Lives suspended by war
AMMAN, Jordan — Rana crosses her legs on the threadbare carpet in her living room in this poor Palestinian section of town and watches as her three children light a candle. The kids are having a pretend birthday party without a cake or presents, but their faces are painted a magnificent shade of gold by the candlelight.

Across town, Hasa and his family sit in their richly-appointed apartment, with all the modern conveniences and bedrooms for everyone. The kitchen is especially bright and clean.

Rana and Hasa live in separate worlds, but have much in common.

Both families are Iraqi refugees facing an uncertain future in a foreign country. Both want to return to their shattered country. And both agreed to be interviewed and photographed for this story only if their real names would not be used because they fear deportation from Jordan and retribution in Iraq.
Driven from their homes by violence and threats of death, Rana and Hasa also provide rare portraits of the refugee life facing many Iraqis. The two families are among the 750,000 Iraqi refugees estimated to be living in Jordan, a country about the size of Pennsylvania and choking on the staggering burden of its new population. (The Iraqis account for about 15 percent of the people living in Jordan.)

Rana’s family is struggling to fit in and faces discrimination from other Iraqis, Jordanians and Palestinians. Jordanians, Rana says, complain to her that “you’re not wearing a hijab, you’re wearing tight jeans, you’re leaving the house.” Palestinians, meanwhile, say, “You killed Saddam.”
Hasa’s family, while well off, faces difficult circumstances as well. From their plush perch overlooking the local mosque, they made a comfortable life here after arriving in 2003.

Things have changed, though.

Hasa now complains government regulations make it impossible for him to run his businesses here or in Iraq, and his life savings is being bled dry.
At the same time, he rages at the U.S. government.

“We are in such a state that we who welcomed America now hate it, and hate the people as much as we hate the politics,” he says. “This isn’t the freedom we expected. This isn’t what we wanted.”

Two families in a country where they don’t want to be.

Two families in a country that really doesn’t want them. …

“Please read the whole thing”:http://www.nj.com/starledger/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-11/1180932323248120.xml&coll=1. It should be noted that two days after the story appeared, the UNHCR raised the number of Iraqis who are displaced or refugees to 4.4 million — almost twice the numbers that were available to me at the time of my reporting. That’s 16 percent of the entire Iraqi population, making it the largest human catastrophe to hit the Middle East in recorded history. It dwarfs the Palestinian displacements in 1948 and 1967. If something isn’t done about this, it will further destabilize an already volatile region.

By the way, can someone recommend a good server host? Yahoo! is terrible and I keep getting 500 Server Errors preventing me from getting into the blog, rebuilding it, etc.

HORRORS OF WAR LINGER IN LEBANON

MAROUAHINE, Lebanon — For 34 days this summer, the Israeli and Hezbollah rockets and mortars whistled through the little villages like this one all across Southern Lebanon. More than 1,000 people, including many Lebanese women and children, were killed. Farther north, concrete cities were flattened. And then, the war ended on Aug. 14.
Or did it?
Nearly two months after a fragile cease-fire was announced and nine days after Israeli promised it had withdrawn the last of its troops from Lebanon, citizens in these southern villages are skeptical. And angry.

You will have to enter some demographic information to see the whole story, but it’s not too odious a requirement.

Technorati Tags: Cluster Bombs, Current Affairs, Israel, Journalism, Lebanon, Middle East

It would last two to three years at most, must provide immediate benefits to the people of Iraq, would hold municipal elections within six months and regional elections within another six months after that and begin immediate criminal prosecutions. The other duties must be to fulfill obligations to the U.N. regarding weapons of mass destruction, he said, and human rights agreements must be adhered to. “It’s critical to me that the transitional period not be seen as a final status,” he said. “I don?t think the transitional government should be the government that signs a peace treaty with Israel. That should be the permanent government.“
And most important, he said, the United Nations should not _lift_ the sanctions. Instead they should be _suspended_ so that the transitional government doesn?t gain control of the country?s treasury and the permanent lifting of sanctions is an incentive to democratize.
“If you want to ensure the transitional figures do not become transitional in the Iraqi sense of the word — by that I mean lasting 40 years — you cannot hand over the purse strings of Iraq,” he said. “Saddam did not immediately rule by fear. He co-opted the elite during the 1960s and ‘70s by drowning them in cash.”

