Kunkel, U.S. Constitution, Human Rights, and Iraq

Most U.S. citizens believe they have fundamental human rights, such as the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that stem from their government and constitution. These rights truly go back to our Founding Fathers, but they are not contained in our Constitution. Instead they stem from the U.S. Declaration of Independence as crafted by Thomas Jefferson, and adopted by these Fathers on July 4, 1776. We continue to celebrate our rights and independence on subsequent 4ths of July. The Declaration reads:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed....

The wording of this Declaration is close to the thinking of John Locke. Locke, diverging from Thomas Hobbes and following upon the equality of all human beings, maintains that individuals “may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.”1 Freedom in this sense is not license, as we are all expected to respect each other’s lives and values. Hobbes, by contrast, holds that we are all aggressive beings, and as a consequence only have the rights, morality, and justice that are written into contracts, and when there are no such contracts there are no rights nor injustices.2

Weak Rights in the Constitution [top]

After the Thirteen Colonies won their independence from Great Britain in a violent Revolutionary War, the Founding Fathers came together in Philadelphia in 1787 to draw up a federal constitution to unite the colonies. Jefferson was not among them, as he was serving in Paris as Minister to France. The rights part of the approved U.S. Constitution is contained in the Preamble, which reads as follows:

We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Instead of grounding the Constitution in universal unalienable human rights the founders endorsed a government that strives for justice, domestic tranquility, and promotion of the general welfare. As historian Gordon S. Wood says the founders were gentlemen. They were at the top of the human evolutionary cycle. They had all received a liberal education. They expected that over time all citizens would have and enjoy similar values.3

But there is less in the Constitution. This government is not seeking justice for all human beings; rather only for justice of “We the People.” African-Americans were written out of the people for at least twenty years, which was then extended for much longer. Native Americans were not included in the people. Neither were women and children. Even after the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified eighty years later in 1868 and children born in the United States were made citizens of the United States whose “life, liberty, or property” could not be deprived “without due process of law,” many people, such as blacks, Native Americans, women, children, and prisoners, were not given an equality with other “people” under a whole variety of laws. Wood says what the founders expected would be culturally forthcoming did not occur, and was overridden by a democracy of less educated people seeking their own self-interests.4

We have “people” and people. Thus Japanese people could be sequestered in camps during the Second World War, and African-American people could be denied equal education until 1954, and voting rights until 1965 — which ran explicitly against the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870. Hispanic immigrants today fare no better when children-citizens born in the United States are orphaned as their parents are allowed to be deported. Homosexuals too are not allowed to pursue their happiness.

Religious right-to-lifers argue for extending these rights — what rights? — to the unborn, by somehow getting back to the “original intent” of the writers of the Constitution. Perhaps they are thinking of the Bill of Rights, that were amended to the Constitution. The Founding Fathers were divided on how strong to make the federal government. The Federalists wanted a strong central government, and the Republicans feared such an Hobbesian authoritarian structure, preferring central power to be split with the states. To the credit of the Republicans the central power of the government was divided, along the lines of Locke, into three independently powerful branches: the legislative, the administrative, and the judiciary. The Bill of Rights was also drawn up to further assuage the concerns of Republicans. So we have freedom of speech, the right of freedom of assembly, no central religion, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to a speedy trial in criminal prosecutions, and so on. The only mention of our right to life is in the Fifth Amendment that addresses citizens accused in criminal cases, and says they shall not “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” That is hardly an endorsement of an unalienable right for all human beings or even of all people of the United States.

Instead of a clear presentation of such rights, the Constitution gives us the potentiality of a government to legislate the specifics. Over the years, this has meant large masses of people having to demonstrate to legislators for this or that group of the people: abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage movement, civil rights, Native American rights, equal rights amendment, right to life, abolition of the death penalty, immigration rights, homosexual rights, animal and environmental protections, the right for every citizen to have healthcare, and on and on. Some of these demonstrations have prevailed, and some are still out on the streets.

The Federalists won out in making a divided central power able to legislate, administrate, and adjudicate what rights would be given to the people. Justice and morality would be retained in the laws that pass various government assemblies. So, 220 years later it is not surprising that in the wealthiest nation in the world 47 million people are without healthcare, 18,000 die each year from treatable medical conditions, 13 percent are food insecure, women make only 77% of what men do in the same fields, most communities are highly segregated, and the ignored environment is playing havoc with our lives.

Non-Rights for the Rest of the World [top]

When our politicians transfer their U.S. governmental values to the larger world we run into a global hornet’s nest. While the United States has rectified some of its missed human rights at home, it has never ratified the equal rights of people living in other nations. The United States ratified the Charter of the United Nations, which contains some human rights language, and voted in 1948 for the non-binding U.N. General Assembly’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which in Article 3 says, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person.” Still for over forty years we have not ratified the follow-on legally binding U.N. international covenants on human rights. We have not ratified the Law of the Sea, the American Convention on Human Rights, the nuclear Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty, and the International Criminal Court, which applies the Nuremberg Principles to military actions across the globe. In other words, our actions speak louder than our words, and show that we as a nation are not committed to the worldwide pursuance of equal human rights.

Our cold war politicians used to argue that the United States was a government based upon laws, and we could not ratify a treaty on human rights lest we alone abide by these laws while our archenemy and superpower foe, the former Soviet Union, undercuts our peaceful efforts with violent force. Today, however, the Soviet Union has dissolved into fifteen independent republics, including some that have clearly aligned themselves with the European Union. Meanwhile the United States has huge military outlays with five unified commands that cover the globe. We are also seeking for dominance of outer-space, and a defensive missile shield. Our nation stands as the only powerful nation in the world. Unfortunately, despite this sole superpower status we have not been able to bring peace to the world. And countries are resenting our unilateral use of military power.

We have shifted from a Lockean nation of democratic laws to a Hobbesian international center of coercive military power. John Perkins, in his Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, makes a similar case for the U.S. use of economic power.5 Under Hobbes, morality, justice, and rights are only what we agree to in contracts or treaties. While Hobbes may have believed nations with equal power would come up with equal justice and rights, having a single superpower that struts its self-interests does not make for fair global rules. Even then we weasel around and circumvent the long-standing Geneva Conventions against using torture in wartime, and allow private firms such as Blackwater to use excessive force in war zones with impunity. We claim to be bringing democracy to Iraq, but instead are modeling an oppressive arrogance.

Power Politics in Iraq [top]

Why are we in Iraq? John Lewis Gaddis of Yale University argues that after September 11, 2001, the Bush administration began to equate terrorists with tyrants.6 The root of terrorism, the administration argues, is not poverty, but the absence of representative governments. The cure is the spreading of democratic values. The hope was that U.S. forces would be welcomed by liberated Iraqis after the fall of Baghdad. The freedom let loose would have repercussions for the rest of the Middle East. This is what Gaddis calls “a grand strategy of transformation.” The strategy failed, and now the administration appears to be focusing on Iran for an imagined even bigger Muslim transformation.

What went wrong? First of all, European support, what Gaddis termed a key ingredient, did not materialize. The International Atomic Energy Agency nuclear inspectors sent in by the United Nations did not find, in four months of intensive searching, any evidence of Saddam Hussein’s building nuclear weapons.7 Thus the need for a pre-emptive just cause never materialized. The United States refused to accept the inspectors’ findings and declared war unilaterally.

Just Cause or Just Power? [top]

The Bush administration then introduced a new just cause. The United States was making a humanitarian intervention to preserve innocent Iraqi lives from a vengeful tyrant. Pertinent examples of Saddam’s punishing wrath came from ten, fifteen, or twenty years previous. But why suddenly in March 2003 could the United States not wait any longer? By this date many protective safeguards were in place. The United Nations oversaw the governance of the three northern Kurdish provinces. The United States controlled the no-fly zones of northern and southern Iraq. U.N. inspectors were once again on the ground hunting weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles. Lastly an international boycott of forbidden military supplies was in operation. Surely an aggressive invasion, and a resultant insurgency, has not been better than continuing to monitor an unstable situation.8

In overthrowing the Saddam government, the United States reverted to power politics. The United States argued that Iraq had failed to abide by U.N. Security Council resolutions, and as such became an outlaw or rogue state that was fair game for the greatest military power in the world to attack. As Hobbes says, “Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice.”9

Shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Iraqi military collapse, Bush appointed L. Paul Bremer to take charge of the multi-faceted interim decisions that in an autocratic way would hopefully bring freedom and democracy to Iraq. Within four days Bremer, according to the award winning journalist George Packer, “dissolved the Iraqi army, he fired high-ranking Baathists from the civil service, and he stopped the formation of an interim government.”10 Bremer, not the Iraqis, was in command. The Sunni Baathists, who had ruled all aspects of Iraqi life under Saddam, quickly realized they were out of government. Unfortunately this included the Iraqi security forces who knew where arms were stored in preparation for an insurgency force. Looting and chaos continued unabated.

Oil and Corporate Interests [top]

Since human rights and democratic values are not in the forefront, what is the United States really after? I believe the first and foremost answer is oil. The United States has only a small share of the world’s conventional oil reserves, and yet we have been consuming about one-quarter of the world’s consumption. Since two-thirds of the conventional reserves are in the Middle East, and since we wish to continue to consume oil at the present rate, then we need to control the flow of oil from the Middle East.11 What better way then to use the largest military force in the world to control this commodity?

Arthur Macewan writing for Dollars and Sense says, “oil is not the whole story.”12 Oil is not the only group of international firms with interests in the Middle East. Citibank and other financial institutions would also like to do business there. So would Microsoft and other information companies. General Motors could sell automobiles. Merck and Pfizer could market pharmaceuticals. Plus there exist retailers, such as, MacDonalds and Wal-Mart. Think open Muslim markets, and we have a host of self-interested reasons for invading Iraq and Iran. These reasons and the way big businesses fund our elections are more than enough to keep the Democrats quiet about withdrawing all troops from Iraq. Indeed we have built at least five super bases, each covering fifteen to twenty square miles, with all the U.S. amenities so our troops can be retained in the Middle East indefinitely.13

Peace through Force? [top]

How do these reflections relate to our peace and nonviolence theme? As citizens of the United States we need to understand that our country’s views of peace are decidedly out of step with nonviolence. Our leaders view peace in the Hobbesian manner of the absence of war. Peace for Hobbes is based upon power politics, and the balance of powers. This view perceives human beings as naturally aggressive. Capitalism is an economic theory in tune with power politics. What limited equality people have in such a system is based upon the few agreements that the wealthy and powerful are forced to share with the have-nots, and have-not nations. Otherwise agreements are one-sided, and geared to keep the majority of the world’s population in dire straits.

What can we do about this awful situation? I am reminded about my trips to Latin America, and conversing with a number of Salvadorans and Colombians, and observing how easily they distinguish between concerned U.S. citizens and the policies of our superpower government. They do not blame us for our government’s positions any more than they blame themselves for the policies of their governments. They know that in many democratic nations political legislation does not live up to the promises of democratic government. It is ludicrous for George W. Bush to say he is bringing democracy and human values to Iraq. With 50 percent of Salvadorans and 80 percent of rural Colombians living in poverty these people know, as do the Iraqis, that ballot-box democracy will not improve the status of their lives.

Neither will small groups of people practicing nonviolence, by themselves, have much of an impact. Our country is so violent overall that having nonviolent groups of citizens has little or no repercussions on the much broader policies of the surrounding state and federal governments. This is especially true when “telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” is at a low premium. I say this hoping that I am wrong.

Human Rights and Positive Peace [top]

What is needed to make a change? I believe we must go back to the Declaration of Independence, and to work at amending our Constitution to reflect these equitable human values. Jefferson wrote in the Declaration,

“[W]henever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

I believe our capitalistic and imperialistic approach to international relations, with its privileged groups at the top and the majority of human beings at the bottom, is destructive of our democratic ends. I am not advocating the use of violent means as undertaken in the Revolutionary War, but I do endorse a Gandhian style nonviolent approach to transforming the minds and hearts of the people of the United States.

Combining nonviolence with the struggle to meet the basic needs of all human beings is striving to achieve positive peace. The theory stipulates that when people have their basic needs met there exists considerably less likelihood of people going to war than when people are competing with each other for these life-giving resources. Moreover the issue is one of justice. As Steven Lee argues, poverty is violence.14 It is an institutional form of violence. For instance, there is enough food grown each year to feed all the people of the world. Still one out of seven human beings goes to bed hungry. The problem is with the human-made distribution of food. The violence is inherent in our human-made social order, and needs to be remedied as much as securing ourselves against harms that disrupt the social order.

Nonviolence practiced alone is inadequate, but nonviolence in the promotion of human rights for everyone, rich or poor, has the possibility of moving a nation and uplifting the spirits of the peoples of the world. To model these values I am thinking of a nation like Sweden. What Sweden has done in the past century is institute a de-commodification program of meeting the basic needs of the Swedish people.15 What this means is that basic human needs are taken out of the marketplace of commodities. We are doing the opposite in the United States by trying to privatize these human-needs programs. Such life-giving needs as a basic diet, water and milk, clothing, housing, healthcare, daycare, education, job training, services for the disabled, and social security have ceased in Sweden to be marketable commodities. Local governments have the responsibility in justice, not charity to ensure that each citizen has all these basic needs met. The capitalistic economy in Sweden operates above and beyond these needs, producing any number of desirable non-basic commodities.

When a sufficient number of independent nations, such as the United States, take seriously the justice of human rights of all their citizens, these countries in turn will begin to enforce the meeting of the basic needs of all citizens of the world. I believe that is what is behind the United Nations’s eight Millennium Development Goals with a first-stage completion date set for 2015. For the United States, however, to do its share to meet these goals we must patch up the holes that have been torn in the fabric of our democratic Constitution. As a genuine democracy we owe all citizens an equitable satisfaction of their basic human needs. I do not mean an average number of U.S. citizens, but all citizens. I believe we are called upon today to demonstrate for the basic rights of all citizens. Achieving these results will remove the power trips that have plagued our nation’s positioning among the great democracies of the world. Becoming a model democracy will not be easy, but it is a good fight worth fighting for. Only we can bring freedom to all our citizens, and through our participation in the United Nations to all the citizens of the world. Only then will the prospects of a world at peace be achievable.

Endnotes [top]

1. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1980), p. 9.

2. See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1994), pp. 74-88.

3. Gordon S. Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made The Founders Different (New York: The Penguin Press, 2006), pp. 12-17; See also Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000).

4. Wood, Revolutionary Characters, pp. 26-28.

5. John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (San Francisco, Calif.: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2004).

6. John Lewis Gaddis, “A Grand Strategy of Transformation,” Foreign Policy, 133 (Nov./Dec. 2002), pp. 50-57.

7. See Scott Ritter, Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein (New York: Nation Books, 2005), esp. pp. 289-292.

8. See Michel Walzer, Arguing About War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 151-157.

9. Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 78.

10. George Packer, The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), p. 190.

11. See Michael T. Klare, Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Petroleum Dependency (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004).

12. Arthur Macewan, “Is it Oil?” Dollars and Sense (May/June, 2003), pp. 20-24.

13. Tom Engelhardt, “Can You Say ‘Permanent Bases’?” The Nation, 282:12 (March 27, 2006), pp. 28-29.

14. Steven Lee, “Is Poverty Violence?,” Institutional Violence, ed. Deane Curtin and Robert Litke (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B. V., 1999), pp. 5-12.

15. See Charles Sackrey and Geoffrey Schneider, “The Middle Way: Swedish Social Democracy,” in Real World Globalization: A Reader in Economics, Business, and Politics from Dollars & Sense, ed. Amy Offner, et al. (Canada: Transcontinental Printing, 8th ed., 2004), pp. 238-245.