Common Dreams : Condoleezza Rice and the President Have Lost Their Way

The main crime of war is aggression. It is initiating a deliberate armed attack against another state, putting its people “to the sword.” Over more than 2000 years, diverse cultures - ancient Greek, Christian, Jewish, Islamic - have rightly named aggression as the central crime of war. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter enshrines self-defense against aggression in international law.

In The New York Times (Sept. 22, 2002), Professor Bruce Ackerman noted that through signing the founding documents of the United Nations, the United States has also legally outlawed aggression as the highest law of the land. But to bar aggression – mass murder by the state – is no more controversial than to prohibit murder. Professor Ackerman spoke of Bush’s error as only one of illegal “unilateralism,” a violation of “two generations” of international law to which the U.S. is signatory. More deeply, however, the central moral judgment, made historically by every culture, about the horrors of war underlies these treaties.

Secretary of State Powell has defended a supposed American right to “take out” Saddam Hussain as part of a Presidential repertoire of tools: a “preemptive war.” But the idea of a preemptive war is to head off the immediate threat of armed aggression. No showing of immediacy – or, for that matter, significant new evidence – has been introduced by the Bush administration or British Prime Minister Blair.

As the overwhelming military power in the world, the Bush administration proposes a doctrine of unending aggression against sovereign states and arrogant military superiority. This policy will not make any of us feel more secure getting on an airplane or walking near a public building…Worse yet, we will have on our hands the blood of large numbers of innocents.