Taking control of the oil industry, while looking really, _really_ bad to the rest of the world, is probably the best that can be made of a bad situation. Istrabadi’s right; if a transitional government took control of Iraq’s oil revenue, there likely result would be wholesale robbing that would make the looters in the closing days of the war look like pikers.
Granted, this will not help the United States’ image in Iraq or in the Arab world. They’re already convinced the U.S. was making an oil grab. The only way to combat this impression is to manage the oil industry in an enlightened and benevolent manner with no favortism given to corrupted Iraqis or American companies.
Handing out crony contracts to Halliburton subsidiaries and other, well-connected American corporations ain’t the way do this. There really don’t seem to be many good solutions to this mess.

I was told by a senior officer in the Pentagon, that if uplinks — that is the television signals out of… Baghdad, for example — were detected by any planes … electronic media… mediums, of the military above Baghdad… they’d be fired down on. Even if they were journalists.

Naturally, I found this alarming, because filing with a satellite phone and laptop is part of my plan, although much of my time would be spent in Iraqi Kurdistan, not Baghdad. So I called the Pentagon and spoke with the Army’s Lt. Col. Gary Keck in the public affairs office.
“I don’t have any information on anything like that at all,” he said. “But we’re certainly not going to talk about targeting processing in any way shape or form.“
Fair enough, I guess. Then he referred me to Lt. Col. Ken McClellan, an expert on electronic warfare. Unfortunately, he doesn’t come on duty until 7 p.m. EST tonight, so I’ll have to wait until later. But it has to be assumed that if someone turns on a cell phone — or a sat-phone — then the emitter will be picked up by American sensors. And if that signal is next to an Iraqi command and control center, and one that had just been bombed no less, then that’s probably not a smart thing to be, as American pilots would likely assume a survivor of the bombing was trying to continue calling in orders.

The question is, would the Americans be able to tell a journalist filing a story from a Republican Guard lieutenant calling in orders? I don’t know. When I talk to McClellan, I’ll have a followup to this.
The rest of Adie’s charges are pretty severe, however. She claims the Pentagon doesn’t care if it hits independent journalists, as “they’ve been warned,” she said. And that reporters being embedded with units have been vetted. “The Americans are: a) Asking journalists who go with them, whether they are… have feelings against the war,” she said. “And therefore if you have views that are skeptical, then you are not to be acceptable.“
“Secondly, they are intending to take control of the Americans technical equipment … those uplinks and satellite phones I was talking about. And control access to the airwaves.“
How true are these charges? At the moment, who knows? But perhaps McClellan can shed some light on the subject.
In other news, Opie writes in, “Stop it with your speculation! I just came upon this website, and have seen that you have tried to predict when this war will start. But, you are always wrong. I just read you wrote March 12–13 airwar? I don’t think so! This war ain’t going to happen till at least the 17th, but now it’s looking it could be pushed back by several days or weeks. We first need the UN to vote! And we would like approval, mostly because Tony Blair needs it. This war isn’t going to just happen now, out of the blue. It wouldn’t make sense, we need the vote to happen first! So please just stop it with the predictions, this war could be pushed for several more weeks.“
First of all, Opie sounds panicked and I hope he’s OK. He’s also right, in that the war predictions from me (and from others, I might add) have slipped mainly due to a) Turkish democracy mucking up the works and b) Tony Blair feeling the heat of the Labour party if there’s no new resolution. Blair is proposing to amend any new resolution authorizing war by putting hard benchmarks for Saddam to meet (inluding a televised mea culpa to the Iraqi people for his WMD!) and a deadline, although no one seems to have an idea of what that would be. The British want a short deadline while the swing countries on the Security Council want 45 days, which is unacceptable to the U.S. and the U.K.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said “the vote will take place this week,” although Spain’s foreign minister said the resolution might be withdrawn in the face of France’s veto threat.
Without that resolution, the U.S. is truly alone. Verbal support from countries like Latvia isn’t building a coalition, it’s forming a pep squad. The United Kingdom’s part in all of this is looking so shaky that U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that the role of the U.K. is now dependent on that resolution.

