SEDA-YE EDALAT: Although promoting the private sector has always topped the government’s agenda, economists believe that the necessary political, social and economic conditions should be prepared before the drive for privatization produces results. It seems that above all our statesmen and economists should elaborate more on their attitude toward the notion of market economy. In fact, there are two different viewpoints regarding market economy. One attaches credence to capitalism with all its manifestations and the other is of the opinion that capitalism contradicts the idea of social justice. However, if statesmen believe in the merits of the market economy, the sine qua non for such an economic modus operandi is facilitating the required institutions. Moreover, the Labor Law should be amended and the ground should be paved for the activities of the private sector.

HAMSHAHRI: Lebanon is a country whose people supported Iran since 1963 when the late Imam Khomeini went to exile for the first time. Lebanon’s Hezbollah is a political current that was established in 1983 inspired by the Islamic Revolution. Hezbollah has presently turned into the most influential, powerful and popular political party of the Middle East. All in all, Iran should play a more active role in terms of diplomatic affairs related to the ongoing Israel-Lebanon conflict. Iran can take part in negotiations with some Arab countries and hence prepare a plan for ceasefire and exchange of prisoners of war. Moreover, Iran’s presence in negotiations will be crucial for achieving concrete results for the Lebanese side.

KAYHAN: Last week when two Islamic dress code shows for women were held in two different parts of Tehran, Tehran’s Al-Zahra University as well as Tehran Cultural and Artistic Organization also jointly held a workshop on designing dresses for women based on the Islamic dress code. This was indeed a brave step taken by the government after so many years of indifference vis-ˆ-vis the important issue of Islamic dress code. The government displayed that it looks at this issue as a social-ethical matter of concern. The reality is that a religious-oriented political system cannot and should not remain negligent toward a vital consideration such as Islamic dress code. This is while secular political regimes have also shown on several occasions that they are not indifferent toward the issue of how their citizens should dress. The recent harsh attitude of the French government regarding how its citizens should dress proves that despite what the so-called western democracies claim they cannot tolerate other ideologies.

The extent to which American exceptionalism is embedded in the national psyche is awesome to behold. While the United States is a country like any other, its citizens no more special than any others on the planet, Americans still react with surprise at the suggestion that their country could be held responsible for something as heinous as a war crime.
From the massacre of more than 100,000 people in the Philippines to the first nuclear attack ever at Hiroshima to the unprovoked invasion of Baghdad, US-sponsored violence doesn’t feel as wrong and worthy of prosecution in internationally sanctioned criminal courts as the gory, blood-soaked atrocities of Congo, Darfur, Rwanda, and most certainly not the Nazis--most certainly not.
Howard Zinn recently described this as our “inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior“.
Most Americans firmly believe there is nothing the United States or its political leadership could possibly do that could equate to the crimes of Hitler’s Third Reich.
But the truth is that we can, and we have--most recently and significantly in Iraq. Perhaps no person on the planet is better equipped to identify and describe our crimes in Iraq than Benjamin Ferencz, a former chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials who successfully convicted 22 Nazi officers. Ferencz, now 87, has gone on to become a founding father of the basis behind international law regarding war crimes, and his essays and legal work drawing from the Nuremberg trials and later the commission that established the International Criminal Court remain a lasting influence in that realm.
Ferencz’s biggest contribution to the war crimes field is his assertion that an unprovoked or ’aggressive’ war is the highest crime against mankind. It was the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 that made possible the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the destruction of Fallujah and Ramadi, the tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, civilian massacres like Haditha, and on and on.
Ferencz believes that a “prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation“.
Interviewed from his home in New York, Ferencz laid out a simple summary of the case:
“The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United States formulated by the United States in fact, after World War II. It says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the permission of the UN Security Council. They can use force in connection with self-defense, but a country can’t use force in anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council resolution essentially said, ’Look, send the weapons inspectors out to Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they’ve found--then we’ll figure out what we’re going to do. The US was impatient, and decided to invade Iraq--which was all prearranged of course. So, the United States went to war, in violation of the charter.“
It’s that simple. Ferencz called the invasion a “clear breach of law,“ and dismissed the Bush administration’s legal defense that previous UN Security Council resolutions dating back to the first Persian Gulf War justified an invasion in 2003. Ferencz notes that the first Bush president believed that the United States didn’t have a UN mandate to go into Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein; that authorization was simply to eject Hussein from Kuwait.
Ferencz asked, “So how do we get authorization more than a decade later to finish the job? The arguments made to defend this are not persuasive.“
The suggestion that the Bush administration’s conduct in the “war on terror“ amounts to a string of war crimes and human rights abuses is gaining credence in even the most ossified establishment circles of Washington.
Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion in the recent Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruling by the Supreme Court suggests that Bush’s attempt to ignore the Geneva Conventions in his approved treatment of terror suspects may leave him open to prosecution for war crimes. As Sidney Blumenthal points out, the court rejected Bush’s attempt to ignore Article 3, which bans “cruel treatment and torture [and] outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.“
And since Congress enacted the Geneva Conventions, making them the law of the United States, any violations that Bush or any other American commits “are considered ’war crimes’ punishable as federal offenses,“ as Justice Kennedy wrote.
George W. Bush in the dock facing a charge of war crimes? That’s well beyond the scope of possibilities or is it?
Jan Frel