"Just One More Thing ..."

It's hardly a surprise that "A new U.N. Human Rights Council official assigned to monitor Israel is calling for an official commission to study the role neoconservatives may have played in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks." It's possible that this is one of those cases where "neoconservatives" is code for "Certain shadowy American Jews seeking to influence foreign policy." But it need not be. The two things -- Israel-bashing and trutherism -- can converge on their own.

Richard Falk, Milbank professor of international law emeritus at Princeton University, said in an interview with truther radio host Kevin Barrett: “It is possibly true that especially the neoconservatives thought there was a situation in the country and in the world where something had to happen to wake up the American people. Whether they are innocent about the contention that they made that something happen or not, I don’t think we can answer definitively at this point. All we can say is there is a lot of grounds for suspicion, there should be an official investigation of the sort the 9/11 commission did not engage in and that the failure to do these things is cheating the American people and in some sense the people of the world of a greater confidence in what really happened than they presently possess.”

Mr. Barrett, who is the co-founder of the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth, said in an interview yesterday of Mr. Falk, “I would put him on a list of scholars who are sympathetic to the 9/11 truth movement.”

He added, “Unlike most public intellectuals today, he is both honest and very, very knowledgeable in that he understands the probable reality of 9/11. He understands that the evidence that it was a false flag operation is very strong.”

And so forth.

Two points, however. One is that Falk is not calling for a U.N. or Human Rights Council investigation of 9/11. The other is that he is not "new" to the HRC. He's been popular with the council well before that. In March 2001 it appointed him to a three-member "human rights inquiry commission established pursuant to Commission resolution S-5/1 of 19 October 2000."

S-5/1 was "to establish a human rights inquiry commission to gather and compile information on violations of human rights and acts which constituted grave breaches of international humanitarian law by the Israeli occupying power in the occupied Palestinian territories. It also requested the High Commissioner for Human Rights to undertake an urgent visit to the occupied Palestinian territories to take stock of the violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people by the Israeli occupying power."

The other two on the commission were John Dugard (South Africa), Kamal Hossain (Bangladesh). It gave a report here, dated March 29, 2001, in which Falk called for vigorous U.N. action against Israel, whose actions and policies he blamed entirely for the lack of "peace." He sought an international occupation of the West Bank.

Earlier in the English translation of the report, Richard Falk is refered to as Peter Falk.

At the end of the discussion, Peter Falk [sic!] a member of the commission of inquiry into the situation in the occupied territories, said that there was no doubt that Israeli forces had resorted to excessive force in responding to the second intifada.

Here is his conclusion, this time under his correct name.

RICHARD FALK, member of the commission of inquiry, said the commission was encouraged by the strong support for the main conclusions which were contained in its report, and its general recommendations. The commission of inquiry had faced a challenge in conducting an inquiry without the help of the Government of Israel. Nevertheless, it did its best to understand the Israeli arguments. The commission had made an effort to lean over backwards to take into account Israel's position. There was no doubt about the conclusions that had been reached. Israel had resorted to excessive force in responding to the second intifada. The Israeli policy and response had produced an intolerable situation for the entire Palestinian population. The way in which the occupation was continued produced a daily ordeal for each Palestinian person, even those who were not involved in the intifada.

Both Israelis and Palestinians sought peace and security, they yearned for it. But peace, security and justice could not be achieved without respect for human rights and international law. The notion that was prevalent during the Oslo process, that human rights and international law could be put aside for the negotiating process, was a dangerous deception. It was necessary at every point to affirm that human rights and international law were as important as the peace that was being sought.

Mr. Falk said that the time for talk was over, and the time for action was now. Repeatedly, the commission of inquiry had heard expressions of disillusionment about the impact of resolutions passed by international bodies. The credibility of the United Nations was challenged by its inability to implement the resolutions which it passed. There was no reasonable excuse to defer any longer in dealing with these issues. The main direction of the conclusions were supported by the non-governmental organizations, the senior civil society personnel dealing with the Palestinian people, and other representatives. On all fronts, there was a consensus as to what was responsible for this violence. And there was a sense as to what was necessary to reverse this process.