Q: Sir, support for a possible war is shrinking rapidly in Great Britain. Would the — two questions. Would the United States go to war without Great Britain? And two, would the role of the British in an initial assault be scaled back?
Rumsfeld: This is a matter that most of the senior officials in the government discuss with the U.K. on a daily or every– other-day basis. And I had a good visit with the Minister of Defense of the U.K. about an hour ago. Their situation is distinctive to their country, and they have a government that deals with a parliament in their way, distinctive way. And what will ultimately be decided is unclear as to their role; that is to say, their role in the event that a decision is made to use force. There’s the second issue of their role in a post– Saddam Hussein reconstruction process or stabilization process, which would be a different matter. And I think until we know what the resolution is, we won’t know the answer as to what their role will be and to the extent they’re able to participate in the event the President decides to use force, that would obviously be welcomed. To the extent they’re not, there are workarounds and they would not be involved, at least in that phase of it. [Emphasis added]

(He later backpedaled after the U.K. acted surprised, but the upshot is pretty serious: No resolution, no Brits.)
And why? Well, aside from the leadership challenge that Tony Blair would almost certainly face, there’s also the matter of the International Criminal Court sworn in yesterday, of which Britain is a signer of the treaty establishing the court. And — surprise! — U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan yesterday said that war without U.N. auspices would “not be in conformity of the [U.N.] charter.” That means British troops could be brought up on war crime charges.
“International lawyers argue that any military attack that killed Iraqi civilians could lead to British soldiers being prosecuted at the new court,” writes Independent reporter Robert Verkaik. George over at Warblogging has an entry on this as well.
(I can just imagine the I-told-you-sos the White House is tossing across the Atlantic to No. 10 Downing St.)
So, to get back to Opie’s complaint (finally!). I no longer have any idea when this thing could go down. The new moon time is over until the beginning of April, but it’s hot and dusty then. When will the resolution come through? Ever? No one knows. The situation grows more chaotic by the day. So, Opie, in deference to your desperate plea, no more predictions.
By the way, click here to see a video of yesterday’s test of the 21,000-lb. MOAB (“Massive Ordinance Air Blast” or “Mother Of All Bombs”) bomb that might be used in Iraq.
21,000 pounds of explosives… That’s a lot.

Last week I sent an email to Karzan Taher Aziz, a young Kurd I met in Arbil last summer. He and I became friends, and he helped me with translation when I didn’t want to deal with the KDP’s official minder and translator. I asked him about the mood in Iraqi Kurdistan toward the Turks and the Americans, considering the alleged plans to have Turkey invade when war comes. Today he replied. The only changes I’ve made to this email were to remove his email address (for his protection) and cleaned up some punctuation and a touch of grammar here and there.

From: Karzan Aziz
To: Christopher Allbritton
Date: Mon Mar 10, 2003 01:23:24 PM EST
Subject: Greetings from Kurdistan
Dear Christopher:
How are you dear friend? How are doing? I was thinking about you. I hope this e-mail finds you in a good health. thank you very much for your e-mail. How things are going in NY? I hope your country all the best.
I'm so sorry that I could not reply [to] you soon, but I'm v. busy these days, but any way i tried to reply you the internet line was not working properly.
dear friend, concerning your questions... regarding Turkey, we feel that we're betrayed by them. i think you know about the demonstration against the Turks, people have got very worried here because of Turkey. As far as i'm concerned i do believe that turkey will face problems if invaded Kurdistan, as i have met so many people they all repeat the same thing "as we have been fighting against Saddam from many decades, we are ready to fight Turkey some more other decades." i don't feel betrayed by America because you know the coming stage will decide whether we will be betrayed or not. though we, unfortunately, as kurds are used [to] wars but this time is entirely different from ever since -- people are scared here and they are afraid of chemical or biological war.
if you are asking about me i'm just fine, thank you very much, and you asked me whether i have met any journalists or not!!!!! yes i have and i'm working as a translator with some scandinavian journalists and i'm going to be getting a translation-job with a German TV. And if you wanted to ask me any thing, any information, please just feel free to e-mail me. O.K.??
With The Best Of Wishes
YOURS MOST FAITHFULLY
KARZAN TAHER

