The US, The UN and Iraq

Steve,
thanks for the link- frightening.

I think that you've stated this badly. All of those very intelligent people in the White House made their best, most reasonable offer to Turkey to enlist their aid in the war, and the legislature of Turkey exercised their right to say, "No thanks."

Please share one with us, and lets explore whether or not it is really a solution.

Steve, the Martin Amis article really was a good article. Thanks

Steve, if you don't choose to post one of the anti-war arguments, and likewise choose not to engage in sophistry today, I for one won't blame you. I also won't take your abstention as implication that your ideas are faulty, that such arguments don't exist, or that this makes the pro-war folks right.

When challenged (baited) on another board to explain why I thought gun control was a good thing, I declined, not because there aren't excellent arguments I could voice, or that I don't like exchange of ideas, but simply because some walls are too hard to beat my head against.

Snood, you seem to have some good things to contribute here, but why you think following me around and making these back-handed insults is one of them, I can't fathom. It's perfectly fine if you want to assume the worst about me (or anyone), but is it really appropriate for you to go around trying to help other people reach the same conclusion? Do you see me popping up behind you anywhere in these discussions offering people my opinions of whether or not it is worth their time to respond to you?

I'd appreciate it if you'd back off. I'm asking civilly.

Steve, regardless of snood's opinion, I would like to discuss other options vis-a-vis Iraq. Obviously if I think an option is flawed, I would write so, but isn't that the point? If debating the pros and cons of alternate plans for Iraq isn't a good use of this space, I don't know what is.

Snood, I'd love to meet your Sis. Is she as articulate as you are?

Steve, of course I'm going to read it! I like Martin Amis (although I liked Kingsley better.)

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep.
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I gotta beware.

We can only hope that the news was delayed to give our FBI and CIA more time to use the intelligence gained to track down Al Qaeda cells and squash them. If the cells know they are compromised, they are likely to fold their tents and run.

Unfortunately, it appears that the news of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's arrest was broken too soon, to our disadvantage.

Tantor

Steve, the Amis article is masterful, incisive, and scary as hell. It was beautifully written, of course, as would be a piece by Amis, but there were a few extraordinary zingers like this bit (although that whole paragraph was pretty amazing):


Also, I loved this turn of phrase, which is vintage Martin Amis:

Thanks for pointing out that there are some valid reasons for delaying such an announcement.

If containment has worked, why do we need weapons inspectors in Iraq? Even Hans Blix says there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. How exactly do you contain Iraq from smuggling anthrax or ricin or nerve gas over the border into the hands of its agents or terrorists?

I beg to differ that there is any doubt that we are not committed to inspections. What other country has held Iraq to task to allow inspections over the last twelve years? The inspections would not be progressing now were it not for US troops pressuring Iraq to cooperate? Those troops are proof of our commitment. Who else can match it?

The fact is that inspections don't work unless the host country wants to cooperate and demonstrate that it wants to rid of itself of WMD, just as South Africa and Kazakh did. Iraq is not cooperating except grudgingly and when cornered. They have a lot of WMD unaccounted for that we know about and undoubtedly more that we don't know about.

The peaceful options have been exhausted. War is the last option left. It is an option infinitely preferable to accepting a mega-Sep 11 on our homeland.

Tantor

If anything, this is proof of the silliness of the author's argument, which reflects a foolish East Coast bias against Texas. For those who seem unable to understand the difference, there is a great deal of difference between Saudi Arabia executing somebody for converting to Christianity and Texas executing somebody who raped his grandmother then beat her to death, as one death row inmate did.

It's much like much liberal rhetoric, facile and intellectually flawed.

