The situation in Europe grows more curious by the second. A fragile French-German-Russian challenge to war grows and fragments all at once. A piece in today’s British Independent, “France, Germany and Russia Defy the US by Declaring That War is Unjustified,” begins:
“France, Germany and Russia begged Washington to give peace ‘every chance,’ in an unprecedented joint statement yesterday rejecting the American arguments for early military intervention in Iraq.
“The former Cold War adversaries agreed a joint declaration, which was read out by President Jacques Chirac at the start of a press conference with Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, in Paris. ‘There is still an alternative to war, we are sure. The use of force must be only a last resort. Russia, Germany and France are determined to give every chance to the peaceful disarmament of Iraq,’ the statement said.”
To read the rest of this Independent piece click here
On the other hand, in Germany itself, a friend writes, the latest news is of the government backing away from the larger “plan” for a preemptive UN peace “invasion” of Iraq amid governmental chaos, though this indeed would be an alternative to war and an opening to free the Iraqi people of the tyranny they’ve lived under for so long.
Still, the very fact of the challenge has driven Washington wild and worried Tony Blair. In this morning’s British Guardian, a piece, “Isolated UK rubbishes French plan,” suggests that “the hardening of the anti-war forces will make it near-impossible for the US and Britain to push this weekend for a second UN resolution declaring Iraq to be in material breach of its disarmament obligations and to authorise war. Without a UN mandate, Tony Blair will have difficulty in carrying his cabinet and party with him into war. He has said that he is aware the Iraq crisis is a threat to his premiership.”
To read the rest of this Guardian piece click here
The Guardian, by the way, had the clever idea — the sort of thing that would be inconceivable in the American press where views from elsewhere are rare and always filtered through our eyes — of asking for quick responses from editors and journalists representing major papers in Russia, France, Spain, and Germany. To find these click here and scroll down
In recent days, our president, secretary of war, and the secretary of state among others in the administration have called into question the UN, and NATO as well, ready to consign them to the place in hell where the Kyoto Treaty, the ABM treaty, the International Criminal Court, and every other multilateral attempt to make the world a more livable place is now believed to reside. We’re seeing an example of unilateralism with a passion, with perhaps a blindness to all consequences.
“The former Cold War adversaries agreed a joint declaration, which was read out by President Jacques Chirac at the start of a press conference with Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, in Paris. ‘There is still an alternative to war, we are sure. The use of force must be only a last resort. Russia, Germany and France are determined to give every chance to the peaceful disarmament of Iraq,’ the statement said.”
On the other hand, in Germany itself, a friend writes, the latest news is of the government backing away from the larger “plan” for a preemptive UN peace “invasion” of Iraq amid governmental chaos, though this indeed would be an alternative to war and an opening to free the Iraqi people of the tyranny they’ve lived under for so long.
Still, the very fact of the challenge has driven Washington wild and worried Tony Blair. In this morning’s British Guardian, a piece, “Isolated UK rubbishes French plan,” suggests that “the hardening of the anti-war forces will make it near-impossible for the US and Britain to push this weekend for a second UN resolution declaring Iraq to be in material breach of its disarmament obligations and to authorise war. Without a UN mandate, Tony Blair will have difficulty in carrying his cabinet and party with him into war. He has said that he is aware the Iraq crisis is a threat to his premiership.”
To read the rest of this Guardian piece click here
The Guardian, by the way, had the clever idea — the sort of thing that would be inconceivable in the American press where views from elsewhere are rare and always filtered through our eyes — of asking for quick responses from editors and journalists representing major papers in Russia, France, Spain, and Germany. To find these click here and scroll down
In recent days, our president, secretary of war, and the secretary of state among others in the administration have called into question the UN, and NATO as well, ready to consign them to the place in hell where the Kyoto Treaty, the ABM treaty, the International Criminal Court, and every other multilateral attempt to make the world a more livable place is now believed to reside. We’re seeing an example of unilateralism with a passion, with perhaps a blindness to all consequences.
Below are two columns today on the — to pick up a word from James Carroll of the Boston Globe — callowness of the American position, which remains in the end a restatement of American military power, rather than a convincing argument for war. As Carroll says, this administration simply has “contempt for the creation of alternatives to war.” Bob Scheer of the Los Angeles Times adds, “It now seems clear we are witnessing the tantrum of a woefully untutored and inexperienced president whose willfulness rises in direct proportion to his inability to comprehend a world too complex for his grasp” (on which more in my next dispatch). Tom
Saying no to war
By James Carroll
The Boston Globe
February 11, 2003DON’T BE FOOLED by Colin Powell. With testimony before the UN Security Council last week, the secretary of state brought many formerly ambivalent politicians and pundits into the war party. But that is a measure of how callow the entire American debate over war against Iraq has been. The question is not whether Saddam Hussein is up to no good. Powell’s indictment confirmed the Iraqi’s malfeasance, although with no surprises and no demonstration of immediate threat. The question, rather, is what to do about Saddam’s malevolence.
Don’t be fooled by Donald Rumsfeld, either. The secretary of defense said in Munich on Saturday, ”The risks of war need to be balanced against the risks of doing nothing while Iraq pursues weapons of mass destruction.”
To read more Carroll click here
House of Cards
Bush’s paper-thin evidence to justify a war has fallen apart
By Robert Scheer
Los Angeles Times
February 11 2003, There is a smoking gun.
Unfortunately — and to the disgrace of a basically decent man — it is in the hands of Colin Powell, who finds himself touting the flimsy, exaggerated and often phony evidence of alleged links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.
From the beginning, the 9/11 attacks that horrified the world have been cynically exploited by this administration as a golden opportunity to settle an old Bush family score with Hussein. Even as we went justifiably to war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the White House kept inexplicably hinting that Iraq would be next. But why? After all, Iraq’s arsenal, eviscerated by war, inspections and bombing raids, was not a pressing threat.
One answer is that Hussein, hunkered down in Baghdad, was a handy stand-in for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar