The US, UN & Iraq II

Too late. Cut off both arms.

sumac

NOT too late. Strike, that's what we do in Europe. Until the end.

Do SOMETHING.

wolf - I'm signing petitions, spreading the word. Thing is in Cambridge, MA, I'm preaching to the choir. On a2k, well, people are pretty well set in how they view thngs.

Wolf,

We do intend to do something. Something positive. You've suggested that we strike. Good suggestion, and the sooner the better. We intend to strike Saddam from the board with extreme prejudice, and begin a new era in Iraqi politics.

Gotta agree with you, Kara. Even-handedness has not been a noticeable US trait. Neither has been Followthrough.

There was a reference to a poll (I'm not even sure that it was on this thread) which stated that 70% of americans support the president in his war on iraq. I looked up the Gallup poll and would like to make a point, as trivial as it may seem to be. The poll analysis can be seen here: http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr030318.asp (can't do URL links right now)

"For months, President Bush has been trying to persuade the American public that a war against Saddam Hussein might be necessary to disarm Iraq and prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The poll suggests that 44% of Americans have been convinced by the president's arguments, and thus support his decision. Another 21% of Americans are unsure if war is the right thing, but support Bush anyway because he is the president. Thirty percent take an opposing point of view."

It's not a 70% warhawk populace. It's 44% warhawk and the other 21% are wishy-washy. I think that we have been scarred for many generations by the vietnam war. For soldiers that scarring is potent and at times hellacious. For americans who were adults in the late 60s and early 70s it is a time of many emotions. For people like me, it was a building block of my personality. I was affected as a child by the filtered info that made it to my sub-conscious. I don't remember specifics, but I KNOW that I was affected. We are still so raw from that experience that, I think, many of the people on the fence are there because of the mayhem that followed the vietnam war for decades. Either that or 21% of our citizens are remarkably wishy-washy in general.

Little k:

Amen, and thank you.

No, thank you.
<really, and your thanks means so much to me, brought a tear to my eye>

75& of polled Australians say NO to involvement in Iraq. All the other major political parties say NO. The Senate just said NO, too:

Senate snubs Howard's call to arms
By Aban Contractor and Cosima Marriner
March 19 2003

The Senate will not endorse the Government's decision to commit Australian troops to a war with Iraq, insisting it is not in Australia's national interest.

Instead, it is likely to support an amalgam of Labor, Democrat and Greens amendments that Iraq must disarm under the authority of the United Nations.

"The Senate believes [that] in the absence of an agreed UN Security Council Resolution authorising military action against Iraq there is no basis for military action to disarm Iraq, including action involving the Australian Defence Force," the amendment says.

The Government says it does not need parliamentary approval.

Labor's leader in the Senate, John Faulkner, accused the Prime Minister, John Howard, of kow-towing to the United States and surrendering Australian sovereignty.

"The implications of this war will reverberate across the globe," Senator Faulkner warned. "It will make Australia less safe ... [and] weaken our ability to work constructively with moderate Islamic countries.

"... John Howard has surrendered our sovereignty and our independence to the President of the US. ... [He is] sounding more and more like the governor of the 51st state of the US."

The leader of the Australian Democrats, Andrew Bartlett, called on the Governor-General, Peter Hollingworth, as Australia's commander-in-chief, to refuse to sign the order for the commitment of troops.

"The Prime Minister has turned his back on peace and signed Australia up, for the first time in our history, as an aggressor nation, launching an attack," Senator Bartlett said.

He called on the public to express its opposition to "the Government, the Cabinet and its gutless bunch of backbenchers", but was ordered to withdraw the unparliamentary remark.

The National Party leader, Ron Boswell, said it was the most difficult decision Mr Howard, the Government and parliament had had to make. "The easiest thing to do in this world is to do nothing ... But this isn't the Australian way."

The Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, told the House of Representatives: "You have to take resolute action against dictators and tyrants if you are to avoid more costly action later on."

He accused France and Germany of engaging in "pretty cheap anti-Americanism" by opposing military action. It was a delusion the UN weapons inspections process was working, he said.

The deputy leader of the Opposition, Jenny Macklin, said Iraq could be peacefully disarmed. She said it was rare for Australia to go to war without bi-partisan support

and accused Mr Howard of dividing the nation by failing to make the case for war.

The Treasurer, Peter Costello, rejected Labor's demands that Iraq be given more time to disarm.

"If Saddam Hussein ... had any intention of disarming himself he would have done so before 2003," he said.

"This is a murderous dictator; this is a Government which engages in systematic execution of its [political opponents]. So we come to this rogue state which defies the norms of the international community."

The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, said the world's future was now at stake.