Tantor

Steve, the Martin Amis piece is brilliant. I love his way with words, but the paragraph I found very incisive is:

When the somnambulistic figure of Kim Jong II subsequently threw down his nuclear gauntlet, the "axis of evil" catchphrase or notion or policy seemed in ruins, because North Korea turned out to be much nearer to acquiring the defining WMDs, deliverable, nuclear devices, than Iraq (and the same is true of Iran). But it was explained that the North Korean matter was a diplomatic inconvenience, while Iraq's non-disarmament remained a "crisis". The reason was strategic: even without WMDs, North Korea could inflict a million casualties on its southern neighbour and raze Seoul. Iraq couldn't manage anything on this scale, so you could attack it. North Korea could, so you couldn't. The imponderables of the proliferation age were becoming ponderable. Once a nation has done the risky and nauseous work of acquisition, it becomes unattackable. A single untested nuclear weapon may be a liability. But five or six constitute a deterrent.

He captures all the cynicism and political manouvering(sp?) involved in this administration's position.

Tantor, you have a point about the UN and its failure to contain Iraq's weapons aquistion by doing nothing about enforcing the inspections process. Often, I have thought of the UN as a bunch of gutless wonders. The US push for more and tougher inspections was valid. IMHO. Sadly, I also believe that the US was cynically giving its determination to go to war some legitimacy by encouraging the inspections.

Both sides seem to be unwilling to admit when the other side has a point, the left as well as the right. If the left doesn't do more toward acknowledging the weaknesses of the positions and organizations it supports, it will do a disservice to the people who are most reliant on the protections and services of those organizations and positions.

I think for the UN to remain a valid entity, it must become more active and decisive. I realize how much I am asking, considering the wildy disparate countries with membership in the UN. Still, I feel so strongly that if a position is worth fighting for, the people fighting for it must never settle for second best, but always require improvement and growth. It is too easy and quite dangerous to become so emotionally involved in a movement that we can't abide any criticism of the movement, no matter how valid, especailly if the criticism is given by the other side. The source needs to be considered, but the criticism, if useful, needs to be analyzed
and used to make improvements.

Protesting the war is the first priority, but being aware of the shortcomings of what we support should not be ignored.

Tartarin, this is late, but thank you for the link to MoveOn. I participated in their phone-a-thon which successfully tied up the lines in Washington for the entire day. It is an organization which can make a difference.

Why do I always seem to ramble? Oh for the talent of Martin Amis!

From UN Wire March 4, 2003

U.S., U.K. To Press For Vote Soon; Canada Outlines Compromise Plan
In a two-hour meeting with the 10 nonpermanent members of the Security Council, Canada's ambassador to the United Nations yesterday laid out a graduated plan for assessing Iraq's progress on disarmament that would delay military action until the end of March, but the United States and the United Kingdom have dismissed it, signaling that they will instead try to push through a resolution next week authorizing war.

Canada's proposal is more stringent than the one supported by France, Germany and Russia, which would have inspections continue for at least four more months (Leopold/Arieff, Reuters, March 4). Ottawa's plan would call on the Security Council to authorize force against Iraq on March 31 if weapons inspectors were still encountering resistance from Baghdad, but if by March 28 inspectors reported "substantial Iraqi compliance," then a stronger inspections system would be installed. Meanwhile, inspectors would report to the Security Council every Friday throughout March (William Reilly, United Press International, March 3).

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Negroponte said he thought a vote on the U.S.-U.K.-Spanish resolution -- which declares that Iraq has shirked its obligation to disarm -- would follow closely after U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission chief Hans Blix's report to the council this Friday. "Our view is that we don't need to debate this very simple and straightforward resolution," Negroponte said (Leopold/Arieff, Reuters).

U.S. and diplomatic officials said yesterday, however, that the United States and United Kingdom are unlikely to press for a vote unless they are certain they will get the nine votes needed on the 15-member council for the resolution to pass (Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, March 4).

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said this morning if the United States uses force against Iraq even if its draft resolution is rejected by the Security Council, than support for that action would be diminished. "There are suggestions that if the Security Council does not vote for action then its credibility would be mortally wounded," he told reporters. "I tend to believe that if the council were to manage to come together and to resolve this crisis effectively and successfully, the credibility and the influence of the council will be enhanced. On the other hand, if the action were to be taken outside the council authority, the support for that action -- popular and otherwise -- would also be diminished."

