blair. It’s
only when that fails that we should go to international prosecution. It
can’t be the International Criminal Court for the past. It can be the
International Criminal Court for the future. And in the case of the United
States, the Court could operate with Bush in absentia, given his
reluctance and fear of international law.
I
think the Nuremberg process is wrong in the sense that the war crimes were
committed on both sides. They’re not justifiable. Whether you fire-bomb
Hamburg and kill 100,000, or you drop, as Truman did, the weapons on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, those also are war crimes. And the trial of Nuremberg should
have encompassed all those who acted in breach of law.
Goering,
the highest-ranking Nazi on trial, said it was victors’ justice.
He,
of course, was right. And that’s 1945. We’re doing it again. We’re now
so ready to prosecute those who lose, but when we win, somehow we believe we
are above international law. And that I find extraordinary.
In
the period leading up to the attack on Iraq, the American public was subjected
to a steady stream of warnings from the Bush administration about the
‘unique’ nature of the Iraqi threat, the ‘growing’ danger it posed.
Cheney said there was ‘no doubt’ that Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction. Tony Blair added to the chorus for war saying Iraq could launch
weapons in ‘forty-five minutes’. How were they able to convince large
numbers of people that these claims were true?
They
had access to a massive propaganda machine. They’re artists of spin. They
employ people to mislead and misinform. They’re into propaganda on a massive
scale we’ve never seen, perhaps, before. And the access that Tony Blair and
George Bush had to the media is extraordinary. And those of us, many millions,
who were opposed, horrified by what seemed to be about to happen, really had
very little access except through alternative media outlets and the internet.
It’s not difficult, it seems to me, to convince a population when you build
on these fears and you mislead and you misinform.
We
know perfectly well that Iraq was not a threat to the United States or to
Britain. The neighbourhood, the Kuwaitis and the Saudis, even up to the end of
2002, were very slow to endorse the Bush approach. They did not recognize that
they were threatened by the very limited capacity available to Saddam Hussein
at that stage, by the end of 2002. This is a fiction which was sold very
clearly by the artists of spin in Washington and London.
Central
to selling the war was Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation at the
United Nations on 5 February 2003. He made more than twenty allegations about
Iraq, ranging from mobile weapons launchers to Scud missiles to underground
factory labs. He held up a vial saying that this amount of anthrax could wipe
out large numbers of people. His speech got a rather tepid response from the
UN audience. But the US media regarded it as a magisterial performance, one of
the greatest examples of diplomacy in memory.
We
all watched it, and most of us felt it was an extraordinary example of
misinformation. And disappointing, because I think many of us hoped that
within the Bush administration, Mr. Powell was perhaps one of the very few who
was a man of integrity and would follow the right path. Clearly, he lied to
the Security Council. He says he was misled, and maybe he was misled. But I
would have thought he would have known better. He showed us photographs of
these trucks up in the north of Iraq, which he claimed were making biological
weapons, and he must have recognized that they were, in fact, something else.
I believe they were handling weather balloons. It was just an extraordinary
display of dishonesty. And it must be a huge humiliation and embarrassment to
him today, when he’s out of power. I think the world recognizes he lied. And
to lie to the Security Council and to encourage the aggression that took
place, that’s got to be classified as a war crime.
Washington
has been systematically attacking the United Nations’ Oil-for-Food programme
that you were associated with. What’s behind that?
Washington
is under such pressure itself and so much criticism for the war and the
failure of the occupation and the unending fighting and killing that’s going
on in Iraq that they’re looking for something to divert attention away from
themselves. Plus, you’ve got
the age-old antagonism towards the United Nations in Washington. It goes back
many, many years. And therefore, it was a glorious opportunity to attack the
Secretary General in person and attack the organization.
There
is an element of truth to it and, of course, that makes it interesting. The
Secretary General’s response of appointing the Volcker Commission was very
clever. That’s what he did to
Rwanda and Srebrenica: look at yourself and announce ‘mea culpa’.
But, in fact, we now have five or six investigations ongoing in Washington. I
went voluntarily to Washington to brief a Senate committee and a committee of
the House, to give them the information I thought they should have, because
the withholding of information by Kofi Annan and Volcker I think is a huge
mistake. It implies the Secretary is in fact guilty of something, and I
don’t believe that is the case.
