Petition to Stop Bush's Doctrine of Preemption and to Uphold International Law

Citizens Not Spectators, has drawn up the following petition to send to the Congress of the United States of America and to the United Nations. If you should choose to sign this petition, copy the body of the message you received into a new email message, add your own name to the list of names on the petition and send a copy of this new message to joeshimpfky [at] citizensnotspectators.org, and, please, then forward the petition to others. Additionally, if you would like to contact your Senators and Representatives in Congress to tell them how you feel or to send them a copy of this petition along with a note of your own, but are unsure how to do so, you can find the contact information at http://www.congress.org

For more information, please visit http://citizensnotspectators.org

The petition reads:

We call on the United Nations to act now or be deprived of what relevancy it still retains. We make the same call to the Congress of the United States of America.

Although history is often made by degrees, our world has been dragged to what looks like a watershed moment. We, the people of the world, stand now at the brink, having been led here by powerful and competing interests not our own. On September 12, President Bush left no doubt as to what is at stake when he stood before the United Nations' General Assembly and made a similarly-worded call for action.

There are some important distinctions to be made, however. While the President's call was an ultimatum, ours is a plea. The President amended former Secretary Albright's assertion that the United States would act multilaterally when it could, to declare, in effect, that the United States would act multilaterally only when the rest of the world got in line and did the bidding of the U.S. The President's call resounded with the arrogance of power. He cynically uses the rhetoric of peace and of principle to threaten war and hypocritically champions the primacy of law while attempting to hijack that very system of international law, which already stands weakly on foundations seriously eroded by past abuses of power.

We denounce this abject speech of his outright. We recognize the President and his administration for what they are: a group who covets power. It is not so very difficult to see that little separates this administration from that deplorable regime in Iraq. Men such as these have all too often blighted our race's history. Only one thing has ever successfully thwarted them, thereby proving its saving graces. That thing is the tradition of law, which men such as these have ever held in disdain, and the principles that gird this tradition.

Do not for a minute think that our call to Congress and the United Nations is made out of naiveté. Our call is made with clear recognition of the twin dangers we presently face. This moment finds us stuck between the Scylla of a desperate and criminal regime in Iraq and the Charybdis of the Bush administration, who would destroy the sole thing that could provide it legitimacy and save us from a future wrecked by power-mad men. So, too, do we recognize that we have been brought to this untenable position because we have for too long followed such power-mad men. We must skirt past these two dangers and set to work on finding another alternative that squares with principle and with law. Only then will justice be found, will justice be done.

So it is that we, the citizens of this world, call on the United Nations to act. We expect that this forum of international law and cooperation will be consistent when it justly demands that its charter and resolutions be adhered to. Iraq must allow weapons inspections to resume and Iraq must put an end to its pursuit of the barbaric weapons of mass destruction. Iraq is not the only nation in defiance of the U.N., however. All nations must be held to account by the U.N. Israel, too, is in defiance of U.N. resolutions; and just as the U.N will expect Saddam Hussein to allow the resumption of inspections and to discontinue his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, Israel must end its illegal occupation of Palestine without delay. Such evenhandedness would restore to the United Nations much credibility and would prove that the U.N. can be a tremendously relevant tool for justice.

What would prove it even more relevant would be for it categorically to reject the Bush administration's reckless doctrine of preemptive strikes. The U.N. should remind the President that the U.N. Charter affirmed once for all that national sovereignty ceased to be considered synonymous with unrestricted power, imposing the duty on member states to "settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice are not endangered," and, further, that it mandates that all members "shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force," unless such force is necessary to defend a nation from immediate attack.

So it is that we, citizens of the United States of America, call on the United States Congress to pass a resolution declaring that it supports the United Nations' call for a return of weapons inspections in Iraq, for an end to Israeli occupation of Palestine, and for the enforcement of all similar U.N. resolutions. This Congressional resolution should also repudiate the Bush doctrine of preemptive strikes. It should, though, endorse the participation of a contingent of the United States Armed Forces in any military action that may be necessary to insure adherence to the United Nations' resolutions, provided that it is the U.N. who shall determine the use of such force to be necessary. Finally, this resolution of Congress' should also inform the U.N. that any unilateral military action taken by the Bush administration or any future administration will mean that the Congress of the United States of America will cede its permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. Such a move by Congress would assure the world that the most preeminent power the world has ever known will not succumb to the arrogance of power. And it would show to the world that these United States of America will, rather, defend the very principles on which this great nation was founded upon, and for which it stands.

Signed:

Joe Shimpfky







To sign this petition, copy the body of the message you received into a new message, add your own name to the list of names on the petition and send a copy of this message to joeshimpfky [at] citizensnotspectators.org, and, please, then forward the petition to others.