Category Archives: United Nations

War — What’s this one good for?

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cpe_baghdad_tigris_01.jpgFol­low­ing the news this week has been con­fus­ing to say the least. Did the United States have 11 votes on the Secu­rity Coun­cil? Eight? Nine? Four? The vote is going to hap­pen Fri­day. Or maybe next week. The March 17 dead­line for Iraq to dis­arm is firm, or maybe it isn’t. Maybe the United States will just say, “to hell with it,” and launch the bombers. Or maybe it will con­tinue to go “the extra mile” for diplo­macy. Who the hell knows?
victorybonds.jpgIt’s safe to say that read­ing the cur­rent Secu­rity Coun­cil is like try­ing to read tea leaves in a still-swirling cup. No one knows where the votes will come down until the last moment.
The U.S., for geo-strategic rea­sons, wants to go to war, very badly. France and Ger­many, for their own rea­sons, want to stop a war, very badly. Tony Blair may want to go to war, but I doubt he wants to very badly. If he does, in fact, take the U.K. into bat­tle, he needs a new res­o­lu­tion very badly, or he might see his own regime changed before Baghdad’s. The rest of the Coun­cil — Rus­sia, China, Syria, Angola, Pak­istan, Guinea, Bul­garia, Spain, Mex­ico, Chile and Cameroon — is basi­cally for sale.
As Strat­for points out, this is now a bid­ding war and being in between the U.S.-U.K. and France-Germany teams is the best place to be. Angola, Guinea et al., can sit back, keep the game going for as long as pos­si­ble, get the bids (for aid, invest­ment, mil­i­tary coop­er­a­tion, state din­ners or what­ever) as high as pos­si­ble and not let any­one know their prices until the very last moment. Why is it so hard to count noses on the Coun­cil on the issue of Iraq? Because the courted coun­tries don’t know how they’ll vote until the gavel comes down and all bids are in.
And then we’ll have Mr. Bush’s splen­did lit­tle war.
Ironic, isn’t it? I thought the point of diplo­macy was to avoid war, but this bizarro diplo­macy is intended (by the United States) to bless a war — and to keep the appear­ance of a coali­tion by keep­ing Britain in the game. France knows that what­ever its actions, it can’t stop this train wreck — George W. Bush has already said the United States doesn’t need the U.N.‘s per­mis­sion — so Jacques Chirac’s intran­si­gence is intended to .… what? Cement France’s posi­tion as the leader of the Euro­pean coun­ter­weight to Amer­ica? Keep the United Nations rel­e­vant, as though the dom­i­nant member’s ignor­ing the Secu­rity Coun­cil doesn’t ren­der it irrel­e­vant any­way?
bhun.jpgThis ker­fluffle stopped being about Iraq, weapons of mass destruc­tion, national inter­ests and the effi­cacy of the United Nations long ago. Oh, national lead­ers say these are the rea­sons, but so many have refused to bend or com­pro­mise that every­one is painted into a diplo­matic or mil­i­tary cor­ner. Bush can’t back down because Amer­ica will look weak and encour­age more ter­ror­ist attacks. Of course, by wag­ing an aggres­sive war against Iraq, that will encour­age more ter­ror­ist attacks, too. Tony Blair can’t back down because he’ll be just as dead polit­i­cally as he will be if he takes Britain to war with­out a res­o­lu­tion, so he might as well go for­ward and hope for a quick vic­tory. France can’t back down because Chirac has com­mit­ted France to oppos­ing America’s hege­mony. Iraq can’t back down because the United States will accuse it of more delay­ing tac­tics and decep­tions and attack any­way. There’s no longer a good rea­son for any of this.
This isn’t the start of World War III, it’s the start of World War I — a very stu­pid war, started thanks to a tan­gle of alliances, national pride and per­sonal egos involved. It never had to hap­pen. And — again with the irony — WWI is the war that brought the world to this point, spawn­ing the League of Nations, the fail­ure of which led to World War II and the later cre­ation of the United Nations and the Secu­rity Coun­cil. It also saw the destruc­tion of the Ottoman Empire and the cre­ation of the King­dom of Iraq. And let’s not for­get the use of chem­i­cal weapons — allegedly the rea­son for the great big army in the desert. It was a war that embod­ied the Law of Unin­tended Con­se­quences.
I promised I wouldn’t make pre­dic­tions about the start of the war, so per­haps I can make one about the end of it. When it’s over and the dust has set­tled, the United States will stand supreme in the world, pow­er­ful but hated, its boot on the throat of Iraq. The inter­na­tional frame­works built over the last 50 years, includ­ing the United Nations, will lie in ruins or will be about to col­lapse. Resent­ful young men, hearts full of fear, hate and Allah will find refuge and a rai­son d’etre as explo­sive mar­tyrs. The world will be less safe — for every­one. And thou­sands of peo­ple — sol­diers, civil­ians, inno­cent or not — will be dead. And for no good rea­son at all.

