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Contributor: RCGGILLIS
Date: 2003-04-08 16:10:19
Regarding the URL request, it is hard not to find a non-biased link. For example, www.jewishagency-ed.org/actual/iraq/4.html, says between 100,000 and 300,000 deaths. Globalsecurity.org states that between 50,000-100,000 Kurds were killed between February and September 1988 (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/1corps.htm).
The White House gives the same number as Globalsecurity. This leaves out the numbers that fled into Turkey or 'disappeared' as some sources claim.
I found that when Professor Ramesh Thakur gave a lecture in Waterloo on the International Commission on State Sovereignty (he was a member of that group and also a Vice rector at the United Nations University), entitle, the Responsibility to Protect, that he provided more flexibility then you.
For the actual report, see http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/iciss-ciise/menu-en.asp. It also has the background research.
Here is part of the report
4.19 In the Commission's view, military intervention for human protection purposes is justified in two broad sets of circumstances, namely in order to halt or avert:
1. large scale loss of life, actual or apprehended, with genocide intent or not, which is the product either of deliberate state action, or state neglect or inability to act, or a failed state situation; or
2.large scale "ethnic cleansing," actual or apprehended, whether carried out by killing, forced expulsion, acts of terror or rape.
One such quote that I recall was "by not taking action, we are more complicit than those who committed the actions themselves." Referring to the genocide of the Tutsi's in 1994. Prof. Thakur reminded several of us in the room that we we must remember that political decisions are still going to be made and thus a "double standard is unavoidable" - as noted by the UN (and Canada's) reaction to Somalia, Rwanda, and Kosovo.
While I am sure he would have supported the UN in this matter, I feel that some of the arguments do carry over. When we see the slow death of the Iraqi people due to the actions of the government, when we see the Kurds in the north living under the threat of their own government, when Saddam has proven he is willing to use WMD against his own people, when we see that the borders of neighbours will be violated given the chance, I am not sure how much longer we as a nation should let one person push the us to the very edge of what is acceptable international behaviour.
With a commitment to rebuild a shattered nation (I wish the Afghani people had the same level of public support as the Iraqi people), I think this war can be justified. Even though several of the people in the academic world that have given me several of my arguments I know would disagree me.
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