Anglo-American responsibility

Anglo-American responsibility

I blush to be British. Page one of The Jakarta Post on
Saturday, April 12, showed two completely distraught Iraqi
children, newly orphaned by the Anglo-American aggression on
their country. Page 12 of the previous day's issue had a picture
of a horribly maimed Iraqi boy. These are the orphans and the
maimed for whom the attacking U.S. and British forces have a
direct moral responsibility.

Page three of April 12's paper meanwhile has my country's
official representative in Indonesia, Ambassador Richard Gozney,
airing his government's amoral point of view.

I read the ambassador's interview hoping to find some
reference to the UN Charter to which Britain and the United
States are signatories, but could find none. And why? Because as
Mr. Gozney very well knows what the two countries have done has
been a major violation. Not only was the U.S.-UK attack on Iraq
an aggression in the terms of the Charter, it was an undeclared
act of war. Undeclared war is a crime for which the perpetrators
are responsible under the 1949 Geneva Convention and, this being
so, the British Labour MP Tam Dalyell is quite right in calling
Tony Blair a war criminal who should be sent to The Hague for
trial.

What is now happening on the streets of Iraqi cities is the
direct responsibility of the Americans and the British. How can
it be any other way? Ambassador Gozney skips round this in the
typically evasive way of the seasoned Foreign Office mandarin. If
the occupying force will not take responsibility for the
breakdown in law and order that is a direct consequence of their
actions then who will? What is happening is that the Americans
are simply abdicating their responsibility and no amount of spin
can alter that fact.

Lastly, as with Prime Minister Blair Ambassador Gozney's view
is simply ahistorical. Making no reference at all to the fact
that Britain was the past colonial power simply does not wash. If
he and Blair choose to forget, the Arabs have not and why should
they? Britain has committed itself to a new colonialism, no less.

DAVID JARDINE, Jakarta