"To state that if the council does not vote one way, it is going to go the way of the League of Nations is overstating the case," he added. "The United Nations is much, much larger than the Iraq crisis" (Jim Wurst, UN Wire, March 4).

The United States has called Iraq's recent display of cooperation with U.N. inspectors "the mother of all distractions" and declared it "insufficient." Yesterday Iraqi workers destroyed six more al-Samoud 2 missiles, bringing to 16 the number of disposed missiles. Iraq possesses 100 of the banned weapons, plus another 20 in various stages of construction (Sanger/Shanker, New York Times, March 3). Iraq announced its intention to crush two or three more al-Samoud 2 missiles today, despite that today is the Islamic New Year, a national holiday.

The United States continued its military buildup in the Persian Gulf yesterday, issuing deployment orders to another 60,000 troops. That brings the total number of soldiers bound for the region to over 250,000, with 215,000 of them already there (Starr/McIntyre, CNN.com, March 4).

Turkey's refusal on Saturday to let the United States stage an attack from the south of the country has complicated U.S. plans, the London Guardian reports, and could delay an invasion by a week or more. About 40 American transport ships loaded with infantry equipment are idling off the coast of Turkey and may have to make their way to staging areas in the Gulf, which would entail negotiating the bottleneck of the Suez Canal. Kuwait has said it will consider accepting the troops.

The Pentagon is still hoping that the Turkish Parliament will reconsider its decision Thursday, but Prime Minister Abdullah Gul has given only lukewarm encouragement. "We are analyzing the situation and we will see what happens in the next few days," he said (London Guardian, March 4).


Tehran Suggests Democratic Solution For Iraq

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi today announced Tehran's proposal for avoiding bloodshed in Iraq -- U.N.-supervised elections that would reconcile the regime of Saddam Hussein with the Iraqi opposition.

"[The Iraqi people] should themselves decide on their own future and form a broad-based government in which all minorities as well as ethnic and religious groups have a share," he said. "We believe this is the only way for a peaceful change of government in Iraq, which will prevent the breakout of a war in the region" (Associated Press/Yahoo! News, March 4).


Reports Of U.S. Spying At U.N. Draws Mixed Response

A report Sunday in the London Observer that a top U.S. intelligence official ordered heightened telephone and email surveillance of Security Council members who are undecided about Iraq evoked varied responses, with many diplomats expressing no surprise about the matter.

"It goes with the territory," said Pakistani Ambassador to the United Nations Munir Akram. "Anyone who thought that it wasn't going on is a bit naive. ... It is regarded as one of the privileges of the host country."

"It's almost an offense if they don't listen," said Bulgarian ambassador Stefan Tavrov of U.S. eavesdroppers.

An unnamed American official said the practice was standard. "We've always done it," the official said. "It's routine" (Drogin/Miller, Los Angeles Times, March 4).

But Chilean Foreign Minister Soledad Alvear confirmed yesterday that she has ordered Chilean authorities to investigate the claims. According to Alvear, there is no reason for any spying because Chile's foreign policies are "clear and transparent" and the government will refrain from making any more comments on the charges until they investigate the allegations thoroughly.

"If the reports are confirmed, it will not be a good situation," she said yesterday, insisting that all of Chile's policies in its bilateral relations and in multilateral relations are done in a manner that ensures "total transparency" (Claudia Riquelme, Europa Press, March 3, UN Wire translation).

Speaking later in an interview with a Chilean radio station, Alvear said Chile was more concerned with the Iraq crisis than with the spying allegations. She also asserted that it is important in the resolution of the crisis that multilateralism takes precedence, especially from the point of view of a small country such as Chile (El Mercurio, March 4, UN Wire translation).

