4 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, October 17, 2001 OP/ED 9 Zbe £iktigutu &aillg 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 daily. letters@umich.edu EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN . SINCE 1890 GEOFFREY GAGNON Editor in Chief MICHAEL GRASS NICHOLAS WOOMER Editorial Page Editors Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's editorial board. All other articles, letters and cartoons do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. NOTABLE QUOTABLE (( Arafat's relationship with Hamas and Islamic Jihad may be more complicated, but in the end no less intimate than that between the Taliban and bin Laden." - Staff editorial in Tuesday's Jerusalem Post, drawing comparisons between the Taliban's sponsoring of bin Laden and Arafat's sponsoring of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. / A V . 4: ?' r' V r ~ .. rAll K,- . W Millions of Afghan lives or one life in Terre Haute? NICK WOOMER BACK TO THE WOOM ight now, the sug- gestion that the United States should immediately cease its military strikes in Afghanistan and enter into good faith negotiations with the Taliban is not likely to be taken very seriously. You have to be kidding! The Tal- iban will only hand Osama bin Laden over under the most unacceptable conditions (i.e. they'll demand that he is tried under Islamic law, etc.). But if these naysayers would only step back from their unilateralist stance for a moment and think about the potential consequences qf George W. Bush ruling out any type of negotia- tions (including prosecuting bin Laden and his associates under Islamic law), they might just be willing to accept the "unacceptable." Right now, the U.S. is headed on a course that will end up avenging the senseless deaths of thousands of Americans by senselessly starving hundreds of thousands or even millions of Afghan refugees to death. In fact, as of tomor- row, the World Food Program estimates that 400,000 people in Afghanistan's Faryab province will have completely depleted their food supplies. Bush's food drops to the Afghan people - vigorously criticized in the European press - won't even make a dent in the problem and may even exacerbate it. International hunger relief organizations have said that ground transporta- tion is the best way to deliver the mass quantities of food it will take to feed the 7.5 million Afghans the United Nations estimates require immediate food assistance. However, by mid-November heavy snowfall will block key mountain passes, making food delivery significantly less efficient. The emerg- ing scenario could be nothing short of nightmar- ish. Mary Robinson, the UN chief human rights official, has called for a suspension of the attacks so that relief agencies could assist the 2 million Afghans who will starve or freeze to death if aid does not reach them before winter. To put the emerging man-made disaster in perspective, Ray Jordan, relief director for the for the Irish agency GOAL told the Seattle Times on Friday that "while hostilities continue, the (Afghan) people are going to starve... The world could be look- ing at the worst humanitarian tragedy since the Rwanda genocide of 1994." At the risk of drawing an inappropriate anal- ogy, I think we would do well to remember what happened when the U.S. demanded Japan's unconditional surrender in 1945. Howard Zinn, in "A People's History of the United States" argues compellingly that: "If only the Americans had not insisted on unconditional surrender - that is, if they were willing to accept one condi- tion to the surrender, that the Emperor, a holy figure to the Japanese, remain in place - the Japanese would have agreed to stop the war." But the Japanese didn't surrender unconditional- ly, so we murdered more than 100,000 civilians in Hiroshima with an atom bomb. Three days later, the U.S. hit Nagasaki - an unjustifiable and unforgivable atrocity by any half-cogent moral standard. It might hurt our unelected president's feel- ings to be forced into making a few concessions to the unelected religious fanatics who rule Afghanistan. Too bad. In light of the horrifying alternative, that's just something America will have to live with if it is to keep the blood of thousands or even millions of innocents off of its collective hands. Moral considerations aside, however, it still makes sense to enter into good faith negotiations with the Taliban to have bin Laden brought to justice. Not even the most Machiavellian right-wing American policy maker will deny that the U.S.- led attacks have seriously inflamed already strong anti-American sentiments throughout the Muslim world - especially among fundamen- talist Muslims opposed to Arab and/or Islamic governments friendly to the United States. Thus, attacking Afghanistan destalilizes key strategic regions and invigorates a potentially violent anti- American sentiment in who-knows-how-many radical young Muslim men all over the world. That is not exactly a prescription for a safer world. So what sensible alternative is there to con- tinuing U.S. military action until the Taliban totally capitulates? First, the U.S. needs to stop insisting that bin Laden is tried in a U.S. court - this will only (rightly) arouse international suspi- cions (especially in the Islamic world) that bin Laden will get a show trial. The best alternative would be for the U.S. to cease its opposition to the proposed International Criminal Court and try bin Laden in that setting. Another strong possibility, proposed by Anne- Marie Slaughter in Friday's Financial Times, would be to create an international tribunal that recognizes and incorporates Islamic law. Such a tribunal would restore a sense of legitimacy to the proceedings in the Islamic world and proba- bly make Islamic countries with powerfil funda- mentalist elements more likely to hand over suspected terrorists. The last possibility, though far from ideal, would be to accept the Taliban's offer to hand bin Laden over to a neutral country and simply try him there under Islanic law. It is foolish and ethnocentric to assume that because bin Laden is Muslim, he will be let off or even punished less severely by an Islamic court. All of these are options the U.S. needs to start considering immediately. Mid-November is rapidly approaching, and thousands or even mil- lions of Afghan lives are at stake. We should not be willing to make a trade-off between a pre- ventable human catastrophe on one hand and executing bin Laden in Terre Haute, Ind. on another. Nick Woomer can be reached via e-mail at nwoomer@umich.edu. t b V ANALYSIS We are fighting a just war V VIEWPOINT Albright deliberately deceptive BY TARA JAVIDI AND IDIN MOTEDAYEN-AVAL Former secretary of state, Madeline K. Albright, delivered the William K. McInal- ly Memorial Lecture last night. The event was held at the Hale Auditorium at the Business School under heavy security, and in a controlled environment. After her speech, she opened the floor for a question- and-answer period, or as she called it, a "lively discussion." Since in her talk Albright referred to the ineffectiveness of sanctions on Pakistan, she was asked about the failure of the sanc- tions imposed on Iraq. In response, she blamed the