Karzan’s a smart guy and he has a lot of connections, and I believe him when he says the Kurds are willing to fight the Turks should they invade. Whether they win or not is a completely different question, but Karzan’s report meshes with talks I’ve had with opposition members who say they will fight to protect what they’ve built in the north.
An interesting note, however. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, based in Suleimaniya in the south near the Iranian border, has agreed in principle to a federal Iraqi government with the regions based on geography instead of ethnicity. The Kurdistan Democratic Party, however, continues to hold out for federally protected ethnic divisions. (You can read the original proposed constitutions given to me by KDP Deputy Prime Minister Sami Abdulrahman here and here. The first is the federal constitution and the second is for the Kurdish entity within a federal Iraq.) The PUK’s support for geographic divisions is a neat diplomatic sleight-of-hand, since the northern three governances are predominantly Kurdish anyway with a population of between 4 million and 5 million. The KDP’s continued support for an ethnic-based constitution isn’t surprising. The KDP authored the constitutions, it’s older and more conservative than the Marxist-inspired PUK and has its roots in Kurdish ethnicity. The activities of its founder, Mustafa Barzani, went a long way toward changing Kurds’ loyalties from the family and clan to the idea of a Kurdish nation as a whole. To back down on ethnicity as the defining nature of the Kurdish entity in the north would be to repudiate everything Mustafa Barzani stood for. And the current president of the KDP, Masoud Barzani, Mustafa’s son, isn’t about to do that.
In other news, French President Jacques Chirac made it plain that a French veto is forthcoming at tomorrow’s (?) vote/smackdown at the Security Council. This is not a big surprise, since France has been saying it wouldn’t “allow” a new resolution authorizing war, implicitly or explicitly, for a while now, but it is an attempt to avoid being the lone veto if the United States manages to round up nine votes on the council. France’s public voicing of its intentions is to buck up Russia, which has also said it opposes any resolution that might be interpreted as authorizing war, but common wisdom is that Russia would abstain rather than veto a resolution. With France definitely in the “non” column, Russia will have more cover to say, “nyet.“
[UPDATE: Stratfor is reporting that Pakistan Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali said today that his country will abstain on the vote. “We will do what is best for our country,” Jamali said after a session of Parliament. “It is not best for my country to support war against Iraq.”]
This means, obviously, the resolution is kaput, and the United States has no reason to wait until March 17. The world could be facing war as early as this week, although it’s likely the United States will wait a few days to give inspectors and other foreign nationals time to flee Iraq and to attempt some semblance of tactical surprise. The dark nights over Baghdad grow short and the heat of April is stalking closer. The U.S. war machine won’t wait much longer, nor, from a tactical standpoint, should it. Why give the Iraqis more time to position their forces or stage a preemptive strike of their own on American troops? That’s the danger of ignoring the U.N. Not only does it free the hands of the U.S. military, but it removes any reason for the Iraqis to hold their fire, too. Saddam no doubt feels that war is coming regardless of what the Security Council decides, so it might be better to strike first and inflict as much damage as possible. Of course, he would then unite the Security Council –behind– against him, but if he plans on turning Baghdad into Stalingrad on the Tigris, what does he have left to lose?

• Bush hasn’t made up his mind and “hopes” that this whole thing can get worked out peacefully;

• Exile for Iraqi president Saddam Hussein is explicitly an option (!), the first time the president has said this so firmly and publicly;
• Iraq and Sept. 11 are linked;
• This war is a choice of Saddam, not the United States;
• Disarmament must happen, and the only way to get it is via regime change;
• The conquest of Iraq will be the start of “trickle-down democracy” in the region.

Let’s look at these in more detail, shall we?
Bush is still undecided on war and hopes that this all we’ll all look back on this and have a good laugh about it
I don’t know what Bush hopes. No doubt he’s hoping this turns out well, and I don’t think he hopes for war, but it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t expect this to work out peacefully. Numerous times in the speech, he said that Saddam was flouting the will of the United Nations Security Council. “Great Britain, Spain and the United States have introduced a new resolution saying that Iraq has failed to meet the requirements of 1441,” Bush said. “Saddam Hussein is not disarming. That is a fact and it cannot be denied.“
In response to a question as to why, if allies of the United States have access to the same intelligence the U.S. does, are countries such as France and Germany so reluctant to back America, Bush again said he has no expectations of Saddam cooperating. “This is the last phase of diplomacy,” he said. “A little bit more time? Saddam Hussein has had 12 years to disarm. He is deceiving people. This is important for our fellow citizens to realize that if he really intended to disarm like the world has asked him to do, the world would know about it. He’s trying to buy time.“
So while Bush talks about hoping to find a peaceful solution, he fully expects and knows that there will be none forthcoming.
Exile for Saddam is definitely on the table
This might be the most significant comment of the evening, because while other administration officials have off-handedly mused that it might be nice if Saddam said, “To hell with this, I’m going to Morocco,” tonight was the first time the President of the United States offered it as an acceptable option. “That’d be fine with me, just so long as Iraq disarms after he’s exiled.“
That’s huge, because Arab countries have been looking for an exile solution but without any explicit support from the United States, they’ve been unwilling to go too far out on a limb to make serious offers to Saddam. I don’t think exile is a very viable option for Saddam, however, since he would be a target for score-settlers and he would lose his place in history — at least in his mind. Still, it’s significant that Bush put that card on the table. And with his innumerable references to his hopes to find a peaceful solution, he’s practically daring the Iraqi leader to turn it down. I think Saddam will.
Iraq and Sept. 11 are linked
This was one of the sneakier aspects of the news conference. Bush attempted many times in the opening statements and the responses to reporters’ questions to tie Iraq to Sept. 11, not through logical or evidential ties, but by using the rhetorical trick to mention the two in the same sentence, strongly implying that Iraq was behind 9/11 but not actually coming out and saying it. For instance:

