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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: abuelita who wrote (14479)	3/13/2003 1:43:30 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Bombs and Blood By BOB HERBERT Columnist The New York Times March 13, 2003 They seemed like very nice people, the men and women, some with children, who dropped by to see the Liberty Bell, which is housed in a one-story shedlike pavilion with large windows in the roof. My mind wandering, I imagined the visitors as casualties of war. I glanced up at the sunlight streaming through the roof and could visualize an incoming warhead, a missile that perhaps had strayed off course and was heading toward us. It wasn't hard to imagine the damage. The pavilion and everyone in it would be obliterated. This is the fate soon to be visited upon a certain number of innocent Iraqi civilians (no one knows how many) if the president goes ahead with the war he has pursued so relentlessly. We should outlaw the term collateral damage. Above all else, the damage done by the weapons of war is to the flesh, muscle, bone and psyches of real people, some of them children. If we're willing to inflict such terrible damage, we should acknowledge it and not hide behind euphemisms. I interviewed a number of people in the vicinity of Independence Mall about their views of a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. No one I spoke with was particularly well informed. But what struck me about those in favor of invading Iraq was the cavalier way in which they talked about it. Their message, essentially, was: "Saddam's a bad guy. It's time for him to go." I got no sense that they thought of war as a horrible experience. No one mentioned the inevitable carnage. No one spoke as if they understood that war is always hideous, even if it's sometimes necessary. The children in Iraq are already in sorrowful shape. The last thing in the world they need is another war. More than half the population of Iraq is under the age of 18, and those youngsters are living in an environment that has been poisoned by the Iran-Iraq war, the first gulf war and long years of debilitating sanctions. One out of every eight Iraqi children dies before the age of 5. One-fourth are born underweight. One-fourth of those who should be in school are not. One-fourth do not have access to safe water. This generational catastrophe is the fault of Saddam Hussein, no question. But those who favor war should at least realize that the terrain to be invaded by the most fearsome military machine in history is populated mostly by children who are already suffering. The American military has significantly improved the accuracy of its weapons, and the U.S. has gone to great lengths to develop war plans designed to minimize civilian casualties. But war, as anyone who has been in the military knows, is about killing people. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has already made it clear that the U.S. is planning to deliver what he calls a "shock" to the Iraqi system. That shock reportedly will be delivered by 3,000 precision-guided bombs and missiles in the first 48 hours. The children of Iraq won't be the targets, but that is what their country will face if America attacks. (On Tuesday the Air Force tested the country's largest nonnuclear bomb, the 21,000-pound Massive Ordnance Air Blast, gleefully nicknamed the "Mother of All Bombs.") After the war will come the humanitarian crisis. There will be the dead to bury and the sick and wounded to tend to. And hundreds of thousands of refugees. Two-thirds of Iraq's 24 million people are entirely dependent on government food rations, and the remaining 8 million are dependent to some degree. U.N. officials have said plans by the United States to feed the population after the war are inadequate, and food supplies could run out in a matter of weeks. Carol Bellamy, executive director of Unicef, told me: "The area we're very concerned about is water and sanitation. There's very little ground water in Iraq. At least half the water has to be treated. So if the major power facilities and water treatment plants were knocked out, there would be very significant consequences, and the children would generally be the most vulnerable." Most Americans will watch this war from the comfort of their living rooms, well out of harm's way. These are a few of the items they might consider as they make up their minds on whether an invasion is a good idea, or whether a search for a better alternative is still in order. nytimes.com

To: abuelita who wrote (14479)	3/13/2003 2:00:44 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Bush Losing the Moral High Ground by Richard Gwyn Published on Wednesday, March 12, 2003 by the Toronto Star While in New York recently, I asked an exceptionally well-informed senior U.N. official his guess at what would happen to the U.S. resolution on Iraq at the Security Council. He replied confidently that the U.S. was virtually certain to win by at least the required minimum of nine votes out of the 15, quite possibly by 10 and conceivably could win by an 11-4 margin. He added that France was only bluffing about using its veto. Instead, the American (and British and Spanish) "war" resolution has, in effect, been defeated resoundingly. The votes in favor of it remain unchanged at four (the three sponsors, plus Bulgaria). None of the Uncertain Six (Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico, Pakistan) has declared support, despite intense lobbying, and — undoubtedly — bribery and blackmail. French President Jacques Chirac has now said he will veto the resolution, while Russia has come close to making the same commitment. In response, Washington and London are now working on a revised version that will be less bellicose and have a later application date (the original one was March 17). It might contain specific disarmament "benchmarks" that Saddam Hussein must meet or be in "material breach" of the U.N.'s requirements (pretty much as proposed in the Canadian compromise resolution that Washington originally dismissed). The reason for chronicling these events isn't to expose, even if only anonymously, some senior U.N. official as misguided. He may well have been right at the time he made his forecasts. A well-connected observer of the U.N. gave me a similar estimate. (Canada's U.N. Ambassador Paul Heinbecker was much more doubtful about the prospects for the original resolution). The point, instead, is