Iraqi leadership for the death of over a million people in Iraq. Among the multitude of lies, half-truths, and misrepresentations offered by the for- mer secretary of state, some were easy to refute. For instance, to see the emptiness of her claims about America's cooperation with United Nation's humanitarian aid to Iraq, one needs only consider the resigna- tion letters of two U.N. humanitarian coor- dinators for Iraq, Denis Halliday (resigned October 1998) and Hans Von Sponeck (resigned February 2000). Even the U.N. secretary general, Kofi Annan, publicly criticized Washington's "refusal to ease economic sanctions." (The Washington Post, Oct. 25, 1999) A more subtle half-truth presented by Albright was her reference to the use of chemical weapons by the Iraqi military against the Kurdish population of Iraq. What she failed to say was that these atroci- ties took place 'between 1984 and 1987, during the Iran-Iraq war. American support for the Iraqi military during this period is well documented in a broad range of sources. The list even includes the book "Ally to Adversary," the autobiography of Rick Francona, an American intelligence officer. Reports of Iraq's use of chemical weapons in the mainstream American media were barely visible during this period. For example, there were only four stories in The New York Times between 1984 and 1987 with references to such crimes, all buried within the back pages of the newspaper. In 1991, after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the American government and media sud- denly became interested in Saddam Hus- sein's crimes of the past without questioning the role of American intelli- gence officers and multi-national corpora- tions in. helping the Iraqi military during those years. This leaves any critical mind no choice but to think that her half-truths are a delib- erate attempt to deceive the public. The question facing the University community now is: do we want to accept, as a profes- sor, an individual with such capacity for lying, and such utter disregard for human suffering? Moreover, her simple-minded and distorted arguments indicate her lack of respect for the University audience's knowledge of world affairs and American foreign policy. That's why we feel the urge to show our dissatisfaction with her pres- ence on the campus of University of Michi- gan. Javidi and Motedaven-Aval are both graduate students in the electrical engineering and computer science department. Motedayen- Aval is on the board of the Persian Students' Association. Javidi is a member of Campus Greens and the Persian Students Association. BY JONATHAN CANEDO The terrorist attacks on September 11, and the subsequent military response by the United States and the United Kingdom, have raised questions about the appropriate use of military force in international relations. Unfortunately, most of the discussion seems mired in arguments advocating attacks either for revenge or to punish those responsible or stalled in arguments against the use of force that seem stuck in either naive pacifism or an automatic anti-Americanism of the far political left. Regardless of which side of the debate over the use of force one is on, how- ever, a common thread is the use of the term "justice." We hear that the use of force is justi- fied, that the United States must seek justice, or that the use of military force cannot be just, espe- cially if civilians are harmed. And in listening to the cacophony of debate arising around the war against Afghanistan and the al-Queda terrorist network it has become clear to me that a vast. majority of individuals have little understanding of the concept of justice with regards to the use of military power. But a specific framework for understanding the conditions under which the use of military force is morally just does exist, and examining this framework can, I believe, provide a posi- tion from which we can begin to determine from a more sophisticated and less emotional viewpoint the appropriateness of the war we find ourselves now waging. But before turning to the specific conditions of a just war, I should lay my cards on the table. I fully support the military action underway and would support even a broader campaign against other states or terrorist organizations that have supported or undertaken acts of terror against American or allied targets. And I believe my position is con- sistent with the restrictions of just war. Just war theory is comprised of two parts: jus ad bellum, the justice of going to war, and jus in bello, the norms governing the use of force during war. For a military conflict to be considered just, both the conditions governing going to war and the norms limiting the con- duct of war must be met. There are six condi- Damaged tanks left by Soviet Troops are seen on this photo made near the town of Termez, Uzbekistan, some 5 kilometers from the Afghan-Uzbek border. of attrition cannot be justified; the goals and means pursued or utilized must be proportionate. . Last resort - a state must exhaust all peaceful means of resolving a conflict before ini- tiating the use of force. . Reasonable hope of success - a war that is unlikely to achieve its limited goals is immoral. The conditions for jus in bello are: . Discrimination -- every effort must be made to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants, and to minimize civilian casual- ties; deliberate and direct attacks against civilian targets not permitted. Proportionality - to remain morally justi- fied, the minimum level of violence to achieve the limited aims of the war must be used; indis- criminate destruction is not permitted. With the possible exception of last resort, it is always possible to claim that one more diplo- matic or political effort could be made; the war now underway in Afghanistan clearly meets the conditions of jus ad bellum. United States and allied military strikes are designed both to right a grievous wrong, the support for terrorism directed against civilians, and deter future attacks. The United States government has the had any chance of working and the several weeks of activity between 11 September and the onset of the war do indicate that the United States did allow a reasonable period of time for non-military efforts to be made. And I would argue that the United States and allied forces have a more than reasonable hope of success, given the isolation of the Taliban regime and their poor military capabilities. This war is also being conducted within the restrictions of just in bello. The use of "smart" munitions where possible and the provision of humanitarian aid, along with the avoidance of indiscriminate raids on built-up urban areas, demonstrate the clear concern the United States and the United Kingdom have with how this war is fought. And while some civilians have been killed, and it is likely that more will die as the conflict continues, this does not violate the condition of discrimination. Just war theory requires that efforts be made to minimize civil- ian casualties while recognizing that such loss- es are inevitable in any large-scale use of military force. From the conditions put forth by just war theory the justified nature of this war can clear- gm