The most useful step that could be taken by the international community at this time was to provide an international presence of a monitoring character in the West Bank and Palestine that would provide these beleaguered people with some kind of transparency. It was hoped that those who had abstained from a resolution calling for such a presence, and the United States, which had vetoed it, would reconsider. Israel had had ample opportunity to take steps to uphold international law, but had been unable and unwilling to do so. If the elementary provisions of the Geneva Conventions were to be upheld, almost all of the violence would cease overnight. Steps should be taken to examine the vulnerability of the Palestinian refugees. There needed to be new initiatives taken in that direction. It was the responsibility of this Commission to show that the international community was able to act.

And he is a member of the editorial board of "The Nation." Shocka! All in all, he seems to be a familiar type.

In a June 2007 article called "Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust," Falk compared some Israeli policies with regard to the Palestinians to the Nazi-Germany record of collective punishment. Identifying himself as an American Jew, Falk stated that his use of the term "holocaust" "represents a rather desperate appeal to the governments of the world and to international public opinion to act urgently to prevent these current [Israeli] genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy [for the Palestinians]." Falk also stated that "the comparison should not be viewed as literal, but ... that a pattern of criminality associated with Israeli policies in Gaza has actually been supported by the leading democracies of the 21st century."

Falk's predecessor on United Nations Human Rights Council, John Dugard, had made controversial statements comparing Israeli actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories with apartheid and colonialism. In response to Falk's past comments, Yitzhak Levanon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, criticised Falk's appointment by the United Nations Human Rights Council in an address to the council, stating: "He has taken part in a UN fact-finding mission which determined that suicide bombings were a valid method of 'struggle'. He has disturbingly charged Israel with 'genocidal tendencies', and accused it of trying to achieve security through 'state terrorism'. Someone who has publicly and repeatedly stated such views cannot possibly be considered independent, impartial or objective." The Israeli government announced that it will deny Falk a visa to Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, at least until the September meeting of the Human Rights Council.

Falk responded to the criticism by saying, "If this kind of situation had existed for instance in the manner in which China was dealing with Tibet or the Sudanese government was dealing with Darfur, I think there would be no reluctance to make that comparison." He attributed the reluctance to criticise Israel's policies on the sensitive history of the Jewish people, as well as the state's ability to "avoid having (its) policies held up to international law and morality."

Soul of the U.N.

I read this book review more out of interest in the author, Francis Fukuyama, than in the subject, Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N. bureaucrat killed in a 2003 al Qaida attack in Baghdad.

But I became more interested in Vieira de Mello as I read. And, if Fukuyama is painting him in accurate tones, he could stand as a platonic ideal of the whole type of international bureaucrats since the day of Dag Hammarskjöld. "More than anyone else at the United Nations," Fukuyama writes, "he embodied the organization’s idealism, as well as its limitations."

Vieira de Mello was born in 1948. The son of a Brazilian diplomat, he was a prototypical global cosmopolitan who grew up in Europe and, as a student, manned the barricades during the événements of 1968 in Paris while studying Marxist philosophy. The young Vieira de Mello was instinctively anti-American and cringed when he heard an American accent. After earning his degree, he found work with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, traveling to southern Sudan, Mozambique and Vietnam, and passionately embracing the United Nations and international law as the embodiments of global justice.

Emphasis added, for the sake of those who cling to the silly notion that America only "lost the respect of the world" in the time of the current incumbent. There is no indication from Fukuyama that Vieira de Mello ever lost that tic. Or his other propensities.