The United States is refusing to comment on the report. "We never comment on intelligence matters, and I'm not going to do it now," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo! News, March 4).


U.N. Agencies Predict Health And Economic Crises

The World Health Organization's representative in Iraq, Ghulam Popal, said yesterday that a war would be "catastrophic" for Iraqis.

Iraq's hospitals, which once rivaled any in Europe, are already overwhelmed and sorely lacking in modern equipment, he said. "There is no room for them to maneuver. They are operating under maximum capacity now, but if there is large-scale disaster with lots of casualties, they won't be able to cope. ... There will be huge humanitarian consequences."

Popal enumerated the diseases that had been eliminated in Iraq prior to the 1991 Gulf War but reemerged afterward: malaria, cholera, tuberculosis, hepatitis, typhoid and polio. Acute malnutrition, dirty drinking water and poor sanitation were to blame, he said (Jordan Times, March 4).

The U.N. Economic Commission for Europe warned today that the prospect of war in Iraq is intensifying the climate of uncertainty surrounding the short-term economic outlook for Western Europe and North America. Real gross domestic product in the United States is expected to increase by about 2.5 percent in 2003. For Europe, it is expected to rise 1.4 percent (Xinhua News Agency, March 4).

(

ul, Very good post. Thank you. c.i.

Ul, thank you.

Kofi Annan's statement says it all:

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said this morning if the United States uses force against Iraq even if its draft resolution is rejected by the Security Council, than support for that action would be diminished. "There are suggestions that if the Security Council does not vote for action then its credibility would be mortally wounded," he told reporters. "I tend to believe that if the council were to manage to come together and to resolve this crisis effectively and successfully, the credibility and the influence of the council will be enhanced. On the other hand, if the action were to be taken outside the council authority, the support for that action -- popular and otherwise -- would also be diminished."

Actually what he does is use an awful lot of words in a titan effort to show us how completely he has missed the point.

The relative "attackability" of Iraq vs North Korea is not at issue here. What is at issue is the relative threat they pose to the US and the world. While NK is a problem and is currently rattling its sabre (hard to hear over the grumbling of their people's empty bellies, by the way), it is doing so to get attention (read: money) and has absolutely no intention of engaging the US in a war it knows it would lose. The notion that war is the only solution to any problem and that if we are going to war it should be with NK seems a bit disingenuous, coming as it is from so many so opposed to war in any circumstance.

Iraq on the other hand is known to possess weapons that could be transferred to terrorists, and is known to have links to terrorists. This is the threat they pose, which is at once more imminent and harder to measure, though that makes it no less real.

tantor, you make your point that we East-Coast liberals do tend to stereotype Texas. However, a recent poll by the N & O in Raleigh indicated that over 60% of North Carolinians were behind the Bush move toward war.

I guess I was struck by the last part of Amis' paragraph because Texas seems to foster a lust for the death penalty not matched in other states. If Texas was absolutely sure beyond peradventure of doubt that the executed man you speak of was indeed guilty of that crime; and if any other man convicted of that crime, no matter his color or funds available for defense, would get exactly the same penalty; and if the jury was not chosen to convict, then perhaps some sort of justice was done, although I persist in believing that if we are able to protect the populace from violent criminals -- as we are, with secure modern prisons -- then there is no purpose or justification, moral or legal, in killing them.

Yes, some leading persons of the US-government knew all this years ago:
[quote]
January 26, 1998



The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC


Dear Mr. President:

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.

The policy of "containment" of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq's chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam's secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.


Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.


Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.

Sincerely,

Elliott Abrams Richard L. Armitage William J. Bennett

Jeffrey Bergner John Bolton Paula Dobriansky

Francis Fukuyama Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad

William Kristol Richard Perle Peter W. Rodman

Donald Rumsfeld William Schneider, Jr. Vin Weber

Paul Wolfowitz R. James Woolsey Robert B. Zoellick

http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
[/quote]