Mother Jones Daily
February 24, 2003
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The Road to War
Empire, Open All Night
Let's see, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that those 1,700 US military types heading for the Philippines to fight a savage little war are actually going to be 3,000 strong. And then the President announced that he was shipping a military contingent of 150 off to Colombia to hunt for those downed "civilian employees" in rebel hands. All in all, it looks like a good week for war and that's without even counting Iraq.
In a full page editorial today, "Power and Leadership: The Real Meaning of Iraq," The New York Times manages to call for more debate on Iraq and plunk for war ("...those of us who believe this is a war worth waging...") at one and the same moment. And so that paper falls in line with much of the rest of the elite "liberal" media on the East Coast. New Yorker editor David Remnick brought that magazine into the corral weeks ago. The Washington Post editorial and op-ed page has been beating the drums for war for months. Charlie Rose and Ted Koppel have, at least when I've looked, seemed comfortably on the team.
The Times even congratulates the Bush administration for showing "itself willing to give the United Nations both time and space to make up its mind." This would be hilarious if it weren't so pathetic -- and serious. After all, the President has made it clear that the UN has the right to make up its mind, but unless it does so in a way satisfactory to him, its mind will be of no matter.
Consider one scenario of the war the Times et. al. may be falling into line for: Eric Margolis, the usually well-informed columnist for the Toronto Sun, reports on a devastating 10-15 day conflict against an already militarily crippled enemy, which could leave not only that military but Iraqi society "blinded, deaf, and dumb." And here's a fascinating twist: Margolis suggests that new American microwave weaponry could knock out not only Iraqi communications, but foreign media communications as well, leaving Iraq in every sense in the dark and the world reliant only on those reportorial "embeds" in advancing American units.
But why not delay the war, while mustering that coalition of the willing? Well, as the Los Angeles Times informs us today, increasingly the administration fears that, if it doesn't hurry, its volunteer governments, all of which lack the support of their people, may begin to collapse like... well, should we even say it, so many dominoes. ("But other officials, speaking less publicly, cited another practical reason for their sense of urgency: They are increasingly concerned that the tenuous coalition the administration has assembled in support of war may crumble if a military campaign is postponed.")
And let's keep in mind that, unlike the rest of us, key figures in this administration have been waiting a long, long time to remake the Middle East. Delay has a different meaning to them. In a piece written for the Counterpunch website, Jason Leopold, reminds us of a letter to President Clinton in 1998, signed by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz among others, in which the neocon signees pump vigorously for full-fledged regime change in Iraq:
"We urge you 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."
In the meantime, via The Washington Post, the administration seems to have published its last, ultimate, completed, not to be tampered with plan for Iraq's future, a "now finalized blueprint," until this next leaked piece proves this to be but the umpteenth test balloon for an occupied Iraq. Key passages include:
"The Bush administration plans to take complete, unilateral control of a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, with an interim administration headed by a yet-to-be named American civilian who would direct the reconstruction of the country and the creation of a 'representative' Iraqi government, according to a now-finalized blueprint....Iraqi military forces would be gathered in prisoner-of-war camps, with opposition members now receiving U.S. training at an air base in Hungary serving as part of the guard force. The Iraqi troops would be vetted by U.S. forces, and those who were cleared, beginning with those who 'stood down or switched sides' during a U.S. assault, would receive U.S. training to serve in what one official called a 'post-stabilization' force....
A... commission would write a new constitution, although officials emphasized that they would not expect to 'democratize' Iraq along the lines of the U.S. governing system. Instead, they speak of a 'representative Iraqi government.'"
In other words, we run the country; no one messes with us; and we appoint "representative" Iraqis to aid us -- the struggle to determine who is representative undoubtedly being between the Pentagon and the State Department. (If one had to reach for an analogy, this sort of puppet government under foreign administration might prove closer to the Japanese occupation of China than the American occupation of Japan.) We also retool Saddam's army; offer the Kurds freedom in the North by negotiating the grounds on which Turkish troops will occupy parts of their lands; and don't make too much of the money or dangers or problems involved in all this, since representative Americans, when asked in polls, generally are willing to invest about minus three dollars in postwar Iraq, and representative Washington officials are still talking about the Iraqis -- I assume, the representative ones -- engaging in a pay-as-you-go occupation scheme funded by their own oil resources, unless, of course, Saddam torches the wellheads before we reach them.
I'm including below a fine piece by Joseph Cirincione that appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle's Insight section on what the occupation of Iraq is actually likely to mean. Finally, on the odder sides of postwar planning, William Beeman, Director of Middle East Studies at Brown University, reports for Pacific News Service that the same wild and wacky administration crew has spent a fair amount of time thinking about how to democratize Iraq by turning the country over to the Hashemite ruling family of Jordan.
My nomination for quotes of the week -- both from The New York Times:
From "U.S. Is Pessimistic Turks Will Accept Aid Deal on Iraq" on the front page,
"In private, though, administration officials were fuming, with one senior official calling the Turkish efforts to hold out for more aid -- and perhaps access to oil from the Kirkuk region of Iraq -- as 'extortion in the name of alliance.' Another said that despite a stream of aid from the United States, 'the Turks seem to think that we'll keep the bazaar open all night.'"
(You know those Middle Eastern types, always ready to haggle the night away...)
And then from a blandly headlined p. 4 piece, "U.S. Official Cites Progress In Trade Ties With China,"
"Led by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Washington officials have become increasingly critical of China in the last week for not doing more to support American positions on Iraq and North Korea at a time when the Chinese economy has benefited enormously from exports to the United States."