Disarming Iraq was the "unfinished business" of the 1991 Gulf War, he said, and every effort would be made to win the war quickly and minimise casualties.

He committed Australia to helping with Iraq's recovery, and emphasised that the aim was to liberate the country, not occupy it.

~~

OUCH! MsOlga, that's some piece of news.

littlek

Yes, but will it make one iota of difference to what happens? <sigh>
People are demonstrating all over the place, the Sydney Opera House has had "NO WAR" painted on it in red, there are demonstrations & walkouts planned for when the war actually starts .... But will it change this prime minister's mind? Not a hope! It seems only one person gets to decide here!

msolga, thanks for patching in the Oz communique. As in GB, your populace is on a different path from its leaders. You can be proud of your country.

Thank you, Kara
And can I say how much I appreciate & agree with just about all you've written on this terrible situation.
It sometimes concerns me that many of the US posters to these forums speak as if only the US is concerned & will be affected. This coming invasion of Iraq will affect the whole planet adversely for quite some time to come.
Isn't it amazing that in the first few weeks of the 21st century we are experiencing such primitive behavior from these so-called "world leaders" who are pushing this action?

March 19, 2003

First shots fired at sea as allied battle plan unfolds
By David Sharrock in Kuwait and Michael Evans, Defence Editor



THE first shots of the war have been fired, killing at least one Iraqi during a suspected operation to mine the waters off Kuwait. But that opening skirmish is about to be dwarfed by the most formidable military assault in modern warfare: 250,000 British and American troops backed by more than 1,000 aircraft, 400 tanks and a 110-strong armada are poised to unleash their awesome power on Saddam Hussein's Iraq the moment the order is given.
The first clash occurred in the mouth of the Khawr al-Zubayr river, a few miles south of the port of Umm Qasr, when a Kuwaiti gunboat challenged a flotilla of about 25 Iraqi dhows. The boats failed to respond and the Kuwaitis opened fire. It was unclear whether the dhows had laid any mines.




http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-615748,00.html

In case you missed it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/02/magazine/02IRAQ.html

The article needs to be read in its entirety, but these two paragraphs toward the end will impart the flavor of the piece:

The longer you try to look at Iraq on the morning after Saddam, the more you see the truthof what many people told me: getting rid of him will be the easy part. After that, the United States will find itself caught in a series of conundrums that will require supreme finesse: to liberate without appearing to dominate, to ensure order without overstaying, to secure its interests without trampling on Iraq's, to oversee democratization without picking winners, to push for reforms in the neighborhood without unleashing demons. It's hard to know whether to be more worried by the State Department's complacency or by the
Pentagon civilians' zealotry.

On the day that Saigon fell in 1975, the British writer James Fenton found a framed quotation on a wall of the looted American embassy: ''Better to let them do it imperfectly than to do it perfectly yourself, for it is their country, their way, and your time is short.'' The words are from T.E. Lawrence. Vietnam remains the shadow over every American war, but never more than the one we're poised to fight, for no war since Vietnam has professed greater ambitions: to change the political culture of a country, maybe a whole region. Ever since Woodrow Wilson worked to put democracy and self-determination on the agenda at Versailles, this strain of high-mindedness in the American character has drawn the world's admiration and its scorn. In Graham Greene's novel ''The Quiet American,'' which was recently released as a film, the title character is a young idealist sent to Vietnam in the early 1950's to find a democratic ''Third Force'' between the French and the Communists. The book's narrator, a jaded British journalist, remarks, ''I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.'' Americans have never been very good at imperialism, or much interested in it; we're too innocent, too impatient, too intoxicated with our own sense of selfless purpose. Several Iraqis expressed the wish that their occupiers could be the British again, who took the trouble to know them so much better, who wrote whole books on the Marsh Arabs and the flora and fauna of Kuwait. Afghanistan lost America's attention as soon as Kandahar fell, and it remains unfinished business. As for Iraq, Jessica Mathews of the Carnegie Endowment, says, ''Our country is not remotely prepared for what this is going to take.''

"I don't mean impeachment - that is too constrained and contrived. Something simpler. If our humble mechanical gadgets, our PCs, can be made to "undo", why can't we."

I love that, Sumac. It's "realistic," it's highly civilized, and it's the way to go!!

Steve: "American recognition of Israel was a mistake."

And of course it was. Sumac's Method of Undoing is what's needed there.

... Or sadly, perhaps too absorbed with your own concerns(& agendas) at the expense of other nations?

LittleK -- As a former Cantabridgian, I know that choir! I wish you would come and preach to ours, in the rural (but militarized!) areas of Texas, Lone Star supporter of the military industrial con-plex.