The
real scandal of the sanctions is taking Oil-for-Food revenue and giving 30% of
it to Kuwait, while Iraqi children were dying for lack of decent water. The
other scandal is to have a Washington that prosecutes Voices in the
Wilderness for sending teddy bears to Iraqi kids but is allowing Saddam
Hussein to sell oil to Turkey and to Jordan and have revenue in hard currency
of approximately $10 billion. Those are the real scandals. The fact that one
staff member may have walked away with $150,000 is appalling. I’m deeply
shocked. But beside $10 billion, I think we have to put things in perspective.
Voices
in the Wilderness, the Chicago-based human rights organization led by Kathy
Kelly, is now called Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Explain the 30% going to
Kuwait.
The
moment the Oil-for-Food programme began, in 1996-97, and the revenue from oil
sales went to the coffers of the United Nations, we, the United Nations
Security Council, creamed off 30% from the gross, gave it to the United
Nations Compensation Commission in Geneva, and they began a process of paying
out compensation to private individuals, to companies, and to countries who
had lost property, valuables, or whatever in Kuwait. Damage due to the Iraqi
invasion. I’m not against compensation. You could wonder why Israel
doesn’t pay compensation to Lebanon, for example. But apart from that, when
you have a country under sanctions and you have children dying by the thousand
per month, to take money out of Iraqi hands, which could have been used to
save lives, to pay a Cadillac salesman in Kuwait, that at best could have been
postponed.
You
say that the United Nations has been conspicuous in its collaboration with the
so-called great powers, the United States and the United Kingdom, vis-à-vis
Iraq.
In
the days of the Coalition Provisional Authority and Mr. Bremer, our own man
who represented the Secretary General worked cheek by jowl with the United
States representative and was seen to be so doing. The United Nations was back
in town despite the fact that an illegal invasion had taken place, an illegal
occupation had been implemented, crimes had been committed and were being
committed. And yet the UN was in there working with this foreign occupying
force to begin to make changes in a country that had no representation, no
legal government, I suppose, anymore. It’s completely unacceptable. It’s
completely in breach of the way the United Nations does business with
individual nation states. We work
on the basis of invitation. We still respect sovereignty, right or wrong.
We used different standards for Iraq, and we paid a very heavy price.
The truckbombing of the UN headquarters in Iraq should not take us by
surprise, believe me. After sanctions and very open collaboration with the
American armed forces, I think we should have anticipated something like that.
The
Security Council refuses to define terrorism. Why is that?
I’m
convinced — and this was part of the proposals of Kofi Annan for reform —
that terrorism needs to be acknowledged and recognized and defined. They have
decided they can’t do that because, I believe, they’re afraid that they
will see the issue of state terrorism addressed. And that will constrain their
own ambitions for using terrorism as a device, as they do, such as the bombing
of civilian areas or the use of depleted uranium or methods like ‘Shock and
Awe’, which is designed to terrify a civilian population. This is
unacceptable under international law, and they don’t want to be constrained.
Therefore, let’s not worry about it. We just call resistance people the
terrorists, and the rest of us are good guys. I think it’s not really
complicated.
The
United States and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom have also been
accused of blatant violations of the Geneva Conventions. What mechanism exists
to impeach or prosecute states that are in violation of the Geneva
Conventions? Will the United
Nations do anything about it?
The
way the Organization was created under the Charter, particularly in regard to
the Security Council, and particularly in regard to the five permanent
members, there is no provision for suspending those member states. They
control that Organization. And if you look at the Charter and you want to
change the Charter and reform the Organization, veto power remains in the
hands of those five. If they don’t like the reform proposals, they can veto
it. So we have an impossible situation here. Nobody is going to attempt to
punish the United States for breaking international law, breaking the Charter
itself; there is no capacity to do that. And the other four permanent member
states don’t have the courage, because they’re guilty themselves. Can the
Russians really point at the Americans going into Afghanistan, when they’ve
gone into Chechnya, for example, and committed atrocities?
And
Afghanistan itself.
Indeed.
They’re all in bed together. And we’re stuck with that scenario. And
that’s why very dramatic reform is required.
The
General Assembly has not condemned the United States’ invasion of
Afghanistan or Iraq. Why not?