Saddam Hussein is a threat to our nation. Sept. 11 changed the strategic thinking, at least as far as I was concerned, for how to protect our country. My job is to protect the American people. Used to be, we thought you could contain a person like Saddam Hussein, that oceans would protect us from his kind of terror. Sept. 11 should say to the American people that we’re now a battlefield, that weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist organization could be deployed here at home. So therefore, i think the threat is real, and so do a lot of other people in my government.

Notice how he moves from “Saddam is a threat” to “Sept. 11 …” And also, “We thought you could contain a person like Saddam Hussein, that oceans would protect us from his kind of terror.” Then he follows it up with, “Sept. 11 should say to the American people that we’re now a battlefield.“
Notice that Bush just said that the attacks on Sept. 11 were “his kind of terror,” which is demonstrably not true. It is true that America is a now a battlefield, but regarding al Qa’ida, not Iraq. Bush’s false tying is a sneaky trick to try to pull, and I hope people see through it.
It’s Saddam’s fault!
Bush also said, “If war is upon us because Saddam Hussein has made that choice…” So Saddam is calling the shots now? Bush is trying to say that all Saddam has to do is disarm, but he is not adding, “and we’ll go home.” Bush has not given any signal that Saddam’s disarmament is enough to avert war, and in fact, Ari Fleischer said that disarmament and regime change were the only way to avoid war.

Q Ari, two questions on Iraq. In response to an earlier question, you said the President still hopes to avoid war, and that Saddam Hussein could avoid it by completely and totally disarming, and by going into exile. I’m wondering, are you — is that now the standard? Previously, you’ve obviously said disarmament. But is it now the combination of disarmament and exile?
MR. FLEISCHER: I think the President made it perfectly plain yesterday in the Oval Office and he has said this repeatedly, it’s disarmament and regime change.
Q So even though the United Nations would sign on to the first part of that, and not to the second, when the President thinks about launching military action, he’s going to think about the combination?
MR. FLEISCHER: The President has made that plain.

This is actually shameful. It’s one thing to say we were attacked and so we had war thrust upon us, which I believe happened regarding al Qa’ida. But it’s quite another to say, “Hm, there’s a bit of unfinished business in the desert over there. You! do what we say or else we’ll invade. No? Ah, now you’ve made us do something we don’t want to do…“
Make no mistake, this is a war of choice, and it’s not one that Saddam Hussein chose. This is a choice by the United States government; the very words used so often by the White House — “preventive” — show that. If he believes so strongly that this mission is just, say so. Don’t try to shift the responsibility from the shoulders of the United States by implying that Iraq provoked America.

Iraq must be disarmed; therefore, invasion and regime change are the only options
Are they? From 1991–1998, inspectors, with only nominal cooperation from Baghdad, managed to destroy more WMD and their production facilities than the military campaign of Desert Storm did. This, obviously, is the crux of the dispute between the U.K., the U.S., and, well, basically everyone else — but especially France, Germany, Russia and China. Inspections worked in the past. They did. Why won’t they work now? Hawks have never given a satisfactory answer to this, instead saying inspectors aren’t detectives — they’re more like auditors. They require full cooperation, otherwise they are Saddam’s “useful idiots.” Well, who says? Why can’t inspectors be detectives? Who’s to say a strengthened inspection regime backed up by U.N. troops and targeted air strikes on suspected sites if the Iraqis don’t play ball wouldn’t accomplish disarmament without a massive invasion and huge loss of life? George over at Warblogging a while back made a good case for a treating Iraq like a hostile witness and using a strong inspection regime that can be summarized as follows (I’d link to the article, but I can’t find the exact one I want. Sorry, George!):