Pentagon taking aim at independent journalists? Hey, that’s ME!

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Dis­turb­ing story here. BBC reporter Katie Adie claims a source in the Pen­ta­gon told her that satel­lite uplink posi­tions of inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists in Iraq would be tar­geted in a war.

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.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Greetings from Kurdistan

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arbil.jpg
The city of Arbil from a fortress on a hill (© 2002 Christo­pher Allbritton)

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?

U.S. backs British compromise of March 17 deadline

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The United States and Spain have revised the British Secu­rity Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion intro­duced last week to say that Iraq has until March 17 to dis­arm or face war. France, pre­dictably, opposed the res­o­lu­tion and again hinted at veto.
“This is the logic of war,” said For­eign Min­is­ter Dominique de Villepin. “We don’t accept this logic.“
Iraq, too, reacted with pique. “So they will give us only 10 days to give up all we have?” asked Iraq’s U.N. ambas­sador Mohammed Aldouri. “We have to dig all of our desert? Really, this is non­sense. We are doing our utmost. We can’t do more.“
This is a gutsy gam­ble by Tony Blair, who des­per­ately needs a U.N. res­o­lu­tion to bol­ster his posi­tion at home where he is fac­ing huge domes­tic oppo­si­tion and a revolt within his own party. With­out this res­o­lu­tion, Blair could face a no con­fi­dence vote. If he lost, he likely would be replaced by a more dovish Labour Party PM who would be expected to pull Britain out of America’s plans for Iraq.
By get­ting this on the table, Blair can at least say to his crit­ics that he tried, pos­si­bly fore­stalling a chal­lenge. (And — bonus! — he could blame the French, which is always pop­u­lar in Britain.) By appear­ing to com­pro­mise, the United States hopes to pick up a few more votes on the Secu­rity Coun­cil and pro­tect Blair’s left flank if it comes to a par­lia­men­tary vote any­way.
This is a switch in the U.S. posi­tion against the set­ting of dead­lines. But why not? The U.S. isn’t risk­ing much by agree­ing to sup­port this res­o­lu­tion because the United States is pre­pared to attack Iraq with or with­out U.N. sup­port — its plan all along.
The pri­mary issue is tim­ing. The war could start at any time after today’s report from Hans Blix.When these res­o­lu­tions even come to a vote next week, they will be vetoed by France, Rus­sia or China and the United States and Britain will go to war. Already, air patrols in the north and south no-fly zones have been –dou­bled– tripled. U.S. marines, pos­si­bly in vio­la­tion in inter­na­tional law, have been seen cut­ting holes in the fence in the DMZ sep­a­rat­ing Iraq and Kuwait. Equip­ment for the 101st Air­borne Divi­sion began arriv­ing in Kuwait Thurs­day, accord­ing to Strat­for, and if the air war begins next week as is expected, that’s enough time for prepa­ra­tions.
March 12 – 13. Air war anyone?

Bush attempts to make case for war, puts exile on the table

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Pres­i­dent Bush’s news con­fer­ence tonight empha­sized a few key points. They are as follows:

  • 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.strip.pool.jpgBush 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.