Extortion, it turns out, is meant to be a one-way street and when it comes to herding our "allies" in the UN and elsewhere into line, we have no hesitation about keeping the bazaar open all night.
Last week, three US "government employees" (presumedly CIA operatives) were captured, and two were killed, by Colombian rebels after their plane went down over rebel territory. Now, the Pentagon confirms that 1,700 American troops are heading for the Philippines not just to train the natives, but to actively fight a small, obscure rebel group whose modus operandi falls somewhere between terrorism and banditry. They will open, as the Pentagon puts it, "a new front in the campaign against terrorism" in a country which years ago, oddly enough, closed down our bases and tossed our garrisons out.
"No country on earth without a garrison" should be our national motto these days on a planet where we could sooner or later end up embroiled in something like a global Vietnam. Paul Rogers of the openDemocracy website offers his estimate -- five weeks -- of how far we are from a war in Iraq, based on the inescapable buildup of American forces in the Gulf. In the meantime, Undersecretary of State John Bolton has been visiting Israel where he and Ariel Sharon have evidently been exchanging views on which countries to take on next in what's shaping up as an age of endless imperial wars. I've included a piece from the Israeli paper Ha'aretz on the visit just to give you a sense of the agenda this administration's hawks can't stop talking about, but which doesn't get much attention here.
You might also consider visiting the Foreign Policy in Focus website and checking out Ian Williams's piece, "John Bolton in Jerusalem: The New Age of Disarmament Wars." He writes:
"Almost as amazing as Bolton's statements [in Israel] is the relative silence of the U.S. media about him and other administration hawks. Shouldn't the American public know that senior administration officials are promising that after a war with Iraq, there will be one with Iran, and then one with Syria, with Libya, with North Korea, and with Cuba? Each of these is a scenario that could frighten the American public. Taken together, George W. Bush is threatening to make the Prussian kings look like Pacifists. Do those Reservists in the Gulf know how long they will be away, making the world fertile for terrorism?"
Finally, I include a piece Jim Lobe wrote recently for Asia Times about our new imperialists and their thinking
Additional contributions from Tom Engelhardt can be found throughout the week at TomDispatch.com, a weblog of The Nation Institute. {publish-page-break}
Resolved and Relevant?
How, Not If?
Gallic History, 101
For months, the Bush administration has been arguing that the United Nations must act decisively on Iraq or risk losing all credibility and becoming irrelevant. Now, with the UN Security Council poised to consider opposing resolutions on Iraq, the determination of 'relevance' is likely to be resolved.
But the declaration of the UN's lasting relevance could come in a fashion unsettling to the White House.
As expected, the US and Britain have delivered a resolution declaring Iraq in violation of its obligations to disarm, but stopping just short of explicitly authorizing the use of military force to carry out that mission. Also as expected, France, Germany, and Russsia have delivered a contrary resolution calling for beefed-up arms inspections lasting at least five more months.
Let the arm-twisting begin. While diplomats from 11 of the 15 nations on the Security Council have made statements supporting continued inspections, many wonder whether their resolve will hold up under the expected US pressure. As the Associated Press reports, the White House is quietly dispatching diplomats to spread the word in the capitals of several Security Council nations, warning leaders "to vote with the United States on Iraq or risk 'paying a heavy price'."
"For some of the countries, such as Angola, Guinea and Cameroon -- poor African countries whose concerns drew little attention before they landed seats on the council -- there is the possibility that supporting Washington's drive for a new UN resolution authorizing war may reap benefits down the line.'For a long time now, we have been asking for help to rebuild our country after years of war,' said Angolan Ambassador Ismael Gaspar Martins. 'No one is tying the request to support on Iraq but it is all happening at the same time.'"
Apparently, the hawks in Washington and London aren't terribly confident they can win the coming debate on the merits of their arguments alone. As Mick Hume declares in the Times of London, the war party's chief cheerleaders "have hardly lived up to their gung-ho reputation."
"Despite their efforts at jutting-jawed decisiveness, the US hawks look increasingly uncertain and defensive. And for all Mr Blair's righteous rhetoric, the British Government appears almost paralysed by uncertainty over Iraq."
Not that France, Germany, or the others skeptical of Washington's war plans are any better, Hume declares, describing the anti-war lobby as "the voice of cynicism and defeatism."
In the end, Hume declares, both sides are hiding behind the UN weapons inspections, hoping that the next report "will win the argument for them." But if chief arms inspector Hans Blix plans to deliver a telling blow for either camp, he isn't letting broadcasting that information. In an interview with Time, Blix offers ammunition for both sides. He asserts that Iraq has "no credibility," and he acknowledges that inspections must stop within a matter of months or be rendered pointless. But Blix also claims that the final decision on Iraq is "political," and must be made by the Security Council.
Assuming Blix does not bail out the diplomats, a growing cadre of pundits are declaring, the coming weeks will largely determine whether the UN remains a credible force in global politics. Of course, US hawks have been saying that for months -- repeating it every time the Bush administration declares that 'time is running out' for Saddam Hussein. Now, however, with the Security Counci facing a clear choice, the antiwar camp is saying it, too.
"The test of the UN's relevance cannot be the extent to which it comes into line with US policy," declare the editors of The Independent. "On the contrary, the test must be the extent to which it encourages US policy to come into line with the concept of international law." The UN may be imperfect, the Independent editors assert, "but it does embody the idea of international law."
"Last year, the US dismissed the idea of restoring UN inspectors to Iraq as a waste of time. Now, the inspection regime has opened up the possibility of an alternative way in which the law-abiding world can restrain the threat from Saddam.To be sure, it is a small possibility. But it is a hope that has been kept alive by the fact that France and Russia hold the power of veto at the UN. It may be that Mr Bush will simply go to war anyway. But there is a crumb of comfort to be gained from the fact that this will be despite the UN's relevance, not because it is irrelevant."
Tariq Ali concurs. In fact, Ali, writing in The Guardian, argues that the UN's credibility is already in tatters, and can only be restored by a rejection of Washington's arm-twisting.
"The world has changed so much over the last 20 years that the UN - the current deadlock notwithstanding -- has become an anachronism, a permanent fig leaf for new imperial adventures. Former UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali was sacked on Madeline Albright's insistence for challenging the imperial will: he had insisted that it was the Rwandan genocide that needed intervention. US interests required a presence in the Balkans. He was replaced by Kofi Annan, a weak placeman, whose sanctimonious speeches may sometimes deceive an innocent British public, but not himself. He knows who calls the shots....
If the security council allows the invasion and occupation of Iraq either by a second resolution or by accepting that the first was sufficient to justify war as a last resort, then the UN, too, will die. It is necessary to insist that UN-backed war would be as immoral and unjust as the one being plotted in the Pentagon -- because it will be the same war."
But would a Security Council rejection of the Anglo-American resolution really derail Washington's push for war? A cadre of hawks inside and outside the White House continue to insist it would not. Richard Perle, perhaps the most outspoken of the administration's über-hawks, reiterated those claims this week, telling the Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat that the US "will go without an international resolution."
So why should the US seek a UN vote if it is determined to invade regardless of the outcome? Ronald Brownstein, writing in the Los Angeles Times, suggests that the apparent contradiction reflects a lasting divide within the Bush administration "between two distinct groups of those supporting force."
"On one side are those who consider international cooperation the key to confronting new threats to global security. On the other are those who see Iraq as the opportunity to prove that the surest way to a safer world is for America to lead through assertive action, even if that increases friction with allies in the near term.Over time, this argument over how to make war against Iraq may have more lasting implications than the debate over whether to invade. The odds are high that President Bush will make the question of whether to use force moot sometime in the next few weeks by ordering an attack. But the dispute over how to pursue war will have implications for years. It will color America's relations with its traditional allies in Europe long after the shooting stops in Baghdad. And it is likely to emerge as the central foreign policy debate in the 2004 presidential election."
In the end, Brownstein argues, both sides are "trying to make very different points from the same war." The neoconservative hawks eager to see a unilateral invasion want to "frighten the bad guys" by "demonstrating U.S. power and resolve," he asserts, while the multilateralists want to "unify the civilized world against emerging dangers."
Of course, those divisions are unlikely to console Iraqi citizens or US soldiers likely to be in the line of fire. Whether launched to shore up US prestige or build multinational resolve, a missile is a missle.
For weeks, war party pundits incensed by France's opposition to Bush's invasion initiative have been skewering all things French. According to these neo-conservative nabobs, the French are cowardly, cynical, self-important and, most of all, churlish. The neocon line of logic: the US lost some 290,000 soldiers during World War II, in part while fighting to reclaim France from the Nazis, and so the French owe us.
Now, however, a few progressive truth-speakers are daring to point out the deep flaws in the neocon fantasies.
Justin Viasse, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, pointedly thanks the hawks for reeducating him about his own country's history. In a Washington Post column, Viasse facetiously apologizes for "being so ungrateful."
"It's just that I learned in school that France and Britain declared war on Nazi Germany in September 1939, while the United States was enacting isolationist laws, and that America entered the war two years later, only after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. But now I see that was just Gallic propaganda. How could I have believed it?I now know what really happened: Franklin D. Roosevelt felt that a country with more than 300 kinds of cheese was worth liberating, and for the love of France he came to our rescue. Joseph Stalin came to the same conclusion, but -- fortunately for us -- he was slower and had to stop in Berlin.
Meanwhile, Lafayette and Rochambeau were a different story altogether: They apparently came here not to help Americans gain their independence but merely to execute the crass realpolitik maneuvers of Louis XVI."
Of course, Viasse is a Frenchman. So he probably hasn't seen all the Hollywood epics which told us how America (with the help of a few English chaps) won World War II after the French so meekly rolled over. But Molly Ivins probably has seen those flicks. And she isn't buying the hawks' adaptation of that history, either.
"George Will saw fit to include in his latest Newsweek column this joke: 'How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris? No one knows, it's never been tried.' That was certainly amusing. One million, four hundred thousand French soldiers were killed during World War I. As a result, there weren't many Frenchmen left to fight in World War II. Nevertheless, 100,000 French soldiers lost their lives trying to stop Hitler.On behalf of every one of those 100,000 men, I would like to thank Mr. Will for his clever joke. They were out-manned, out-gunned, out-generaled and, above all, out-tanked. They got slaughtered, but they stood and they fought. Ha-ha, how funny."
As for the idea tha the French should be perpetually thankful for the US role in liberating France... Well, Allan Massie of The Scotsman points out that anyone making such a claim doesn't know much about the history of World War II.