Samantha Power argues that Vieira de Mello underwent a personal evolution that tracked the United Nations’ experiences. In his early days he carried the United Nations habit of being nonjudgmental to an extreme: he dined with the bloody Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Sary; he cultivated a friendship with Slobodan Milosevic (which earned him the nickname “Serbio”). “Chasing the Flame” is critical of Vieira de Mello for, in the words of one of his colleagues, “siding with power” when he helped organize forced returns of refugees to Vietnam and Rwanda. But the book is not entirely convincing in its claim that by the end of the 1990s, Vieira de Mello had concluded that the United Nations needed to shift from peacekeeping to peace enforcement as part of a new, global “responsibility to protect.” If he believed such a thing, he never articulated the view or disavowed the earlier United Nations posture as fundamentally broken, as Kofi Annan was eventually to do.

I'm sure Fukuyama will not take it amiss if, after reading all this I am more convinced that the U.N.'s "idealism" and its "limitations" are flip sides of the same coin.

“Chasing the Flame” argues, as Vieira de Mello himself once did, that the United Nations is often unfairly blamed for failures to protect the vulnerable or deter aggression, when the real failure is that of the great powers standing behind it. Those powers are seldom willing to give it sufficient resources, attention and boots on the ground to accomplish the ambitious mandates they set for it. At present, the United Nations is involved in eight separate peacekeeping operations in Africa alone; failure in a high-profile case like Darfur (which seems likely) will once again discredit the organization. Power (who has been a foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama) makes the case for powerful countries like the United States putting much greater effort into making the institution work.

Emphasis added, again, this time for the sake of those trying to peer into the hypothetical futures of the possible next administrations.

Concert of Democracy

[posted by Callimachus]

The arrangement of powers and nations in the world drifted after the fall of the USSR, waiting for the next alignment to emerge. 9/11 and all that has followed reveals the folly of letting things drift. Events and revelations since 2001 have brought into stark relief the defects of most of the likely candidates to succeed the Cold War superpower rivalry: UN-driven state-based internationalism, unilateralism, American hegemony, ad hoc coalition-building, Wilsonian idealism, ignoring festering sores and hoping they'll just go away on their own.

What to try next? This idea looks to be worth a try. The "Concert of Democracies" would be an alternative international organization; it was formally proposed in the fall by the Princeton Project, in a report printed here [pdf].

Neither America nor the world can wait forever for U.N. reform, no matter how desirable it is. The United States must take the lead and invest the time, energy, and resources to accomplish significant reform, on the principle of “mend it, don’t end it.” At the same time, however, we should work with our allies to develop a new global institution dedicated to the principles underpinning liberal democracy, both as a vehicle to spur and support the reform of the United Nations and other global institutions and as a possible alternative to them.

This alternative body would be a global “Concert of Democracies.” Its purpose would be to strengthen security cooperation among the world’s liberal democracies and to provide a framework in which they can work together to effectively tackle common challenges – ideally within existing regional and global institutions, but if those institutions fail, then independently, functioning as a focal point for efforts to strengthen liberty under law around the world. It would also serve as the institutional embodiment and ratification of the “democratic peace.”

Essentially, it is a return to the "Great Powers" diplomacy of the pre-1919 period. But instead of being exclusively European, measured by military might, and dominated by colonial empires, it would be worldwide, measured by democracy, and dominated by free peoples. It rescues the idealism of Wilson's 14 Points, while turning away from the errors built into the world system represented by the League of Nations and later the United Nations (notably the false extension of the "one man one vote" principle to nations). It could restore the old power of real diplomacy, as opposed to polemical posturing, without the cold-bloodedness of Kissingerite realpolitik and the dynastic rivalries that brought down the old order in the bloodbath of 1914-18.

The membership of the Concert of Democracies would be selective, but self-selected. Membership would be predicated not on an abstract definition of liberal democracy or on the labels attached by states to other states, but rather by the obligations that members are willing to take on themselves.

