Thinking about the Forgotten

I have been reading Blood on our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq by Nicolas J.S. Davies. Early in his account Davies draws attention to this country's criminal disregard for international law. He finds this doubly egregious because Article 6 of the United States Constitution specifically declares "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land;"

The burden of this portion of his book is that we, as a people and as a government, no longer pursue the rule of law in international issues. It was not always this way. At the end of World War II people were so impressed with the horrific loss that war incurred (62 to 78 million of which 40 to 52 million were civilians) that it was clear that national differences could no longer be addressed in this fashion and that a rule of law must exist among nations by which national conflicts could be arbitrated; hence the establishment of the United Nations, largely under the urging of Franklin Roosevelt who coined its name. This time, unlike the Senate's rejection of the League of Nations Treaty, the United Nations treaty easily passed the Senate with only two nay votes. This was recognition that the nation state was no longer to be regarded as the end-all of socio/political organization. For purposes of preventing war it was to be subservient to the rule of international law as administered by the United Nations. However, Roosevelt's successors soon reverted to the anarchy of nationalism, initially by trying to use the United Nations as a instrument of United States foreign policy. e.g. the Korean Conflict, which we refused to call a war, but rather a "Police Action." While it is the case that the newly minted United Nations was immediately presented with the unprecedented burden of two nuclear superpowers contesting for global domination, the United States, a prime mover in establishing the U.N. made little effort to support the U. N. in its role of peacekeeper. Indeed, as time wore on Americans began to regard the U.N. as an enemy, indeed many Conservatives urged our withdrawal from the organization. We withdrew our obligatory funding of the U.N. and denigrated it at every opportunity. All this without once recalling the monumental horrors it was designed to prevent. As a result we have had 65 years of continuous global conflict with millions more humans killed, maimed and deprived of a decent life. We have squandered the resources of this planet, condemned our posterity to the effects of global warming, diminishing water supplies, incipient food shortages and the chaos of a collection of nations armed to the teeth with an ever increasing capacity to kill, maim and destroy. One result of our self-perceived role as the world's "sole remaining superpower" was our embarking on a largely lawless journey in world affairs, e.g. the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and now threats to bomb Iran.

In my judgment what has to change is a mass perception of ourselves as humans living together on the only home we have, the earth. We must cease seeing the nation as the ultimate socio/political unit and ourselves primarily as citizens of a country. The nation must become an instrument through which we pledge our allegiance and efforts to our world. But how?

The global environmental movement has shown us that humans can seek solutions to global problems. As reflected in a recent article in WorldWatch magazine the environmental movement is beginning to realize that it will have to expand its vision and efforts to include economic issues if our ecological problems are resolved. This suggests to me that the need to address socio/political concerns will be seen as a prerequisite to accomplishing the ecological goals of environmentalists. The environment is shared by all humans and is therefore a fit vehicle to begin shifting the human mind-set from nation to world. Yet another task progressives could take the lead in.

Bob Newhard