"The American part in the liberation of Western Europe was the consequence of one of the two worst decisions Hitler made after 1939: his declaration of war on the US in December 1941. That came only six months after his even more serious blunder: the invasion of the Soviet Union. It was, of course, the Red Army that broke Hitler's Wehrmacht, and so made the Allies' invasion of Normandy in June 1944 possible. But it's a very long time since we -- or the French -- have been expected to feel grateful to the Russians.Neither the US nor the USSR chose to go to war with Germany and overthrow the evil Nazi regime. War was forced on both. In contrast, the United Kingdom and France actually declared war on Germany. So, despite the disasters of 1940, Britain and France have rather more right than the US to claim the moral high ground -- even though that claim would be somewhat spurious, since both went to war reluctantly because it seemed necessary in our self-interest."
Now, Rooney actually fought in France -- a fact that, Ivins suggests, means he "has a right to be critical." Roy Blunt, a Republican Congressman from Missouri, didn't fight in France. In fact, as Joe Conason notes, Blunt never fought anywhere, as he "somehow escaped the Vietnam draft." But has that fact stopped Blunt from deriding the French as cowards? Certainly not. And the hypocricy doesn't end there, Conason notes.
"The French are accused of coveting Iraqi oil contracts, as if our insatiable need for petroleum had never influenced American policy in the Middle East. The French are accused of ingratitude, although most Americans remain ignorant of the critical role they played in our own revolution. In my hometown, there was an elementary school named for the Count de Rochambeau, yet nobody bothered to teach the children there about his gallant service to George Washington."{publish-page-break}
The Arm-Twisters
The Inside Hawks
Ad Wars
A single body of 15 delegates will soon decide whether the US -- if war does come to Iraq -- invades in the name of the international community or as the more isolated head of a 'coalition of the willing.' Or, to be more accurate, a group of seven of those delegates to the UN Security Council will decide.
Washington has the undeniable support of at least two members of the Security Council -- Great Britain and Spain -- for a resolution declaring that Iraq has failed to meet the UN's directive to disarm, clearing the way for war. An alternative resolution calling for beefed-up arms inspections -- drafted by France and Germany -- has the support of three more members, Russia, China, and Syria.
The remaining seven Security Council members -- all temporary members whose delegates hold no veto power -- have become the deciding factor. Now, those seven nations -- Angola, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico, and Pakistan -- have become the targets of fierce lobbying. Washington has dispatched diplomats to several capitals, and both London and Madrid are following suit. As the Times of London reports, the effort is shaping up to be a combination of old-world diplomacy and hard-ball horse-trading.
"Britain is also conducting some more old-fashioned diplomacy. Baroness Amos, the Foreign Office Minister responsible for Africa, left last night on a hastily arranged trip to Guinea, Cameroon and Angola, the three African nations on the UN Security Council. Guinea, which becomes chairman of the Council on Saturday, has a reputation as 'strongly anti-French'.The Americans, too, are using their considerable power of persuasion. Mr Powell was in Beijing over the weekend and yesterday John Bolton, the US Under-Secretary of State, held talks in Moscow. Today Mr Bush hosts Simeone Saxe-Coburg, Prime Minister of Bulgaria, whose country's support for the Anglo-American position in the Security Council is all but guaranteed."
Facing overwhelming pressure, several of the nations in question are apparently hoping to either see a compromise emerge, have their decision made easier by the upcoming arms inspections report, or discover a way to sit out the vote without jeapordizing relations with Washington. But, as Mark Turner reports in The Financial Times, such hopes seem increasingly unlikely.
"The middle ground's best hope is that Iraq will make an unambiguous move towards disarmament. But without that, and as time grows tighter, there is an increasing sense that the time for fudges is over.If so, the US and the UK could find themselves on the losing end.
Munir Akram, Pakistan's UN ambassador, said it was a case of seeing whether the US had decided to go to war. 'If it has, it's a holding action: to see if it is at all possible to dissuade them.'"
Akram insists that countries, faced with "a pre-determined US decision," are unlikely to line up behind Washington for "cynical" reasons alone. But the stakes for the seven nations are undeniably high. At a meeting of 116 developing countries, officials from several nations -- Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe among them -- blasted the Bush administration's war plans and called on the seven swing countries to reject the US proposal. But officials attending the summit from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea and Pakistan said their governments are unwilling to make any commitment until after hearing the arms inspectors next report.
While American and British diplomats are lobbying hard in Africa (U.S. envoy Walter Kansteiner was in Angola Monday and will be in Cameroon today), Washington is reportedly baffled and increasingly angry that Mexico continues to hold out. And while President Vicente Fox appeared to take a slightly harder stance on Tuesday, declaring that "only disarmament by the Iraqis can ensure peace," Mexico's vote is far from certain.
The entire situation could become moot, of course, if France, Russia, or China choose to veto the Anglo-American resolution. But Bush administration officials are working to kill that possibility, too. As The Independent reports, Washington's ambassador to Paris, Howard Leach, deliverd "a blunt warning" that France would pay dearly if it resorts to using its veto power.
"Officially, France says that it has not yet considered whether or not to use its right of veto, as one of the five permanent members of the Security Council. Paris says it is still hopeful that a majority will support its alternative plan to strengthen inspections and extend them for four months.But unofficially French sources accept that Paris is approaching a dangerous precipice. If most on the council back the US, France would face an impossible choice. If it used its veto, it would seem to be blocking the will of the international community. The future of the Security Council and veto system, and France's key role, would be called into question."