Members would have to: pledge not to use force or plan to use force against one another; commit to holding multiparty, free-and-fair elections at regular intervals; guarantee civil and political rights for their citizens enforceable by an independent judiciary; and accept that states have a “responsibility to protect” their citizens from avoidable catastrophe and that the international community has a right to act if they fail to uphold it.

... In one sense, the Concert would serve as an informal gathering of democratic states that are already allies, as it would include the United States, NATO and non-NATO European democracies, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. However, it would also include new democratic partners like India, South Africa, Brazil, and Mexico. This aspect of the Concert would constitute a major effort to integrate non-Western democratic powers into a global democratic order. At the same time, the Concert would be more substantial and exclusive than the already existing “community of democracies,” which is a broad but shallow organization that seeks to strengthen democracy within states.

The Concert of Democracies would not be – at least for the foreseeable future – a new alliance system or a substitute for America’s alliances in Europe and East Asia. Nor would it be a substitute for the United Nations or other global institutions, as long as those institutions can be successfully reformed. If UNSC expansion and reform proves impossible by the end of this decade, however, the Concert could become an alternative forum for the approval of the use of force in cases where the use of the veto at the Security Council prevented free nations from keeping faith with the aims of the U.N. Charter.

Should this necessity arise, Concert members would undertake an additional set of agreements approving the use of force by a supermajority of member states, with no veto power. They would have to seek approval at the United Nations first, but they would commit to accept authorization by the Concert as an equally legitimate and acceptable alternative. In this sense, the creation of the Concert would follow in the tradition of the creation of NATO, which was seen as a means of achieving the goals of the U.N. Charter, rather than undermining them.

A wonky idea, perhaps, but so was "containment" in 1948. I think it's worth a long look and a serious critique.

(More commentary on the idea here).

U.N. Decides It Doesn't Suck Enough

[posted by Callimachus]

Votes to Suck More.

GENEVA (AP) — Islamic countries pushed through a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday urging a global prohibition on the public defamation of religion — a response largely to the furor last year over caricatures published in a Danish newspaper of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.

The statement proposed by the Organization of Islamic Conference addressed what it called a "campaign" against Muslim minorities and the Islamic religion around the world since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

The resolution, which was opposed by a number of other non-Muslim countries, "expresses deep concern at attempts to identify Islam with terrorism, violence and human rights violations."

It makes no mention of any other religion besides Islam, but urges countries "to take resolute action to prohibit the dissemination of racist and xenophobic ideas and material aimed at any religion or its followers that constitute incitement and religious hatred, hostility, or violence."

(And don't miss this).

Kofi Gets a Pass

OK, so a major world force sends military into a brutalized but resource-rich nation, ostensibly to help people. But some of the protectors become abusers, and they even go so far as to make pictures and videos of their sexual shenanigans. What's the reaction of major European leaders? Demand justice? Demand the resignation or investigation of the leaders responsible for this? Not when the international power is the United Nations.

When Kofi Annan sent investigators last spring to look into rumors that U.N. officials and peacekeepers were sexually abusing girls in the war-riven Congo, he got back some bad news.

Not only were there more than 150 cases of alleged rape and exploitation, there also were pictures and videos of some acts. One case involved a senior official in charge of security, and one of the investigators was caught soliciting a prostitute.

... In May, Annan's special representative to Congo, William Lacy Swing, announced that he would investigate Uruguayan peacekeepers accused of having sex with girls at a displaced persons camp in the northeastern Congolese town of Bunia.

Inquiries turned up dozens more cases allegedly involving girls between 12 and 15 years old who would trade sex for something as basic as a banana or a piece of cake.

In July, Annan quietly appointed Jordan's ambassador to the United Nations, Prince Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, to look into the charges along with Swing. Zeid, a former peacekeeper who had dealt with similar allegations involving Jordanian soldiers in East Timor, returned from Congo this month and recommended sweeping changes to U.N. operations.