that the international scene has changed rapidly — radically indeed, although not yet irrevocably — in an extraordinarily short space of time. Today, the main concern of large numbers of people and of many governments is not to disarm Iraq but to disarm the U.S. That's, of course, impossible in the term's literal sense. No one can doubt that the U.S. possesses the military capacity to successfully invade Iraq almost by itself. Psychological disarmament, though, is quite another matter. It won't affect the political and military leaders; George W. Bush's self-conviction is absolute and adamant. But it may — just — affect American public opinion. A lot of people around the world, and an increasing number of governments, are acting as though it were possible to influence ordinary Americans and thereby to influence Bush. Jean Chrétien is acting as though he believes this. His comment in an ABC-TV interview last weekend that the war is already "won" because Saddam is now frantically disarming was, at one level, pretty naive. Any belated actions Saddam has taken have not been because of the U.N. inspectors but because of the American and British troops that surround him. Chrétien, though, was also being shrewd. If Saddam, is giving up — for whatever reason — why go in after him? In mid-week, French President Jacques Chirac multiplied the pressure. "War can only lead to the development of terrorism," he said in the TV interview where he announced France would use its veto. "The first victors will be those who want a clash of civilizations, cultures, religions." Why go to war, that is, when its consequence may be endless, global war? The most telling intervention was that of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He's an international bureaucrat, exceptionally eloquent but still cautious and concerned principally with the survival of his institution. He threw caution to the winds in warning bluntly that a U.S. attack without the approval of the U.N. would "not be in conformity with the (U.N.) Charter"; that is, illegal. The moral case thus is tilting decisively against Bush. It's the absence of effective moral counter-arguments that explains why the international scene has changed so decisively so quickly. These days Bush is asking the world to trust him while he has failed to trust others. He's said almost nothing about moving to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement after Iraq is conquered. He's promised to pursue democracy in post-war Iraq but he's not invited the U.N., or anyone, to help him achieve it. Quite simply, the U.S. is increasingly alone these days because it is alone. Once that was a good argument for rallying to the U.S. side, because without it the U.N. will be largely impotent and there'll be no-one to police the world's trouble spots. The counter case is that until the U.S. disarms — attitudinally, psychologically and temperamentally — better a world doing its best to function without it than one trying to keep in step with the Americans wherever they march. Today that case is the winning one. Richard Gwyn appears Wednesday and Sunday. Copyright 1996-2003. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited commondreams.org

To: abuelita who wrote (14479)	3/14/2003 11:53:36 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Whole World Feels Effect of US Intent, Activist Says The chief threat to the world today is not Iraq, but the United States, Argentine activist says by Timothy Appleby Published on Friday, March 14, 2003 by the Globe & Mail/Canada The Bush administration's drive to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is so aggressive that even before a war has started its repercussions are being felt in every corner of the world, says Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel. Nobel Peace Prize recipient Adolfo Perez Esquivel listens to a discussion titled: "A world without wars is possible" during the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Sunday, Feb. 3, 2002. (AP Photo/Douglas Engle) The Argentine, who won the 1980 Peace Prize, views President George W. Bush's plans for attacking Iraq with great alarm. "Bush is setting the world on fire," he said. Mr. Perez Esquivel, a native of Buenos Aires, is an architect, sculptor and teacher. He won the 1980 prize for his resistance to Argentina's Dirty War against leftist rebels. Imprisoned and tortured, he was freed with help from Amnesty International and the Pope. At 71, he leads the Latin American human-rights group Servicio, Paz y Justicia, and travels widely on behalf of the antiwar movement. He has been in Toronto and Ottawa under the auspices of the church group KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives. After visiting Iraq last year for a firsthand look at what 12 years of sanctions and U.S. bombing attacks have done to its battered infrastructure, Mr. Perez Esquivel scoffed at the notion that Iraq poses any significant threat. A U.S. attack, on the other hand, would open "a Pandora's box, threatening to set free the demons of death and destruction," he wrote recently. "The chief danger in the world today is not Saddam Hussein," Mr. Perez Esquivel said. "It is the United States." Like other critics of U.S. policy, he perceives in the United States an angry, isolated country inflicting lasting damage on itself. Mr. Perez Esquivel reaches for some words by Abraham Lincoln, quoted by President John F. Kennedy at the United Nations in 1962. "What Lincoln said more than a century ago is that if the United States doesn't defend life, then it faces the prospect of self-destruction." Yet unstable as the planet is, Mr. Perez Esquivel fears surging anti-Americanism will make it far more so. Across Latin America, he says, the antiwar sentiment, which has prompted big demonstrations in half a dozen countries, is vigorously feeding long-term resentment over U.S. policies on trade, tariffs, militarization and debt. "What's happening with Iraq is not isolated, it's part of a global phenomenon. When we see the installation of U.S. military bases throughout Latin America, when we look at [American interference] in countries such as Venezuela and Colombia and Panama, we have to ask ourselves what's going on. "Lots of people think it and won't say it, but I will say it: The United States is seeking to control the world. That's why we are seeing the reaction in so many countries." © 2003 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc commondreams.org