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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (20176)	3/13/2003 2:02:30 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25898

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