On April 17 the BRussells (no, that's not a typo!) Tribunal condemned the war in Iraq and the ideology that led to it....

 

THE ONES WHO SAY NO

By Mark Jensen

** World press says "no comment" to BRussells Tribunal's call for resistance to "Total War Incorporated" **

United for Peace of Pierce County (WA)

April 23, 2004

On Saturday, April 17, the BRussells Tribunal condemned the war in Iraq and the ideology that led to it.[1]

 

No one paid any attention.

 

It is probably a testimony to how far we have left behind the Enlightenment tradition of the Republic of Letters and how far we have advanced into the era of the postmodern market-state that almost one week after the conclusion of the opening session of the BRussells Tribunal in our media-saturated world, the findings of the Brussells Tribunal have -- unless I am mistaken -- been the object of not a single significant journalistic commentary in the English language.

Not one.

 

Thirty-seven years ago, Bertrand Russell received a little more respect.

For while the BRussells Tribunal was indeed held in Brussels, its name is primarily a reference to one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest, philosopher of the twentieth century: Bertrand Russell (1872-1970).

Russell was not only a preeminent logician, mathematician, and philosopher, the author of The Principles of Mathematics (1903) and, with Alfred North Whitehead, Principia Mathematica (1910-1913). He was also a committed social reformer and an active pacifist who spent six months in prison in 1918 for his antiwar activities.

 

It was Russell's action against the Vietnam War, at the age of 95, that inspired the tribunal held last week.

In 1967, appealing to the precedent of the Nuremberg Trials, Bertrand Russell organized a war crimes tribunal on the Vietnam War. Two sessions were held, the first in Stockholm, Sweden, and second in Roskilde, Denmark.

Because of his great age, Russell was unable to attend; so the tribunal was presided over by Jean-Paul Sartre.

 

The goal of Russell's tribunal was, in his words, to conduct "a solemn and historic investigation, uncompelled by reasons of state or other such obligations," in order to answer the question: "Why is this war being fought in Vietnam?"

Russell's conception was that the tribunal should be composed of "men who respect the truth and whose life's work bears witness to that respect." His hope was that "this Tribunal [may] prevent the crime of silence."

 

At the end of its second session, Russell's tribunal rendered a number of verdicts, most of them unanimous, concluding, among other things, that the United States Government was guilty of genocide against the people of Vietnam, and the armed forces of the United States had subjected the civilian population to inhuman treatment prohibited by international law.

 

Thirty-six years later, confronted with a different war, Belgian philosopher, theologian, and activist François Houtart, one of the founders of the World Social Forum, was among those who signed, just before the beginning of the invasion of Iraq and along with about 500 other intellectuals, academics, and artists, a statement calling for moral and perhaps legal action against the 'Project for the New American Century' and the authorities responsible for the war against Iraq.

 

The statement was published in two Belgian newspapers, De Standaard and De Morgen, on March 21, 2003. In June 2003 Houtart helped plan the World Tribunal on Iraq, of which the just-concluded Brussells Tribunal is the first part. The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation agreed to support the initiative.

 

What is the World Tribunal on Iraq? What does it hope to accomplish?

Its goal is one of which Albert Camus would have approved. The World Tribunal on Iraq hopes to contribute to a resistance against the tendency to present and to regard the current international situation as normal, or as a fait accompli.

 

Expressly stating the criminal nature of the policies that led to the war is also a stated goal of the tribunal -- a goal which, it must be admitted, undermines to a degree the appropriateness of the term "tribunal," since the fundamental questions to be discussed are pre-judged.

But the tribunal is not a legal forum. Its goal is also "to keep up the spirit" of those who refuse to "give in and to bow to the American pressure" and who desire to "defend fundamental human dignity, justice and above all World Peace."

 

The historical view of the organizers of the BRussells Tribunal is dire: "The war in Iraq is only a step, a stage in the attempt to impose a "Pax Americana" through multiple and simultaneous wars -- for more wars are bound to follow."

Like Camus, who said that the rebel is the one who says no, the BRussells Tribunal regards resistance as the key to hope for the future: "The stronger the resistance is from the start, the bigger the chances are that we can turn this imperial tide. We are on the brink of disaster. Breaking the will to resist is the cornerstone of the Bush administration's policy. Capitulating to this course will only lead to more capricious, frantic and aggressive interventions."

 

In its April 14-17 proceedings, the BRussells Tribunal defined its goals as "in-depth understanding and knowledge of the Project for a New American Century and of the United States National Security Strategy, as well as assessing the risks and threats that those policies may hold for international peace and security in the future."

 

The hearing, which concluded on April 17, is part of the World Tribunal on Iraq, a series of hearings and tribunals scheduled to conclude with a final session in 2005 in Istanbul.

 

The commission of the tribunal concluded as follows:

--that the Project for a New American Century is a program to establish U.S. hegemony;

--that key PNAC signers like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz are members of the U.S. administration and that the "National Security Strategy of the United States of America" incorporated the PNAC's ideas;

--that the war in Iraq was an application of those ideas;

--that the invasion of Iraq constituted an act of aggression and "a breach of one of the most fundamental norms of the international legal order";

--that the 10,000+ civilian deaths the war has caused and the other gross violations of humanitarian law it has entailed make the constant use of the words "democracy," "freedom," and "human rights" in this context a "complete perversion of those terms";

--that the invasion has created instability and promoted "further annihilation of the rights of the Palestinian people";

--that because its program is likely to lead to a state of permanent war, "the ideas of PNAC constitute an intellectual crime";

--that the cynical requests of the U.S. and U.K. for help from the U.N., the European Union, or N.A.T.O. should be resisted in favor of the "complete withdrawal of all occupying forces."

Finally, the tribunal called on the peoples of the world to demand that their governments refuse to support in any way the occupying powers, supporting instead the attempt of the Iraqi people to recover their full sovereignty.