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against the attack on Africa and African people worldwide.

The march will be preceded by a gathering of some of the world’s prominent legal minds who will hold a forum under the banner the “War Crimes and other Violations of International Law against Africans Forum” which convenes on Wednesday this week, again in Harlem.
The forum will be the first step towards an International Peoples Tribunal to prosecute the United States, Nato, and collaborating Western interests for war crimes for the illegal bombing of Libya, and the illegal

economic war in the form of the economic sanctions on Zimbabwe, and other attacks on Africans worldwide.
Among the panellists will be Lennox Hinds, an international attorney and law professor at Rutgers University; Roger Wareham an international human rights attorney and secretary general of the International Association against Torture; King Downing former national coordinator ACLU Campaign against Racial Profiling; and Jeanne Mirer president of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.

And among the sponsors of the march is the December 12th Movement International Secretariat. Closer to home, prominent industrialist Senator Aguy Georgias showed the way when he launched a challenge against the West’s illegal sanctions regime in the British High Court which referred his challenge to the European Court of First Instance. Probably sensing danger, the EU promptly removed Sen Georgias from its sanctions list.

The forum and march could not have come at a better time given the illegal bombardment of Libya and other wars of aggression the world over pitting Western warmongers against people wishing to assert their independence and sovereignty.
The cheek of it! The warmongers – who have been implicated in the use of banned weapons like Depleted Uranium and cluster bombs – have the temerity of accusing their victims of war crimes as has happened with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

The principle of universality is perhaps the most elementary of all moral truisms in these cases. However, when one is confronted with Western exceptionalism, there is this flat rejection of universality in the Western intellectual, moral and political culture.
Formally the post-war consensus as enshrined in the UN Charter’s Article 51, on principles governing the use of force remains in effect. The brutal and unacceptable aggression by the US and its allies brings to light this revealing and disturbing scenario that portrays a shift in the spectrum of opinion in Western elite circles.

While none of them is willing to honestly reject the post World War 11 consensus, the truth is that the consensus is being ignored and is deemed too extreme to consider under the West’s “special circumstances”.
The only time the consensus is rigorously preached by Western politicians is during public discussions and electoral politicking.
The onset of the new millennium was characterised by a forceful departure from the post-war consensus. The Nato bombing of Serbia, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, attempted strangulation of Zimbabwe and the latest crazed bombardment of Libya are classic expressions of this departure and arrogant deviation.

The Western intellectual and political culture has coined the phrase “illegal but illegitimate” to try to give a face of decency to this terrorism. The enthusiastic support by Western intellectuals for resort to violence they deem to be legitimate is, of course a gross violation of the principle of universality.
It is a violation enshrined in the historical and somewhat racial prejudices that say only those outside the Western world are liable to crime and barbarity.

When one takes a look at George W Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive strikes or “anticipatory self-defence”, as articulated in the US National Security Strategy of September 2002, then it is interesting to see how what applies to the US has become unacceptable banditry for all others, unless they are Uncle Sam’s authorised allies and/or client states.
The post-war consensus still reaffirms the stand of the world on war – that is the world outside what the West calls “the international community,” namely itself. The AU, Sadc, Comesa and NAM’s condemnation of the West’s illegal economic sanctions regime on Zimbabwe only received crude derision from Western circles. This is the standard reaction to the bleating of the ‘‘lesser peoples” of this world. This is even evident in

the West’s disregard of the AU position on the Nato bombardment of Libya.
When the Declaration of the South Summit of 2000 was made, firmly rejecting the “so called right of humanitarian intervention” the same committed derision from the West poured forth with abandon. The accompanying detailed and sophisticated analysis of neo-liberal globalisation was thoroughly ignored in the West, just like the Sadc resolution that says the illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe must go.

The Bush doctrine of “anticipatory self-defence”, a US “senior official” later confirmed to be Condoleezza Rice, outlined that the phrase refers to “the right of the United States to attack a country that it thinks could attack it first.”
This is the same lady who concluded that international court jurisdiction has “proven inappropriate for the United States,” and that the United States is not subject to “international law and norms” generally.

While the majority of American and Western citizens hold the view that force can only be used when there is strong evidence that a country is in imminent danger of being attacked, the elitist view is apparently very different.

The idea of exceptionalism was evident as early as the time of the Nuremburg Tribunal. Both the Nuremburg and Tokyo trials were flawed if the least were to be said. They were founded on rejection of the principle of universality.

In order to bring the defeated war criminals to justice, it was deemed necessary to devise definitions of “war crime” and “crime against humanity.”
The operative definition of “crime” became: Crime that you committed or carried out but we did not. By this logic, the Nazi war criminals were absolved each time the defence could show that their US and UK counterparts carried out the same crimes.

While it can be argued that neither side was punished on these crimes, it remains clear that the approach discredited international law, as well as subsequent tribunals like the Yugoslavia Tribunal and the Special Court for Sierra Leone at The Hague.

Washington’s self exemption from international law and the fundamental principle of universality together with Israel’s blatant breaches of international law and every peace treaty in existence are clear indicators of a world headed for disaster.

When one considers the behaviour of the US at international level, the practice of exceptionalism is understandable.

If the West entertained for a moment the principle of universality and also accepted for once that every country, just like the US, has the right of “anticipatory self-defence” against terror or those “they think might attack” them first then countries like Iran, Cuba and Nicaragua in the eighties would have been entitled to attack the US whichever way possible, given the involvement in very serious terrorist attacks against them, including blatantly advertised threats of attack on the part of Iran.

Such conclusions are considered utterly outrageous of course.
In similar fashion one could argue that Japan’s bombing of US colonies, Hawaii and the Philippines was legitimate anticipatory self-defence since the American Press was awash with details of how American planes were capable to ‘burning down Tokyo, a city of rice-paper and wood houses” – all from bases in Hawaii and the Philippines.

On November 15, 1941, General George C Marshal explained that “there won’t be any hesitation about bombing civilians.”
This provided far more justification for anticipatory self-defence than anything so far conjured up by Obama, Sarkozy or Cameron or anyone else from the Allied West. We all know the implications of applying these elementary moral principles.

The general meaning and implications of international law are clear enough for anyone to understand, much as law is subject to a scope of interpretation. The Nato alliance’s unilateral ‘‘right” to resort to force is nothing but arrogant behaviour motivated by the might of military supremacy.

I hope the forum of prominent scholars of jurisprudence and the millions march in Harlem marks the beginning of an end to western impunity. Its time Western war criminals stood in the dock at the Hague.
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