Who can keep up? Daily, the threats pour in. Deadlines are declared adamantly, belligerently. By Monday or else By mid-week or By Friday, the issue must be forced and sides chosen And yet the deadlines and threats lead to new, ever more bizarre events. Plans change. New deadlines are promptly announced. Now, the President declares that he’s going “the last mile” — and the last mile unexpectedly turns out to take him Sunday to the Azores to meet with Blair of Britain and Aznar of Spain. The last mile, that is, takes him to an island off the coast of Europe. He probably can no longer set foot on the mainland — or in Great Britain — without causing consternation and neither Blair, nor Aznar could rush to Washington without looking even more like vassals of empire. They are already men without countries behind them. So we are watching a bizarre, drunken dance — of some vast creature whose moves are utterly unpredictable — but to what end? All you can do is to watch in amazement as the men who claim to be prepared to take one of history’s great gambles in the name of reorganizing the world can’t seem to organize their diplomatic days.
And while we all watch and listen, amazing, angry, crude, strange statements pour out of Washington. Here’s my little classic of today from Steven R. Weisman’s piece in the New York Times, Powell at New Turning Point in His Evolution on Iraq War:
“‘The French are just not credible on [delaying the war into the heat of spring],’ said Senator Richard G. Lugar, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. ‘It’s all well and good for the French to say that our troops should sit out there in the desert for a while, and what’s the hurry? There aren’t 200,000 French troops out there.’
“‘It would be almost a form of physical torture to make our forces stay there and fight in the summer,’ Mr. Lugar continued. ‘Ultimately the president is not going to stand for that. Neither would I. When the French are willing to put some of their own troops on the line, then maybe we might listen to them.'”
I wonder who put those troops out there in the first place, for here, of course, is that First World War mobilization mentality in which the very presence of vast armies becomes the argument for why they must be used.
In the meantime, another show — endlessly reported to the world — is under way. Stealth bombers have finally made it to Diego Garcia, ships off the Turkish coast are transferred south, nuclear subs head for the Gulf. British or Australian troops are slipped into place. Americans troops are reported exercising and preparing for combat in Kuwait. Another vast body, it seems, is in endless motion, while at home a giant bomb, with the Biblical name of Moab, is set off rattling American windows to “rattle” the leadership of Iraq. And yet here too deadlines pass and strange, coded, sometimes angry statements are issued. Today, for instance, though we’ve heard endlessly of the horrors of the spring dessert heat in Iraq, Marine General Peter Pace, “the nation’s number two military officer,” suddenly declares at a “closed-door briefing” at the Pentagon (whose door turns out to have been extremely open so that the general’s words were promptly reported to the Washington Post by “a number of those in attendance”) that it wouldn’t be that much of a problem to delay invading Iraq for “a month or more.”
And in Australia, reports that country’s Herald Sun, retired Air Vice-Marshall Ray Funnell offered the following pungent comment, which sounds like it comes from an angry antiwar radical:
“‘It would be almost a form of physical torture to make our forces stay there and fight in the summer,’ Mr. Lugar continued. ‘Ultimately the president is not going to stand for that. Neither would I. When the French are willing to put some of their own troops on the line, then maybe we might listen to them.'”
I wonder who put those troops out there in the first place, for here, of course, is that First World War mobilization mentality in which the very presence of vast armies becomes the argument for why they must be used.
In the meantime, another show — endlessly reported to the world — is under way. Stealth bombers have finally made it to Diego Garcia, ships off the Turkish coast are transferred south, nuclear subs head for the Gulf. British or Australian troops are slipped into place. Americans troops are reported exercising and preparing for combat in Kuwait. Another vast body, it seems, is in endless motion, while at home a giant bomb, with the Biblical name of Moab, is set off rattling American windows to “rattle” the leadership of Iraq. And yet here too deadlines pass and strange, coded, sometimes angry statements are issued. Today, for instance, though we’ve heard endlessly of the horrors of the spring dessert heat in Iraq, Marine General Peter Pace, “the nation’s number two military officer,” suddenly declares at a “closed-door briefing” at the Pentagon (whose door turns out to have been extremely open so that the general’s words were promptly reported to the Washington Post by “a number of those in attendance”) that it wouldn’t be that much of a problem to delay invading Iraq for “a month or more.”
And in Australia, reports that country’s Herald Sun, retired Air Vice-Marshall Ray Funnell offered the following pungent comment, which sounds like it comes from an angry antiwar radical:
“‘[U]nfortunately, what [Australian Prime Minister Howard has] done is he’s followed, almost in lock-step, a man who has demonstrated strategic stupidity, and I refer here to President (George W) Bush.’ in the immediate aftermath of the horrific September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, Mr Bush was supported without reservation by the nations of the world and the United Nations.
“‘Contrast that with today, just 18 months later, his nation is divided, most of the world is against him, alliances are crumbling, multinational institutions that have been developed over decades are under enormous pressure,’ he said.
“‘And how do President Bush and his egregious Secretary of Defence (Donald Rumsfeld) react? They react by trumpeting “we don’t need any of you.”“‘Well, I’m sorry Mr President but you do. If you want to remain leader of the free world you have to be something more than just a military superpower and a diplomatic bully.'”
(And let’s remember here that military strictures being what they are, retired military men tend to speak for those in the service who can’t do so. Here, New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh has been saying that he’s never seen such anger and dissension in the American military, especially in the Marine high command.)
Today, in a blistering column (see below), Paul Krugman of the New York Times considers this madness and points out that everywhere in an “epidemic of epiphanies,” some of which — though he doesn’t say it — have even happened on the editorial pages of the Times, “a long list of pundits who previously supported the Bush administration’s policy on Iraq have publicly changed their minds.”
Let me just offer an example of this, brought to my attention by a friend, a piece by the editorial page editor of Business Week, included below, an analysis so chilling and oppositional that it could easily have been the lead piece in, say, The Nation. (“The Administration risks turning what was once trumpeted as the American Century into the Anti-American Century.”) And this is before the war even begins. Tom
George W. Queeg
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
March 14, 2003Aboard the U.S.S. Caine, it was the business with the strawberries that finally convinced the doubters that something was amiss with the captain. Is foreign policy George W. Bush’s quart of strawberries?
Over the past few weeks there has been an epidemic of epiphanies. There’s a long list of pundits who previously supported Bush’s policy on Iraq but have publicly changed their minds. None of them quarrel with the goal; who wouldn’t want to see Saddam Hussein overthrown? But they are finally realizing that Mr. Bush is the wrong man to do the job. And more people than you would think — including a fair number of people in the Treasury Department, the State Department and, yes, the Pentagon — don’t just question the competence of Mr. Bush and his inner circle; they believe that America’s leadership has lost touch with reality.
To read more Krugman click here
The High Price of Bad Diplomacy
By Bruce Nussbaum
Business Week
March 24, 2003The U.S. has already lost the prewar battle over Iraq, whatever the outcome of a further U.N. vote. Even if it wins a fig-leaf majority vote in the Security Council, America will be entering its first preemptive war faced with opposition from nearly all of its allies and much of the rest of the planet. A world that rallied to America’s side in unprecedented demonstrations of support after September 11 increasingly perceives the U.S. itself as a great danger to peace. How did things come to this? The failure of the Bush Administration to manage its diplomacy is staggering, and the price paid, even if the war ends quickly, could be higher than anyone now anticipates.
Nussbaum is the Editorial page editor