Which means the spotlight remains on the seven non-permanent members. As a service to our readers, War Watch has established the following score card, and we will update it regularly as the lobbying intensifies. As can be seen, the stakes for the seven nations in question are high. In the coming days, as Washington's horse-traders begin making the rounds, the pressure being applied, and the potential payoff for countries that line up behind the US, are sure to soar, too.
| What They're Saying | What's at Stake | ||||
| US AID 2002 | US AID 2003 | US AID 2004 | Exports to US in 2001 | ||
| Angola | "We're working to find the necessary consensus," Foreign Minister George Chicoty said after meeting with U.S. envoy Walter Kansteiner. 2/21 | 14 | 11.75 | 22.6 | 3096 |
| Bulgaria | Asked about Bulgaria's possible support of the new US resolution, President Georgi Parvanov said that "this draft and the French proposal on a settlement of the crisis merit careful consideration." 2/25 | 47.3 | 42.3 | 41.5 | 337 |
| Cameroon | 3 | 3.2 | 3.7 | 102 | |
| Chile | "It is a lack of respect to big countries and small countries," to suggest that the US is pressuring Chile, President Ricardo Lagos said after a lengthy telephone conversation with President Bush on Saturday. "I do not want to talk about pressures." 2/25 | 1 | 1.6 | 1 | 3495 |
| Guinea | 24.9 | 25.9 | 21.4 | 464 | |
| Mexico | U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza denied widespread reports in the Mexican press that Washington is pressuring Mexico. "It is not pressure," Garza said. "It is part of the process of dialogue" 2/25 | 61 | 43.6 | 67.5 | 131433 |
| Pakistan | General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler, will wait till "the very last moment" before deciding how his country votes on a new UN resolution on Iraq, a senior Pakistani official said. 2/25 | 1,044 | 305 | 395 | 2249 |
Sources: US Department of State and US Department of Commerce
The Inside Hawks
A good deal has been written, recently, about the cadre of neoconservative über-hawks within the Bush administration, determined to wage a war in Iraq regardless of how the Security Council votes. Now, Ed Vulliamy of The Guardian considers how the two officials at the very heart of that cadre -- White House political advisor Karl Rove and Pentagon number two Paul Wolfowitz -- formed an unlikely alliance to push identical initiatives driven by very different ideologies.
The pair represent the two dominant factions within the Bush White House, Vulliamy reports: "the gritty Texan Republicans who took over America, fuelled by fierce conservative Christianity, and a faction of the East Coast intelligentsia with roots in Ronald Reagan's time, devoted to achieving raw, unilateral power."
"Rove in theory has no role in foreign policy, but Washington insiders agree he is now as preoccupied with global affairs as he is with those at home. In a recent book, conservative staff speech writer David Frum recalls the approach of the presidency towards Islam after the attacks and criticises Bush as being 'soft on Islam' for his emphasis on a 'religion of peace'.Rove, writes Frum, was 'drawn to a very different answer'. Islam, Rove argued, 'was one of the world's great empires' which had 'never reconciled... to the loss of power and dominion'. In response, he said, 'the United States should recognise that, although it cannot expect to be loved, it can enforce respect'."
The ad features actress Susan Sarandon and Ed Peck, the former US ambassador to Iraq. In it, Sarandon poses a question to the veteran diplomat: "Before our kids start coming home from Iraq in body bags and women and children start dying in Baghdad, I need to know what did Iraq do to us?"
Apparently, CNN feels that question isn't fit to be asked -- at least, not on their network. And the boys in Atlanta aren't alone. As Ad Age reports, several groups opposed to Washington's war plans claim that cable networks "are censoring citizens' political views by refusing to accept placements of their anti-war TV ads." And, while several of the groups are getting around the networks' rejection by purchasing local ad time in major markets, the censorship charge remains.
A CNN spokesperson tried to explain away the decision by claiming the network has "a policy not to accept issue ads on regions in conflict." But Ben Cohen, who also appears in the ads along with his partner in ice cream history Jerry Greenfield, isn't buying the excuse.
"'It is amazing that the networks are rejecting them in terms of freedom of speech and censorship. The news media pretty much acts as the megaphone of the administration... We are left with little choice but to buy time to get our message across. If, as a practical matter, you are not able to communicate a message, there is no free speech.'"{publish-page-break}
Purchasing the Votes
Paying for the War
Buying and Selling Allies
For months, the Bush administration has said it preprared to invade Iraq with only the support of a "coalition of the willing." But in order to avoid that, in order to gain the fig leaf of multilateral support provided by a supportive UN Security Council vote, Washington is pulling together what some waggish pundits are calling a "coalition of the coerced."
Lobbying to secure the support of six nations from a group of seven that remain on the fence, President Bush is sending diplomats across Africa, making personal calls to Chile, and entertaining Bulgaria's premier. For the seven countries in the spotlight -- Angola, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico, and Pakistan -- a yes vote could mean more US aid, more US trade, and Washington's help on a score of issues.
And, just as importantly, a no vote could draw the wrath of the only remaining superpower. As Bill Nichols of USA Today reports, the first Bush administration showed how heavily the US can hurt countries that don't fall in line.
"When Yemen, along with Cuba, cast the only negative votes against a U.N. resolution in 1990 authorizing the Gulf War, Washington almost immediately withdrew a $70 million aid package to Yemen. Immediately after the vote in the Security Council chamber, a U.S. official was overheard telling Yemen's ambassador, 'That will be the most expensive 'no' vote you ever cast.'"
If Yemen's experience isn't fresh enough, the current Bush administration followwed suit last fall, during Security Council negotiations over the resolution which returned arms inspectors to Iraq. Washington wasn't happy with the lukewarm support it received from Mauritius. The tiny island country recalled its UN ambassador, dispatching a new diplomat who lined up firmly behind the US position.
Washington's diplomats have plenty of ways to coerce and compel the smaller countries. As Michael Moran of MSNBC reports, the unavoidable reality is that no other nation can twist arms as effectively.
