LindyBill, just to confirm that not all Canadians are wimpy appeasers here is the view of a Globe and Mail columnist:
globeandmail.com
9/11 was the smoking gun, boys
By REX MURPHY
Saturday, February 8, 2003 – Print Edition, Page A23
Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the United Nations Security Council this week to make the case that Saddam Hussein is not in compliance with the most recent resolution demanding that he disarm, and demonstrate that he has disarmed.
I think Mr. Powell made the case and then some -- that the dictator is engaged in evasion and deceit, that there is an arsenal of concealed chemical and biological weaponry, and that the world should not be too comfortable on how eagerly he is pursuing the acquisition of nuclear weapons, or how close to getting them he may be.
I have only one difficulty with Mr. Powell's presentation: It should never have been made.
The wrong person, from the wrong country, stood in the UN making a case about Iraq's weapons and Iraq's compliance. If there is any persuading to be done here, it surely has to be done by Iraq. And if there are any UN member states that insist on demonstrations of proof about the honesty of Iraq's compliance with Resolution 1441, then surely it is Iraq, not the U.S., that bears the primary burden of response.
I will go one step further. The resolution in question came into being (it is the 15th of its kind on Iraq) as a compromise. The U.S. was prepared to go to war with Iraq when the idea was offered by means of Resolution 1441 to give Saddam Hussein one last chance. He was to restore the weapons inspectors he had kicked out, commit to disarming, and supply the proof that he was so doing. It was on that basis that the U.S. decided, for the moment, to give the UN its last chance to enforce its own resolutions on Iraq and the matter of weapons of mass destruction.
So there should have been a second presentation at the UN this week, and this one should not have been made by Colin Powell, either. Rather, it should have been Kofi Annan making a presentation to the world body, and the U.S. in particular, on whether the 15th resolution was all the UN promised the world and the United States it would be. A presentation that demonstrated, to the satisfaction of Washington, that Iraq was in compliance, that it was disarming, that it was ridding itself of all weapons of mass destruction.
Resolution 1441 was crafted by its supporters as a device to achieve by peaceful means what the U.S. is determined to achieve by peaceful means or by outright war. If the threat that the U.S. perceives still remains -- and certainly Mr. Powell, the least war-inclined member of the Bush administration, perceives it as still remaining -- then it is surely Iraq first, and then the UN, that should be making the case to Washington as to why it should forgo the military confrontation.
I wonder what the Security Council would have done had Mr. Powell gone before it in February of 2001 and argued that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was harbouring and aiding terrorists and that, without a pre-emptive attack, those terrorists would very likely launch some mighty assault on American lives and territory. If he had shown photos of training camps, argued a link with Osama bin Laden and suggested that, if action were delayed, there would be great loss of civilian lives some day on U.S. soil -- what would the UN response have been then?
I wonder whether the UN would have even called for weapons inspectors. Or would the response have been that the U.S. was being belligerent for its own sake, or that it wanted control of Afghanistan to secure oil reserves? Very probably. Very probably, too, there would have been tremendous calls for more proof and a smoking gun.
Well, four smoking guns -- or, more precisely, hijacked planes -- did show up, on Sept. 11, compliments of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Mr. Powell didn't make a case then. No one did, because no one could conceive, other than the terrorists themselves, the kind of murderous horror they were willing to, and sadly did, perpetrate.
This point is worth underscoring: For the Americans, Sept. 11 is the only smoking gun that counts. It was the demonstration that terrorists are willing to kill as many as they can, whenever they can. Mr. Powell's case is predicated on the horrible example of that day.
That case may be crudely summarized thus: The U.S. is not willing to allow the really bad guys to get all their bombs and chemicals lined up, and not willing to allow one heinous dictator to make a useful alliance with another heinous terrorist, so as to obliterate as many U.S. citizens as possible whenever an opportunity is afforded them.
It's up to the UN to prove to Colin Powell that, at the very least, Iraq is out of the game.
Not the reverse.
Rex Murphy is a commentator with CBC-TV's The National and host of CBC Radio One's Cross-Country Checkup.
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