Canada: its war in Afghanistan is part of an illegal adventure

The Shocking Conclusion: My View- Our War In Afghanistan Is Unlawful.

It’s a bit late for me to be writing this particular column, but as someone once said, “Better late than never”.

As the conflict in Afghanistan deepens and begins to affect more and more people, we need to question our involvement and the legal basis for it. A careful reading of the United Nations Charter, drawn up after World War Two, by the nations which prosecuted the war against Nazi Germany – confirms that this war is unlawful. Article 51 states that no nation may use military force except in self-defense – that means – in the event of an armed attack against it by another county. The Security Council is the final legal instrument for authorizing war and no such decision was ever taken.

Afghanistan attacked no one. The brutality of 9/11 was the work of a criminal gang, which laid its plans in camps located in a primitive land, governed by a collection of illiterate Pashtun tribesmen. The majority of the perpetrators were Saudi Arabians…none was an Afghan national. There was no “imminent threat” of armed attack by Afghanistan, Iraq or any other nation against any U.N. member.

Here’s what Professor Michael Mandel of Osgoode Law School at York University in Toronto says,

‘In fact, the only means mentioned in the Security Council Resolutions of bringing anyone "to justice" is to "ensure that … such terrorist acts are established as serious criminal offences in domestic laws and regulations." In other words, fight terror through law, not war’.

Following 9/11, the Security Council passed 2 resolutions – #1386 and #1373; neither one of them authorized the use of military force against Afghanistan.

What the U.N. authorized was the freezing of assets of anyone suspected of terrorism, the criminalizing of terrorist activity and the prevention of terror. The financial support for terrorist attacks was also outlawed. The Security Council urged the sharing of information and enforcement of international conventions against terrorism. But clearly, the Council did not authorize war.

The U.N. was ostensibly established to provide a global system of “collective security”. The response to 9/11 by the United States and by NATO – all signatories to the U.N. Charter – was an act of vengeance, carried out in anger and had little to do with enhancing collective security.

The American justification for attacking Afghanistan was that it was the country where Osama bin Laden and his fellow criminals planned the attacks of 9/11.

George W. Bush argued that invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq would improve global security. Well that reasoning held no water at the time and it doesn’t hold water now.

Instead of improving our collective security, the two wars have damaged it severely; we are more vulnerable to terrorist attacks now than ever before. Those who wrote the U.N. charter were people of some intelligence. They understood that “planning and waging an aggressive war” was counter-productive. They had already seen the proof of that in the destruction of both Germany and Japan. That’s presumably why they wrote article 51 in the first place…and that’s why the Nuremberg Trials ordered the execution of Nazi officials, who had “planned and waged an aggressive war”.

Those who believe – as I myself have in the past – that the use of military force was “legal” in Afghanistan are deluded. Those who planned and are now waging that aggressive war, are guilty of crimes. Also – those who think that the U.N. is worthless are off-base. The Charter was devised for a specific and important reason: to prevent the very kind of situation in which we now find ourselves.

What the Security Council authorized in 2001, was the formation of an “International Security and Assistance Force for Afghanistan” – ISAF. Canada signed onto ISAF in 2001, in order to help with rebuilding Afghanistan and training its military, period. The "catch-22" with ISAF is that it has always been subject to rules imposed by the U.S. Central Command…and not a United Nations Command. We’ve been duped folks. Big time.

"In respect of the relationship between the International Security Assistance Force and forces operating in the Afghanistan theatre under Operation Enduring Freedom, and for reasons of effectiveness, the United States Central Command will have authority over the International Security Assistance Force" (Letter from the U.K. government to the Security Council, Dec. 19, 2001).

Those who conspired to hijack airplanes and kill thousands of people on 9/11 were not Taliban…they were terrorists; they are criminals and must be identified and brought to justice in accordance with the law. Seeking retaliation and revenge by invading Afghanistan wasn’t and isn’t the answer; it will lead to the deaths of more Canadians and more Afghan civilians and hence, more crimes.

But most important of all, the war in Afghanistan will harm, not help our security.

It makes one wonder just how serious those men of intelligence really were in San Francisco in 1945…the ones who wrote up the U.N. Charter. The ones who wanted to put an end to “the scourge of war”. Maybe they weren’t serious at all. Maybe it was all just a sham.

It’s hard for me now to admit that I was that gullible and that stupid at the time of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, but in the interest of being honest, I have to.

Someone somewhere needs to go to the World Court and get a ruling on this matter…because…if I’m correct, we have a lot of war criminals in power right now and that just doesn’t seem right.