"Strip away the moralizing from both sides of the Iraq debate, and what remains is a very unfair fight between the reigning champion and France, a nation with formidable cultural ties to some and an admiring pull on those who resent American hegemony, but no real ability - financial, military or otherwise - to help smaller Security Council states weather the blows that defiance would bring....
'The smaller countries, I think, we can buy except maybe Syria,' says Chris Joyner, a professor of international law at Georgetown University. 'Most would stand to lose a lot more than they'd be willing to for the sake of Iraq, or France for that matter.'"
Predictably, administration officials insist that they aren't 'buying' any votes. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer pompously told reporters that Bush is "not offering quid pro quos" to any of the nations in question. Of course, Bulgaria's Prime Minister refuted that statement, declaring that the president had done exactly that, promising additional aid and military assistance in recognition of the country's support. And, even if the Bush administration isn't promising monetary gifts, there are other lures the US can use, Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times reports, such as trade deals and diplomatic support.
"Angola, a major oil producer, would like American cooperation on a conference of donors to help rebuild the country, which was devastated by a long civil war.'It's not just money,' said José Evaristo, a spokesman at the Angolan Embassy in Washington. 'We know that Turkey is rushing for $30 billion, but Angola is really trying to build an American partnership.'"
For Angola, that partnership would mean a greater share of the US oil market -- boosting the $3 billion in business the country already does with America. Here, we revise our score-card to consider what rewards might be dangled in front of the other six 'swing vote' nations. And, keeping the lessons of Yemen and Mauritius in mind, we look at what the countries stand to lose with a no vote.
| What's the Carrot? | What's the Stick? | ||||
| Military Aid* | Economic Aid* | Total Aid* | Exports to US | ||
| Angola | Angola is looking for an infusion of new foreign aid -- or a larger share of the US oil market -- to fund reconstruction efforts following years of civil war. | 6 | 5.3 | 22.6 | 3096 |
| Bulgaria | Iraq owes Bulgaria about $1.7 billion, dating from the days of the Cold War. Washington has indicated it will intercede to have that debt repaid. | 9.8 | 28 | 41.5 | 337 |
| Cameroon | Hoping to increase the growing trade surplus it already has with the US, Cameroon wants Washington to drop demands for tax and tariff reform. | 0 | 0 | 3.7 | 102 |
| Chile | A new free trade agreement between Chile and Washington is awaiting ratification by Congress. Chile also wants Washington's support in international markets. | 1 | 1.6 | 1 | 3495 |
| Guinea | Guinea, one of the world's poorest nations, definitely wants additional aid from both the US and Great Britain. But President Lansana Conte may be most influenced by the promise of continued British military support for his country's fight against a rebel army supported by neighboring Liberia. | 11 | 0 | 21.4 | 464 |
| Mexico | Mexico wants to see some progress in negotiations over a comprehensive immigration treaty, as well as support in international markets and more aid for anti-drug-trafficking initiatives. | 38 | 24.5 | 67.5 | 131433 |
| Pakistan | While many in Washington have already assigned Pakistan to the 'no' column, Islamabad must remain on good terms with Washington to keep the aid pouring in and to remain off the administration's growing list of possible next targets. | 76 | 250 | 395 | 2249 |
All aid and trade figures in millions of US dollars.
Sources: US Department of State and US Department of Commerce
Of course, there are at least two scenarios that might make all the arm-twisting pointless. First, France, Russia, or China might use their veto and kill the US proposal without the need for a vote. But US officials are working diligently to prevent that from happening -- offering huge carrots to both Russia and China and brandishing a huge stick in the direction of France. The second possibility would come if Saddam Hussein further resists the UN arms inspectors' demands. Any evidence of such stonewalling on Iraq's part could come as early as Saturday, Howard LaFranchi of The Christian Science Monitor reports, the deadline chief arms inspector Hans Blix has set for Iraq to begin destroying all its Al Samoud 2 missiles.
"Iraqi officials on Tuesday said the UN demand was still being studied. But some experts -- citing reports of stiff pressure on Baghdad from economic partner Moscow to show signs of cooperation with inspections -- expect Mr. Hussein to accept the missiles' destruction as a PR coup.'If Saddam is smart he'll destroy those missiles, and very publicly,' says retired Admiral Stephen Baker at the Center for Defense Information in Washington."
When President Bush released his proposed 2004 budget last month, Congressional Democrats were quick to note that it contained a big hole. The spending plan had no funding for the administration's plans to wage war in Iraq and then rebuild the ravaged country.
Now, Pentagon officials are providing some sense of just how big that hole is. As Peter G. Gross of the Los Angeles Times reports, "the price tag for the conflict could top the $100-billion mark, twice the war costs cited just last month by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and an amount that the White House dismissed as outlandish last fall." And the cost could climb even higher, Gross writes.
Indeed, some close to the process say war planners have no firm grip on the conflict's final costs, a fact that is causing consternation among administration policymakers as the nation edges closer to war.'It's like watching numbers roll higher and higher on a slot machine,' said one State Department official, who asked not to be named.
This official said that during recent interagency meetings, White House budget aides 'put their hands over their ears and said, 'We're not listening.''"
Pentagon planners still expect any war to be a speedy one. But, as The Washington Post notes, the already skyrocketing estimates don't account for scores of possible costs, such as decontamination efforts should Iraq use chemical or biological weapons.