1. UN inspectors select site for inspection.

2. Inspectors dispatch Predator UAVs to watch site for any movement, particularly the ingress or egress of people or material.
3. Inspectors call Iraqi liaison to inspections team and notify them that any movement in or out of the selected site will constitute noncompliance. Noncompliance will result in punitive military action (i.e. destruction of three presidential palaces) and a report of noncompliance to the United Nations Security Council.
4. Inspectors lift off in helicopters from an air base within an hour?s flight time of the site to be inspected.
5. Inspectors inspect every inch of the site they’re interested in. Any non-cooperative Iraqi personnel are immediately arrested and shipped out of the country for interrogation, and punitive military action is taken in response. If necessary military forces descend on site and open any “locked” doors and such.

Some other key points of strong inspections include:

• At all times at least one American Marine Expeditionary Force and carrier battle group are stationed around Iraq in order to take proper punitive military action against Iraq in the case of non-compliance

• The Security Council meets biweekly to assess Iraqi compliance and decide whether compliance merits the lifting of some sanctions provisions or punitive military action. The Council can, at any time, decide to authorize the invasion and occupation of Iraq — and the United States will carry out such a sentence.

Many war supporters like to frame the only options available are “doing nothing” and going to war. “The risk of doing nothing, the risk of hoping that Saddam Hussein changes his mind and becomes a gentle soul, the risk that somehow inaction will make the world safer, is a risk I’m not willing to take for the American people,” said Bush.
George’s ideas, as well as proposals floated by France, Germany and most recently Canada, shows that “nothing” and war is a false choice.
Trickle-down Democracy
Bush has started to speak in positively Wilsonian terms lately, of spreading peace and democracy to the Middle East. That would be lovely, if only it were true.

I believe Saddam Hussein is a threat — is a threat to the American people. He’s a threat to people in his neighborhood. He’s also a threat to the Iraqi people.
One of the things we love in America is freedom. If I may, I’d like to remind you what I said at the State of the Union: Liberty is not America’s gift to the world; it is God’s gift to each and every person. And that’s what I believe.
I believe that when we see totalitarianism, that we must deal with it. We don’t have to do it always militarily.
But this is a unique circumstance because of 12 years of denial and defiance, because of terrorist connections, because of past history.
I’m convinced that a liberated Iraq will be important for that troubled part of the world. The Iraqi people are plenty capable of governing themselves. Iraq’s a sophisticated society. Iraq’s got money. Iraq will provide a place where people can see that the Shia and the Sunni and the Kurds can get along in a federation. Iraq will serve as a catalyst for change — positive change.
So there’s a lot more at stake than just American security and the security of people close by Saddam Hussein. Freedom is at stake, as well. And I take that very seriously.

If only he did take it seriously. America’s track record ain’t good. Afghanistan, with the exception of Kabul, is still made up of fiefdoms ruled by gangsters, Taliban holdouts and warlords. It’s arguably in worse shape than it was a year ago, what with opium again being one of its biggest crops and a spring offensive by al Qa’ida and the Taliban in the works. U.S. troops are engaged in the heaviest fighting since Operation Anaconda. That war isn’t finished and Bush is ready to start another one.
In a quick run-down, South Korea was a military dictatorship for decades after the Korean War. We kicked out a democratically elected leader in Chile in 1973 ushering in Pinochet. The Shah of Iran ran a wicked police state from the time the CIA installed him in 1954 until his overthrow by the Iranian revolution of 1979. Noriega was our strongman in Panama until we grew tired of his drug running. The list could be a lot longer.
However, there have been successful democractic interventions. Bosnia and Kosovo come to mind, fragile democracies though they are. But there is a strong multinational coalition running the show in both cases, something that it doesn’t look like the United States is going to get in Iraq. And anyway, democracy, powdered wigs and all, doesn’t jibe with the United States’ interests in Iraq.
Conclusion
All in all, I will give Bush this: He was measured, somber and didn’t flub up much. The only time the frat-boy glibness showed up was when discussed the massive protests of Feb. 15. “I’ve seen all kinds of protests since i’ve been the president,” he said and then shrugged. “I recognize there are people who don’t like war. I don’t like war.” He might as well have added, “Whatever.” Honestly, this was one of his better performance. I suspect tonight will go a long way toward convincing some fence-sitters in America that this is the route to take, and I’ll go out on a limb and predict a 5–7 point shift in favor of war in the next few days. Millions of Americans can’t be wrong can they?
Unfortunately, yes, they can.