ZAID JILANI

Forum will 'soil' Rusk legacy

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Posted: 3/27/08

The Dean Rusk Center has invited five former secretaries of state to a forum organized to give "Bipartisan Advice to the Next Administration."

The ironic thing here is that a school created to "expand … [the] service … [of the] international dimensions of law," as its Web site proudly proclaims, would host severe transgressors of both international and domestic law.

Due to space limitations, I'll list the crimes of three of the secretaries of state.

Let's begin with Henry Kissinger, who prize-winning investigative journalist James Ridgeway has called "Manhattan's Milosevic."

He began his crime spree in 1968 on behalf of his campaign boss Richard Nixon when he violated the Logan Act and conducted private diplomacy with the South Vietnamese government to scuttle peace talks.

Having prolonged a war that went on to kill millions, Kissinger took office with Nixon and engineered carpet bombings against Cambodia and Laos that violated both the Hague and Geneva Conventions.

It is alleged that before leaving office, Kissinger directed assassinations and coups in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Chile, Cyprus and even Washington, D.C.

All of these actions were illegal by both domestic and international law, but thanks to a timid judiciary and friends in high places, Kissinger never has been prosecuted (though he is sought for extradition by five countries).

Then we have Madeleine Albright. Under the Clinton Administration she devised an embargo against Iraq that, in the words of two morally outraged U.N. officials in charge of its administration, was nothing short of "genocidal," violating "the U.N. Covenant on Human Rights and the Hague and Geneva Conventions."

The sanctions regime against Iraq had a horrifying toll. According to the U.N. Children's Fund, more than half a million children in Iraq died before reaching the age of five as a direct result of the embargo.

When asked on "60 Minutes" what she thought about the deaths, she replied, "We think it's worth the cost."

She also oversaw the bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, which produced half of the country's medicines. Thousands of people needlessly died from malaria and tuberculosis as a result.

Lastly, we have Colin Powell, who unapologetically planned and prosecuted the war against Iraq, which U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan rightly condemned as "illegal" by all current laws and norms.

When asked about civilian casualties in the Gulf, he replied, "That is really not a matter I am terribly interested in."

My parents grew up in the so-called third world, where these officials played out their intellectual theories at the expense of millions of lives.

I can't imagine the hell I'd go through if one of my parents were killed and then the University honored and subsidized their murderers. True, my parents weren't the ones killed here, but I don't think it should matter whose loved ones are being hurt.

Justice should be blind and universal.

It's unfortunate the Dean Rusk Center has chosen to soil its legacy with this kind of abhorrent moral nihilism. It has lost any credibility on matters of international law.

I know the U.S. refuses to respect international law and reserves the right to murder anyone on the planet without reproach, but I am hopeful that one day we won't live in a world like this.

Maybe my children's children will live in a world where every life is sacred not just in rhetoric but in practice. If we can achieve that someday, then maybe the Kissingers and Albrights of the world will have lost in the long run.

- Zaid Jilani is a sophomore from Kennesaw majoring in international affairs.