There
were attempts to bring this to the General Assembly under the provision called
Uniting for Peace. The precedent was set in the Korean War, when the Russians
refused to endorse the Korean War in the Council. It was taken to the General
Assembly and the majority, 66%, I believe, approved. There was an attempt to
do that on the Iraq situation and prevent Mr. Bush from going to war by a vote
in the General Assembly. The United States acted very quickly and bought off
enough members of the General Assembly to avoid that sort of a vote.
And I say ‘buy off’. I’m talking about aid programmes and very
practical measures of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund
assistance. The
As
I look around us, the thought comes to mind that we are sitting here amidst
the semi-ruins of a former empire – there is a kind of irony that we are
talking about a current empire which sees itself as invincible. But all things
will come to an end.
It’s
wonderful to be sitting here amidst the remains of the Ottoman Empire. But
there are more and more Americans who are beginning to understand that empires
all collapse and come to an end. I think many Americans, even if they’re
thinking only domestically, are concerned that something is falling apart
here. And when they look at foreign policy, I think they understand that never
has the United States, I think, been so isolated as it is at the moment, never
has your country’s foreign policy been so detested as it is at the moment.
You’re
setting up conflicts when the United States should be setting up
relationships. You’re not using the soft power that the United States has,
or used to have, but instead using forms of aggression and pre-emptive
aggression, which is frightening, terrifying for the rest of us — even those
of us in Europe who perhaps no longer feel secure in the sense that we also
might someday be invaded by the United States. We are still occupied to a
certain extent, given American troops in Europe. But it has raised a level of
anxiety which is very bad for the United States and will bring down this
empire. The days are numbered. The American empire has peaked already. We’re
beginning to see a change, which I think will be in the best interests of all
of us, including the people of the United
States.
Turkey
is a close Nato ally of the United States and has long been responsive to
Very
interesting. In Europe we sort of question Turkish democracy, but when it came
to that issue, democracy worked very well here in Turkey. It did not work in
Spain or Italy or Australia. Even in my own little country, the Irish
government has allowed American war planes to land at Shannon Airport: armed
troops on Irish soil, which is abhorrent to the Irish people. We’ve had
enough of occupation under the British. So it was dramatic to see what the
Turks managed to do. I can only take my hat off to Turkey in making the right
decision.
This
is the final session of the World Tribunal on Iraq. There has been a series of
meetings in major cities around the world. What can be a positive outcome to
these deliberations, considering the fact that the tribunal has no state
authority or enforcement mechanisms to enforce its verdict?
Arundhati
Roy called the Tribunal a resistance movement. The Tribunal represents
resistance — resistance to what’s happened in the United Nations, in the
world today under this new era of pre-emptive aggression, which is so
dangerous, this so-called humanitarian intervention, which has a different
face in reality, sad to say. And I think the power that this Tribunal should
have and maybe will have is the power of public opinion.
And
perhaps it’s a growing phenomenon. The peace and justice movement in the
United States is a growing phenomenon. More and more Americans, disillusioned
with Washington, are beginning to see some other side of the story and will
act accordingly. This tribunal is just one part of a bigger picture, I think,
of regular, ordinary people coming together, as they did on 15 February 2003,
and demonstrating that this is not the way we want to see the world go.
Aggression is not acceptable. We talk about ourselves being civilized. Let’s
behave in a civilized manner. And for a so-called American democracy led by
this Christian born-again leader, to have a capability of going out and
allowing 100,000 Iraqi civilians to be slaughtered, it’s incomprehensible to
me how he can reconcile his Christian caring together with his neglect of the
well-being of the Iraqis, not forgetting American boys and girls who are going
out there, again misinformed, believing they’re fighting for the good old
United States of America. In fact, they’re throwing away their lives for a
cause which has no validity.
Some
suggestions?
It would be very good if the American school system began the introduction of human rights, looking at the Declaration of Human Rights. They need to understand what human rights mean for themselves and for other people; and that the United Nations is not an enemy, it’s their friend. International law is also there to serve the people of the United States and protect their needs as it protects the little countries around the world. I think we’re beginning to see in Washington that bright people are beginning to articulate that, indeed, respect for international law serves the interest of the United States. We’ve got to see a different attitude. We’ve got to have Americans look outwards, not only look inwards, and see that they are part of something bigger and that they need to participate in the United Nations and not just manipulate the UN in the vested interests of the United States itself.