"'There could be massive, incalculable costs associated with Saddam lashing out against other countries, such as Israel, or pursuing a scorched-earth policy against his own people,' said Daniel Goure, a vice president at the Lexington Institute, a defense-oriented think tank."
While Fleischer may insist that the White House isn't buying UN votes, he didn't even try to make that suggestion in relation to Turkey. The simple fact is the Bush administration has bought compliance from its NATO ally, pledging $26 billion in aid in and support in order to secure access to military bases along Turkey's border with Iraq.
While some have attacked Turkey's hard-ball negotiating as diplomatic blackmail, The Boston Globe insists that Ankara "is entitled to drive a hard bargain."
"Because Washington did not keep economic promises made to Turkey before the Gulf War of 1991 and because a dozen years of economic sanctions on Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq also cost Turkey billions in lost revenues, Ankara had just cause to insist on the $15 billion aid package it received from Washington.
What disturbs the editors at the Globe, however, is the second part of Washington's apparent deal with Ankara: US willingness to have tens of thousands of Turkish troops cross the border and take up positions in northern Iraq. If Turkish soldiers are allowed to penetrate deep into the Kurdish territories in northern Iraq, the Globe reasons, "they could be used to intimidate Iraqi Kurds or to seize and lay claim to oil fields near the northern Iraqi towns of Mosul and Kirkuk."
That's exactly what Kurds believe will happen, if Washington doesn't rein Turkey in. The Kurdish parliament has formally requested that the US prevent any Turkish military force from entering Iraq. As C.J. Chivers of The New York Times reports, the parliament vote "was carefully timed, coming hours before Zalmay Khalilzad, President Bush's special envoy, arrived in northern Iraq." Khalilzad was in the Kurdish territory to meet with Iraqi opposition leaders, including prominent Kurdish officials.
And Kurdish politicians aren't the only ones concerned about Turkey's aims. Cameron Barr of The Christian Science Monitor reports that Kurdish distrust of Turkey has begun to color the Kurds' negotiations with Washington. Kurdish concerns, they are convinced, will be quickly trumped by Turkish demands.
"The Kurds say Turkey has another goal: To undermine the autonomy of the region the Kurds have governed for 12 years and prevent them from seizing control of Kirkuk, traditionally a predominantly Kurdish part of Iraq and the site of some of the country's most productive oil fields.'People in northern Iraqi Kurdistan are more scared of the Turkish military than of Saddam,' says Nasreen Sideek, minister of reconstruction and development in the [Kurdish] administration."
While Washington has bought Turkey's support, Kurds are increasingly convinced that the Bush administration has sold their security in the process. Aso Hardi, a Kurdish newspaper publisher in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah, sums up Kurdish concerns.
"'Will the Turks ever leave?' Hardi asks. 'Will they destroy everything we have built in the past decade?' Unspoken is the bigger question: Will the United States betray the Kurds again, as it did in 1991 when the first President Bush called for an uprising, then let Saddam crush the Kurds when they responded?"{publish-page-break}
Dubya's Dream World
The Human Cost of War
The "A" Word
President Bush has tried the regime change argument. He has tried the disarmament arguments. He has tried the terrorism argument. Now, with popular opposition growing and a United Nations defeat looking increasingly likely, Bush is trying another argument to justify an invasion in Iraq.
War in Iraq, Bush declared in a speech before the ultra-hawkish American Enterprise Institute, is the key to peace in the Middle East.
Bush promised that, after removing Saddam Hussein, the US will create an Iraq that could serve as "a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations of the region." And he linked regime change in Baghdad to the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
War party pundits, predictably, were enthralled. This was the language they had been waiting to hear. David Frum positively gushes on National Review.com, calling Bush's address "among the most important state papers of the past three decades."
"It's hard to over-stress the grandeur and importance of this new departure. Bush emphatically repudiated the core belief of the old policy in the Middle East -- that Islamic societies are somehow permanently unsuited for democracy....
It was Bush all over: strategically bold, tactically cautious; gentle in tone, strong in content; carefully balanced between the innovative and the traditional."
The only thing that prevents Frum from reaching unprecedented levels of Bush adoration, naturally, is the president's mention of the Palestinians. Frum wanted to hear about the destruction of Arab governments, particularly those in Iran and Saudi Arabia. He has no stomach for the idea that war in Iraq might be paid for by the creation of a Palestinian state.
William Saletan of Slate aptly picks up on the Orwellian nature of Bush's logic. As far as the Middle East is concerned, Bush seems to believe, war really is peace, freedom really is slavery, and ignorance really is strength. Strangely, Saletan seems inclined to agree. At least, he's willing to consider the argument.
"Maybe Bush is a fool. Maybe he suffers from the naiveté that, in the view of many Europeans, makes the United States a dangerous, blundering giant. Or maybe he breathes the idealism that rescued Europe, liberated Kuwait, and saved the Muslims of Kosovo. Maybe the lie of 2003 isn't that strength comes from ignorance but that it comes from a preoccupation with history, with the ethnic hatreds of Europe and the autocracies of the Middle East. Maybe with care and perseverance, flowers can bloom in the desert.Maybe Bush's worldview is a little bit Orwellian. And maybe he's right."
No, Jill Nelson declares, he's not. War is not peace, and the only peace the Bush White House seems interested in is a Pax Americana, Nelson declares. An invasion of Iraq, she writes on MSNBC, is nothing more or less than "the first salvo in a war for empire."
"Iraq is just the first step by an administration committed to global hegemony, the creation of a United States to which all other nations are made subservient through bludgeoning, bribery, or the threat of American-made terror."