Officials expect more cases to surface. "When you stir the pot, more comes to the top," Jean-Marie Guehenno, undersecretary-general of peacekeeping, said last week in an interview in Kenya. "But we are sending a message that we will not compromise on this. If it is a U.N. official, then we will lift his immunity and prosecute."

A French civilian official was expelled from Congo this month and has been indicted in France under a recent law designed to halt sexual tourism. Two Tunisian peacekeepers have been deported, and officials from Australia and Haiti will be sent home soon.

[emphasis added]

But just this week, the leaders of France and Germany lent their unqualified backing to Annan, and even Britain's U.N. ambassador told Reuters, "The United Nations is doing a good job.

"Ask those people who need it most," he said. Yeah. Good idea.

Some Highlights

From the report (PDF file warning). The headings here are mine and indicate separate sections in the text:

Saddam's Goals

Saddam’s primary goal from 1991 to 2003 was to have UN sanctions lifted, while maintaining the security of the Regime. He sought to balance the need to cooperate with UN inspections — to gain support for lifting sanctions — with his intention to preserve Iraq’s intellectual capital for WMD with a minimum of foreign intrusiveness and loss of face. Indeed, this remained the goal to the end of the Regime, as the starting of any WMD program, conspicuous or otherwise, risked undoing the progress achieved in eroding sanctions and jeopardizing a political end to the embargo and international monitoring.

The introduction of the Oil-For-Food program (OFF) in late 1996 was a key turning point for the Regime. OFF rescued Baghdad’s economy from a terminal decline created by sanctions. The Regime quickly came to see that OFF could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to further undermine sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD-related development.

By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their international support. Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime, both in terms of oil exports and the trade embargo, by the end of 1999.

Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability — which was essentially destroyed in 1991 — after sanctions were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability — in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks — but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.

Manipulating the U.N.

One aspect of Saddam’s strategy of unhinging the UN’s sanctions against Iraq, centered on Saddam’s efforts to influence certain UN SC permanent members, such as Russia, France, and China and some nonpermanent (Syria, Ukraine) members to end UN sanctions. Under Saddam’s orders, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) formulated and implemented a strategy aimed at these UNSC members and international public opinion with the purpose of ending UN sanctions and undermining its subsequent OFF program by diplomatic and economic means. At a minimum, Saddam wanted to divide the five permanent members and foment international public support of Iraq at the UN and throughout the world by a savvy public relations campaign and an extensive diplomatic effort.

Another element of this strategy involved circumventing UN sanctions and the OFF program by means of “Protocols” or government-to-government economic trade agreements. Protocols allowed Saddam to generate a large amount of revenue outside the purview of the UN. The successful implementation of the Protocols, continued oil smuggling efforts, and the manipulation of UN OFF contracts emboldened Saddam to pursue his military reconstitution efforts starting in 1997 and peaking in 2001. These efforts covered conventional arms, dual-use goods acquisition, and some WMD-related programs.

Once money began to flow into Iraq, the Regime’s authorities, aided by foreign companies and some foreign governments, devised and implemented methods and techniques to procure illicit goods from foreign suppliers.

To implement its procurement efforts, Iraq under Saddam, created a network of Iraqi front companies, some with close relationships to high-ranking foreign government offi cials. These foreign government officials, in turn, worked through their respective ministries, state-run companies and ministry-sponsored front companies, to procure illicit goods, services, and technologies for Iraq’s WMD-related, conventional arms, and/or dual-use goods programs.

The Regime financed these government-sanctioned programs by several illicit revenue streams that amassed more that $11 billion from the early 1990s to OIF outside the UN-approved methods. The most profitable stream concerned Protocols or government-to-government agreements that generated over $7.5 billion for Saddam. Iraq earned an additional $2 billion from kickbacks or surcharges associated with the UN’s OFF program; $990 million from oil “cash sales” or smuggling; and another $230 million from other surcharge impositions.

