How much is George W. Bush willing to give up for this war?
He appears ready to compromise any competing U.S. interest.
NATO is unlikely to retain its former cohesion after the breach caused by this war, which has weakened the commonality of purpose and values that have sustained collective security since World War II.
Relations with France and Germany, countries likened to Libya and Cuba by the incontinent Donald Rumsfeld?-harmed, possibly beyond repair.
Tony Blair?-put at risk of losing office, should the war go badly. Blair wants Saddam disarmed. But he has another motive in backing Bush, according to government sources cited by The Financial Times. That is to contain Bush?-to stop him from destroying the international order by proceeding on the unilateral path to war advocated by Cheney and Rumsfeld, whose speeches last summer galvanized Blair (and Colin Powell) to pressure Bush to seek UN backing. Bush got that backing, but on false grounds, using a Security Council resolution to disarm Iraq as cover for sending an army to the Middle East to remove Saddam Hussein and occupy his country.
Asked last Friday to define the objectives of U.S. policy, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer dropped all pretense of disarmament OR regime change, the choice implicit in Resolution 1441; now "it's disarmament and regime change." To win votes for a second resolution triggering war with Iraq, the United States is turning the Security Council into a hock shop, dangling bribes before the nonpermanent members. The U.S. bribed and, according to one report, threatened to punish Turkey as part of its campaign to use Turkish territory to attack Iraq from the north. But pressure from a public 95 percent opposed to the war has, at this writing, persuaded the Turkish parliament to reject the multi-billion-dollar deal. "The relationship is spoiled," a member of the governing party told The New York Times. "The Americans dictated to us." The Kurds?-betrayed as part of our bribe of the Turks. The U.S. not only agreed to allow up to 80,000 Turkish troops to advance as far as 250 kilometers inside Iraqi Kurdistan, ostensibly to fend off an inrush of Kurdish refugees harried by the war, but also to allow these troops to disarm the Kurd militias after the war.
The Arab nations?-ignored; their fears of internal instability dismissed.
The war on terror?-rendered problematic. Terrorism grows by provoking state violence; a U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is Osama bin Laden's dream.
Homeland security, fiscal sobriety, economic recovery, spending on education, health care, scientific research?-all casualties of war.
The Atlantic
