The following is an archived copy of a message sent to a Discussion List run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.
Views expressed in this archived message are those of the author, not of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.
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[ Presenting plain-text part of multi-format email ] CESR Statement on War The world faces an illegal, immoral, and unnecessary war that the vast majority of peoples and governments do not want. We face war because the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and a handful of other countries are willing and able to disregard both our opinions and well-established principles of international law. Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator, but he is a pretext to launch an illegal invasion, a "preventive" war of the type condemned by the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946 as "the supreme international crime." We have been here before. More than 50 years ago, the world said "never again" to war unrestrained by principles of humanity. We established the United Nations "to avert the scourge of war that twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind." We created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to protect life in peace, and the Geneva conventions to protect life in war if we fail in our duty to preserve the peace. These are the very laws that the U.S. and its allies now seek to dismantle in pursuit of war in Iraq and elsewhere. We are never powerless. It is a trick of power to declare that the future is pre-ordained so as to deter us from taking that first small step of resistance. Each of us has the choice, right here and now, to act for a just peace or remain silent in the face of an unjust war. War will have its day, and so too will justice. Blood will soak the ground, and life will rise again. Even the fearsome power of war can never overcome the power of millions of ordinary people walking together-away from destruction of life and towards love of life. We are not naïve appeasers of evil. We support human rights for all people and stand against all tyrants, regardless of their national dress or political disguises. We are not revolutionaries, just ordinary people who refuse to bestow upon our children the grim inheritance of endless war. It is our right to choose peace and justice. In solidarity, Roger Normand Executive Director Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) http://www.cesr.org/iraq For more on the illegality of an invasion of Iraq, please see CESR's new report: TEARING UP THE RULES: THE ILLEGALITY OF INVADING IRAQ, available at http://www.cesr.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&catid=538&cpid=402&pressview=1 _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk