THE WORLD SPEAKS ON IRAQ

The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) held its final session in Istanbul June 24-27--the last and most elaborate of sixteen condemnations of the Iraq War held all over the world in the last two years in Barcelona, Tokyo, Brussels, Seoul, New York, London, Mumbai and other cities. The Istanbul session used the verdicts and some of the testimony from the earlier sessions; this cumulative nature of the sessions built interest among peace activists, resulting in this final session having by far the strongest international flavor. This cumulative process, described by organizers as "the tribunal movement," is unique in history: Never before has a war aroused this level of protest on a global scale--first to prevent it (the huge February 15, 2003, demonstrations in eighty countries) and then to condemn its inception and conduct. The WTI is one expression of the opposition of global civil society to the Iraq War, an initiative best understood as a contribution to "moral globalization." A Panel of Advocates coordinated by Turgut Tarhanli, dean of the Bilgi Law School in Istanbul and myself, organized the fifty-four presentations offered to the jury. The advocates came from a wide range of backgrounds, and the presentations included some incisive analyses of international law issues by such respected world experts as Christine Chinkin of the London School of Economics; Amy Bartholomew of Carleton University, Ottawa; Barbara Olshansky, Assistant Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who made a gripping presentation of the gruesome record of abuse of detainees and prisoners held by the US Government since 9/11; two former assistant secretary generals of the UN, Denis Halliday & Hans von Sponeck, both of whom had resigned in the 1990s to protest the genocidal effects of UN sanctions in Iraq. There were accounts of the devastation and cruelty of the occupation by several seemingly credible eye-witnesses who had held important non-government jobs in pre-invasion Iraq; a moving presentation of why he turned against the Iraq War by Tim Goodrich, a former American soldier and co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War; and overall assessments of how the Iraq War fits into American ambitions for global empire by such renowned intellectuals as Samir Amin, Johan Gaining, and Walden Bello. Their presentations combined an acute explanation of the strains on world order arising from predatory forms of economic globalization with the view that the US response to 9/1