Joseph Wilson concurs. And Wilson knows something about war in Iraq -- he was the acting ambassador in Baghdad during the Gulf War. Forget Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, forget Baghdad's supposed links to Al Qaeda, forget the idea that this will be a war of liberation. The Bush administration's true objective, Wilson declares in The Nation, is "the imposition of a Pax Americana on the region and installation of vassal regimes that will control restive populations."
"The neoconservatives with a stranglehold on the foreign policy of the Republican Party, a party that traditionally eschewed foreign military adventures, want to go beyond expanding US global influence to force revolutionary change on the region. American pre-eminence in the Gulf is necessary but not sufficient for the hawks. Nothing short of conquest, occupation and imposition of handpicked leaders on a vanquished population will suffice. Iraq is the linchpin for this broader assault on the region. The new imperialists will not rest until governments that ape our worldview are implanted throughout the region, a breathtakingly ambitious undertaking, smacking of hubris in the extreme."
To understand how completely that cadre of neoconservatives have imposed their vision of neo-imperialist policy though unilateral intervention, one has only to consider the venue Bush chose for his speech, Jim Lobe suggests. The American Enterprise Institute is the wellspring for "the most unilateralist and pro-Likud elements in the Bush administration," Lobe writes, serving as a the hub of "a tightly knit network of neo-conservative activists and groups."
"Bush's decision to deliver his speech on the Middle East to the AEI, echoing the think tank's vision for the region, made clear the extent to which the most radical hawks in the administration have prevailed in the internal policy debate. 'The fact that Bush would choose AEI, of all audiences, to talk about his vision for a democratic Iraq and peaceful Middle East, has to be profoundly demoralizing to Powell,' noted one Congressional aide whose boss has supported Powell's efforts to keep the hawks in check."
Bush used the word "democracy" -- or derivations of it -- seven times during his speech. But Marwan Bishara sees absolutely nothing democratic about the president's vision. The idea of democracy, Bishara writes in The International Herald Tribune, "is too valuable, and too vital, to be used as cynical camouflage for other agendas," particularly imperialistic ones.
"It is dismaying to watch as America, which long ago rejected the notion of colonialism, seems about to repeat the mistakes of an old Europe whose past attempts to dominate the region by force have lead to more than a million Arab deaths. America is also mimicking the preemptive war doctrine and policies of Israel, which have failed utterly to bring peace or security....
Only totalitarian regimes and ideologies preach that the end justifies the means. For democrats, the means counts no less than the end. That's called applying the law."
This week, officials in Washington finally released estimates of how much a war in Iraq would cost the American treasury. But how much will it cost the citizens of Iraq? How many innocent Iraqis will be killed in a war Bush argues will liberate them?
Fred Kaplan considers the existing projections of civilian casualties -- particularly a confidential UN report leaked to the British group Campaign Against Sanctions in Iraq, and a second study produced by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Both documents, Kaplan declares on Slate, are so broad as to be virtually worthless. And he argues that's predictable.
"There is no way to estimate ahead of time -- even within several orders of magnitude -- how many civilians, or for that matter how many combatants, will die in this war or in any war. Beth Osborne Daponte is a public policy professor at Carnegie Mellon and a former government demographer who got hounded out of her job by the Bush I administration for attempting to do a post-'91 estimate of Iraq's civilian casualties. She is ignoring all inquiries about how many might die in this next war. As she put it to me, 'Multiply an unknown by an unknown, and you get an unknown.'"
Still, there are lessons to be learned from the Gulf War, Kaplan says. The best way to minimize civilian casualties, he argues, is to minimize the destruction of the country's infrastructure and electrical network. Pentagon officials say that is the plan, Kaplan notes. But then, Pentagon officials are also predicting a short war.
President Bush believes war is peace. Max Boot -- a leading light of the neoconservative right and a former Wall Street Journal editorial writer -- believes that peace is war. Or, at least, Boot believes that peace movements cause war.
The worldwide antiwar movement, by disrupting Washington's rush to invasion, have given courage to Saddam Hussein, Boot reasons. The peace movement, not Bush's policies, have divided the world. And so the peace protesters, he concludes, are making war more likely.
"All this should be no great surprise, considering the ignominious history of peace protests over the last century. The record is fairly clear: When the demands of protesters have been met, more bloodshed has resulted; when strong leaders have resisted the lure of appeasement, peace has usually broken out."
As far as Boot is concerned, all peace movements amount to appeasement -- a term that naturally conjures up images of Nazi troops marching into Poland. Now, as antiwar voice after antiwar voice has pointed out, Saddam Hussein is not Hitler, and Iraq, crippled and contained, is certainly not Nazi Germany. But, by pointing out such obvious facts, are antiwar activists undermining their own efforts? True, Saddam is not Hitler, but he is a monster, and the antiwar movement must never lose sight of that reality, Michael Walzer declares in The New York Review of Books.
"The right way to oppose the war is to argue that the present system of containment and control is working and can be made to work better. This means that we should acknowledge the awfulness of the Iraqi regime and the dangers it poses, and then aim to deal with those dangers through coercive measures short of war. But this isn't a policy easy to defend, for we know exactly what coercive measures are necessary, and we also know how costly they are."
Among other things, Walzer argues, such a policy depends on the continuation of the existing trade sanctions against Iraq, the continuation of "no-fly" zone patrols over northern and southern Iraq, the indefinite continuation of UN arms inspections, and the indefinite posting of troops around Iraq to back up those inspections. If the antiwar movement can't get behind such "coercive measures," Walzer worries, the "appeasement" attacks will be hard to refute.
