A couple more bits of UK viewpoint...
Washington is apparently sidelining the real hard-liners in favour of Powell's "more deliberate" approach - is this how it's seen in the US?
The deputy secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz, issued a chilling description of the "alarming coincidence" between "states that harbour international terrorists and those states that have active and maturing weapons of mass destruction programmes".
Regarded as the leading hawk within the Bush administration, Mr Wolfowitz still kept to the emerging American position that phase one of its military activities will be directed against the Taliban. ... From the outset, Mr Wolfowitz has argued for US retaliation, not just against Osama bin Laden and the immediate perpetrators of the attacks but against states which sponsor terrorism – above all Iraq.
Now nothing would delight the US more than to use the war on terrorism as an excuse to get rid of Saddam Hussein. But most policy makers in Washington realise this simply is not possible. Mr Wolfowitz is an increasingly lone voice in an administration all too aware that anything which smacks of a general offensive against Muslim countries of which the US disapproves might destroy moderate Arab support – the most important but also the most fragile part of the coalition Mr Bush wants to build.
"Colin Powell has emerged as perhaps the key figure," says a senior Western diplomat in constant contact with the administration. "His measured, deliberate approach is prevailing. Everyone realises that this is a war which has to be fought, but that it's a war you can't win with a spectacular strike."
...
by and large the "Powell Doctrine", not long ago mocked as an anachronism overtaken by today's new and messy forms of war, holds sway: take your time, amass all the force you need and more, build up alliances and hold your hand until you are absolutely sure of your targets and objectives.
This approach seems to have been embraced by the Vice-President Dick Cheney, Mr Powell's comrade-in-arms in the Gulf War, by the National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and – most importantly – by Mr Bush.
Even erstwhile hardliners like Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, promise no quick fixes in this "war without a D-Day", which will end, if it ends, without the ceremonial surrender of an enemy.
In short, the Bush administration is being forced to adopt the gradualist, multilateralist approach so conspicuous by its absence in the old age of go-it-alone, to-hell-with-the-world policies on missile defence, global warming and the rest, which died on 11 September.
...
A few right-wing columnists apart, everyone in Washington is alive to these dangers – and so, it would seem, is public opinion. A New York Times poll this week showed colossal majorities in favour of military action against those responsible for the suicide attack, even if the operations lead to large US casualties.
But if at the outset there was a gung-ho clamour to shower Afghanistan with bombs and missiles, it has abated. Like their government, ordinary Americans have come to believe that revenge is a dish best served cold.
independent.co.uk
And something more palatable to the RWET, perhaps... although I still agree:
Still, the instant deflection of rage from the perpetrator to the target, the undercurrent of schadenfreude evident in many statements ("What do you expect, given American foreign policy? They had it coming to them. We have to have a more complex view of where terrorist rage comes from. Americans will just have to learn why the world hates them so much") has been astonishing and dismaying.
...
Yes, American foreign policy has often been misguided and sometimes reprehensible. But the attacks in New York and Washington, or the larger phenomenon of fundamentalist fury, are not reactions to actual American policies. If we think that a change in any one of those policies – including a magic solution in the Middle East, which supposedly lies within the touch of America's wand to accomplish – would induce the lion to lie down with the lamb, we are kidding ourselves.
...
In our eagerness to distance ourselves from a wholesale anti-Muslim sentiment (as we of course should), we forget that for fundamentalist leaders it is much easier to scapegoat the Great Satan than to address problems caused by their own repressive regimes. We seem to have unlearned all the lessons about dictatorships and their ruthlessness in exploiting their own populations. We forget that there is such a thing as populist fascism, easily incited among the disaffected by rhetorically extremist demagogues. We underestimate the extent to which the linchpin (or at least propagandist raison d'etre) of traditionalist mullahs' policy is a titanic struggle between putative good and evil, victims and oppressors, Islam and the West.
...
it is also the better part of respect to treat others – even if they come from less "privileged" societies than our own -- as responsible agents, with a capacity to think, diagnose their situation, and exercise at least some choices and options. We keep shouting at America to "learn its lessons". What do we have to say to those responsible for the attacks and their supporters?
...
A vision of the world in which we treat "America" as giant bad parent and others as helpless victim children is insufficient. With all sensitivity to cultural difference and disparities of vantage point, it would surely be useful to enter into an honest and rigorous dialogue with moderate segments of the Islamic community in this country, and to identify elements of democratic opposition within Islamic countries – to find out what they are thinking, and what they might want from us. Beyond that, we need to start thinking seriously about the sources of religious fervour and fanaticism; about the benefits of creating a demonised enemy, and the attractions of subsuming one's individuality in a system of laws and a collective cause.
independent.co.uk
Enough from this paper, already <g> |