Making Progress

By mid-2000 the exponential growth of Iraq’s illicit revenue, increased international sympathy for Iraq’s humanitarian plight, and increased complicity by Iraqi’s neighbors led elements within Saddam’s Regime to boast that the UN sanctions were slowly eroding. In July 2000, the ruling Iraqi Ba’athist paper, Al-Thawrah, claimed victory over UN sanctions, stating that Iraq was accelerating its pace to develop its national economy despite the UN “blockade.” In August 2001, Iraqi Foreign Minister Sabri stated in an Al-Jazirah TV interview that UN sanctions efforts had collapsed at the same time Baghdad had been making steady progress on its economic, military, Arab relations, and international affairs.

Companies in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, UAE, and Yemen assisted Saddam with the acquisition of prohibited items through deceptive trade practices. In the case of Syria and Yemen, this included support from agencies or personnel within the government itself.

Numerous ministries in Saddam’s Regime facilitated the smuggling of illicit goods through Iraq’s borders, ports, and airports. The Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) and the Military Industiralization Commission (MIC), however, were directly responsible for skirting UN monitoring and importing prohibited items for Saddam.

Food For Spoil

The United Nations' oil-for-food bargain with Saddam Hussein may well be the biggest scam of a "relief" effort in global history. It's a kraken of corruption that is hard to see whole because the investigations underway focus on one tentacle or another, while the monster 's bulk lies hidden in the murk of U.N. secrecy.

After the 1991 Gulf War, the U.N. slapped economic sanctions on Saddam's regime. Five years later, stung by heart-wrenching pictures of hollow-cheeked Iraqi children and statistics about infant mortality, the Security Council set up the Iraq Oil-for-Food Program. Iraq would be allowed to export oil and use the money to import food and humanitarian supplies.

Saddam shamelessly shook down the program to fuel his power machine. He undersold his oil, demanding part of the profit as a kickback. He made arrangements to overpay for the goods he bought, then took back part of the overpayment as more kickbacks. The U.S. General Accounting Office estimated that Saddam earned at least $10 billion from smuggling and kickbacks. He lined his pockets and pimped his sons' palaces while his people suffered.

The tyrant's perfidy should surprise no one. But what's disgusting is the number of willing partners he seems to have found in the U.N. and 50 nations around the world. Apparently, leading figures in France, Britain and Russia adamantly opposed the American bid to topple the dictator while taking his money under the table. Among the subpoenaed companies is a Swiss-based firm that employed U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's son, Kojo, and which was in charge of monitoring goods entering Iraq.

Saddam's shenanigans would have run up red flags for anyone on the scout for evidence of graft. But you can't see with your eyes closed. And Kofi Annan's Secretariat, raking in a 2.2% commission on Saddam's oil sales, never systematically examined Saddam's contracts.

The scale of this scandal still has not percolated through the media, in part because it is being investigated piecemeal, by different agencies with different levels of secrecy, working independently at their own pace. For instance, three different congressional panels have subpoenaed the French bank BNP Paribas. This week, BNP delivered "a semitrailer truck load" of documents concerning the $60 billion it held in the oil-for-food escrow account.

At least two other committees in Congress are investigating allegations of U.N. corruption. The U.N.'s own investigation of the morass apparently is focused on bribery allegations. The interim Iraqi government in Baghdad, meanwhile, has reams of documents from the old regime waiting to be examined.

At stake is the legitimacy of the U.N. itself. Already shaken by the rifts opened in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, the U.N. now finds itself in a situation where only a little over a quarter of the citizens in its major contributor nation, the U.S., feel the organization reflects their values.

The U.N. should be subject to the same scrutiny given to Halliburton, or applied by the 9/11 Commission. It has failed miserably to protect lives in Bosnia, Rwanda and Somalia, it continues to dither while Darfur dies. Yet its leadership lives in denial.

And now, we are beginning to learn that, while Annan scolds the American administration for overthrowing a murderous tyrant, he has yet to acknowledge that he presided over that tyrant's theft of food from dying children.