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Credit: Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect
– As preparation for a proposed “new world order” continues, one question remains: Will the country with the most powerful military reign supreme?
The United Nations remains politically impotent. The UN charter is in tatters. The sovereignty of nation states and their territorial integrity have been reduced to a political mockery. And the law of the jungle prevails, whether Palestine, Ukraine, Venezuela or Iran.
What’s next: Colombia? Cuba? Green Earth? North Korea?
Widespread condemnation of the ongoing conflicts – including accusations of war crimes and genocide – continues to fall on deaf ears.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council that under Article 2 of the UN Charter, all member states must “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
But is there anyone out there listening?
Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and national director of RootsAction.org, told IPS that killing from the sky has long offered a kind of distancing that ground warfare cannot match. Far from its victims, air power remains the apogee of modernity
Reliance on overwhelming air power is key to what the United States is doing together with Israel. Bombing from the sky without attacking with ground forces is the best way to kill without taking many casualties.
This reduces domestic political fallout in a political and media culture that values American lives but views the lives of “others” as easily expendable, he noted.
“This blatant war of brazen aggression, launched by the United States and Israel, cannot be contained, much less reversed, with typical diplomatic euphemisms and caution.”
The governments of the United States and Israel, Solomon said, are completely run by psychopathic leaders who adhere only to the “principle” that might makes right. If ever there was a time when the vaunted “international community” should step up and confront an alliance of reckless illegal governments, this is it.
America’s European allies, he said, should end their cowardly vagueness and finally step forward to demand an end to this aggression that is setting fire to the powder keg of the Middle East. The EU should threaten massive countermeasures against the United States and Israel unless those pair of sociopathic governments immediately stop their attack on Iran.
“Playing evasive games with Washington makes leaders in London, Paris, Berlin and elsewhere complicit in methodical ongoing war crimes,” said Solomon, author of “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.”
According to the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, the act of aggression between the United States and Israel against Iran was carried out in violation of international law and the United Nations Charter, as they exercised the use of force without authorization from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) or without a demonstrated threat to their security that would trigger the right to self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.
“The attack came amid ongoing nuclear talks between the United States and Iran and just hours after Oman’s Foreign Minister, a key mediator in the negotiations, shared details about the progress made and announced that a breakthrough was near. The attack also reflects recent illegal actions taken by the United States in Venezuela on January 3, which culminated in the kidnapping of the head of state and set in motion deep uncertainty for the region and the global order.”
Meanwhile, the Geneva-based UN refugee agency UNHCR said it is deeply concerned about the escalating conflict in the Middle East and its impact on civilians and further displacement in the region.
“Many affected countries already host millions of refugees and internally displaced people. Further violence risks overwhelming humanitarian capacities and placing additional pressure on host communities.”
“We echo the urgent call of the UN Secretary General for dialogue and the reduction of tensions, respect for human rights, the protection of civilians and full compliance with international law.”
James Jennings, president of Conscience International, told IPS that the joint US-Israeli attack on Iran was ill-advised, illegal and based on lies. It will delay, not push forward, any future nuclear deal, perhaps for decades.
It was illegal, he noted, because it violates both the United States Constitution and international law enshrined in the United Nations Charter. It was based on lies because the nuclear watchdog groups have clearly indicated in essence that “there is nothing to see here.”
“Trump regularly claims that June’s joint ‘Operation Midnight Hammer’ destroyed Iran’s nuclear capability, yet his weak argument for the current ‘Operation Epic Fury’ war is based on the idea that perhaps one day in the future Iran could get its hands on a bomb. Several US administrations have worked diplomatically to prevent this, but Trump tore up the deal.”
Trump claims not to be limited by any law, constitution or UN Charter. Guided solely by his own morality, as he recently said, he obediently followed Israel in launching a massive war against a sleeping country of 92 million people, Jennings said.
“Meanwhile, his amateur diplomats were deceptively negotiating a compromise as imperial Japan did in the run-up to the attack on Pearl Harbor in World War II. Ask the parents of the more than 100 schoolgirls killed in the horrific first day of joint US-Israeli bombings in Minaj, Iran, and they probably won’t see Mr. Trump as particularly moral.”
George W. Bush called himself “The Decider,” so he foolishly decided to lead the United States into two unwinnable wars that most politicians in Washington, and even Trump himself, now consider monumental mistakes. Trump campaigned vigorously to keep the United States out of misguided wars in the Middle East that became “Forever Wars,” Jennings said.
“Yet here you are being dragged by the nose by Mr. Netanyahu. According to a classic rule when launching a war, one must recognize that two things cannot be changed: one is history and the other is geography. It is surprising that the leader of the United States would be arrogant about going to war without understanding that or without clearly establishing the purpose of the mission or the endgame.”
Experts and television reporters call the attack on Iran “a war of choice,” Jennings said.
“Why not call it what it really is: a war of naked aggression? No one knows when it will end. Trump’s claim that the war will end in a few days is a cruel joke. The other side gets a vote. Iran celebrated its 2,500th anniversary in 1971. Maybe people who have been around this long know a thing or two about survival,” Jennings declared.
IPS UN Office Report
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