Bush commits 'capital crime' with war to change world order

President George W. Bush has committed "a capital crime" in modern international law: an attack against another state in violation of the United Nations Charter. He has abandoned modern-day law and order to plunge the world back into the dark days of warfare and jealously guarded empires.

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Today the hawks in the White House are no longer interested in either the United Nations or the majority of the world's population. War has become as banal as it was before the modern era when it was the normal state of the world - a source of honor, of plunder, of political legitimacy or simply of adventure.

The war has thrown into question the effectiveness of the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, political institutions that so far have served as the basis of the world's political order. The post-Yalta order has collapsed for good. It is the end for the political institutions of the 20th century. The chasm between America and Britain on one side and France, Germany, Russia and China on the other risks a new division in the world.

Entry of the Turkish troops from the north and the potential of Iranians also entering from the northeast would disintegrate Iraq with a high risk of destabilizing the Middle East.

The way it is going on, this war will be long and can end up with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein removed from Baghdad, but holding on in other parts of Iraq - the way it happened in Afghanistan.

The war could end very badly. A large number of victims, a prolonged war or even an American failure would change the world order - for the worse. Already all over the world, hatred against United States is at all-time high, leaving the United States isolated because of President Bush.

In spite of his promise to seek an up or down vote in the United Nations on his resolutions in the U.N. Security Council, he avoided the vote. But, he will not be able to avert the vote in the 2004 election when patriotic and peace-loving Americans will vote him and his party out of the White House ...

Mohsin Ansari, Evans, Ga.