Terrorist state - what's wrong with US bombings of Afghanistan and Sudan for embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania - Editorial

Progressive, The, Oct, 1998

President Clinton's bombings of Afghanistan and the Sudan showed a disregard for international law and a disrespect for our constitutional system of government. Welcome to the war against terrorism, where the United States responds in kind, promising an infinite series of attacks and counterattacks.

Of the many things wrong with Clinton's action, perhaps sending some sixty cruise missiles over Pakistan was the most reckless, since it could have falsely alarmed Pakistan that India was attacking with nuclear weapons, thus risking a nuclear war in the subcontinent.

Not all of the missiles aimed at Afghanistan hit their target. At least one fell on Pakistan. Nuclear physicists in Pakistan were eagerly examining the missile, which didn't explode, for clues on how to perfect their own.

"Pakistani scientists and weapons experts are studying components salvaged from an American cruise missile that landed ... in southern Pakistan," The Washington Post reported. "They expressed optimism that they could unlock technological secrets that will advance Pakistan's missile program."

As one Pakistani security official put it: "It is a gift from the God. The country that had denied us all sorts of economic and military assistance has suddenly gifted us the weapon of choice from its arsenal."

The divine gift was illegal under international law, however. "International law prohibits the unauthorized overflight of other countries," says Peter Weiss, president of the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy. Defense Secretary William Cohen said on Meet the Press that the United States did not warn Pakistan of the missile flights.

The United States also violated the sovereignty of the Sudan and Afghanistan. The only time a country can take unilateral action under international law is when it's a matter of self-defense, says Weiss. The United States invoked self-defense in this instance, but it was a specious claim.

"The United States was definitely not abiding by international law," says Weiss. "Self-defense is an extremely limited concept, relating to the invasion of your country. It does not cover speculative, preemptive strikes."

With the missile attacks on the Sudan and Afghanistan, the United States has demonstrated that it is just as willing to use violence, and just as willing to kill civilians, as anyone else. The early casualty count was twenty-one dead and forty injured in Afghanistan, and one dead and nine injured in the Sudan.

By launching missiles to combat terrorists, the United States reduced itself to the tactics of the terrorists themselves.

Another reckless aspect of the missile attack was the targeting of the Sudanese pharmaceutical company, which looks less and less like a chemical weapons plant every day. The pharmaceutical factory produced half the medicines for the entire country, press reports indicate. The bombing "will cause a drug shortage that could cost many thousands of lives, Sudanese doctors said," according to The Washington Post. The attack "will really hit the poor Sudanese. They will be deprived of medicines for a long time," said Mohammed Hassan Tayeb, president of a Sudanese doctors' union.

The plant was also under contract with the United Nations to export medicine, though the United States didn't even know that the plant made medicines, Defense Secretary Cohen admitted two weeks after the attack.

As far as the claim that the plant was producing chemical weapons, the evidence was dubious. "I have intimate knowledge of that factory, and it just does not lend itself to the manufacture of chemical weapons," Tom Carnaffin, a British technical manager of the plant in the mid-1990s, told The London Observer.

The Clinton Administration claimed to have evidence that the plant produced Empta, a chemical used in the production of nerve gas. But "other officials now say it is unclear that Empta was actually produced at the plant," The New York Times reported.

There is also a question as to whether Empta could be used for purposes other than making chemical weapons. And there is some doubt that the chemical even was Empta in the first place. "Several chemical-weapons experts outside the [U.S.] government say the single soil sample, if it was not carefully preserved and quickly tested, could have misidentified the key ingredient," The New York Times reported. "They said Empta is chemically similar to several available pesticides and herbicides, including the commercially available weed killer called Round-Up."

In any event, the overarching question is: What standard of intervention is the United States upholding? In the 1980s, when the Reagan Administration was financing a war against Nicaragua, did the Sandinistas have the right to attack us? When anti-Castro Cubans in Miami were plotting terrorism against Havana, would Castro have been justified to launch missiles against the United States?

Unilateral military action by the President is not what our founders had in mind. The Constitution grants Congress the exclusive power not only to declare war but "to define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations," and to "grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water."