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COMMENTARY
February 15, 2003
Rush to \"peace\"
Today is peace march day. Around the world and especially across Europe perhaps millions will march in solidarity with Saddam Hussein; while the people of Iraq continue to live under one of this world's most murderous and vicious dictatorships glumly anticipating American liberation but fearing they'll be let down once again. Chic exponents of abortion on demand will accuse President Bush of wanting to kill Iraqi babies; socialist proponents of public theft will accuse him of trying to steal Iraqi oil; and people whose safety and freedom have been guaranteed by U.S. military protection all their lives will chant that "Amerika" is a fascist country. It is a scene of human depravity worthy of description by the Hebrew prophets. The farce continued yesterday at the United Nations as Hans Blix produced an updated sphinx-like report declaring that while on the one hand he cannot deny Iraq may be hugely armed with genocidal weapons on the other his inspectors still hadn't found much. The chief nuclear inspector Mohammad El-Baradei followed as usual with a rehashed statement confirming that the IAEA had no idea at all about Iraq's nuclear weapons programme -- as indeed it has never previously had an idea. Around the ring of the Security Council one nation after another ruled by scoundrels or butchers or both lent their weight to French demands for more time and more inspections resisting the U.S. "rush to war" -- after 12 years of U.N. demands and 17 unrequited U.N. resolutions. As Colin Powell the U.S. secretary of state pointed out in his response to the latest inspection reports they are all about "process issues". For instance whereas there were previously five Iraqi minders for each U.N. inspector Mr. Blix now assures us there are on average fewer than five. (Mr. Powell has a gift for withering understated sarcasm.) What the inspectors can't address and the various Council members refuse to discuss are the questions of substance. Resolution 1441 called upon Iraq to do three substantial things: 1. to completely disclose its illegal weaponry 2. to prove its disclosure accurate and 3. to surrender the weapons to verifiable destruction. In fact -- not opinion -- the Saddam regime is still demonstrably stonewalling on demand number one ten weeks after the final deadline for it and offering more paper declarations instead such as the ludicrous presidential decree it tabled in Baghdad on the eve of the Security Council meeting declaring the WMD it denies having to be "illegal". Diplomats who will accept such humourless jests in lieu of substance -- as the French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin almost gloatingly accepted them yesterday -- reduce their own credibility to the level of Saddam's. In every other way despite verbal disclaimers such statesmen and diplomats have been doing Saddam's work for him struggling consistently to soften the demands of Resolution 1441 then after the fact to misrepresent them; while directly sabotaging necessary preparations for contingencies of war. And now with the help principally of the leading suppliers of materials and technology for his illegal weapons programmes -- Germany France and Russia in that order according to material widely available in the European media -- Saddam has succeeded in reversing the onus. It is now taken for granted at the U.N. that the regime in Baghdad is not obliged to co-operate except cosmetically with U.N. weapons inspectors -- that instead the United States is obliged to prove the contrary of each Saddamite claim no matter how intrinsically improbable the claim may be. Yet when the U.S. then provides this proof the members of the Security Council ignore it and change the subject back to the progress of these pointless inspections. Farce may not be the appropriate word for it tends to exclude the element of malice. A Resolution that was emphatically not about inspections but about the disarmament of Iraq was being discussed yesterday by one Council member after another glibly as if it were exclusively about inspections. Not one of these delegates could be unaware of the deceit in this rhetorical posture. To add to the effect of surreality the diplomats were meeting in a city in which for the last week police reinforced by the U.S. National Guard have been heavily patrolling the subway system (468 stations under constant monitoring for biological and chemical attack) and posting frighteningly-armed "Hercules" quick-reaction teams with their packs of sniffer dogs at public monuments and the 16 entrances to the city's underground water channels. And this from intelligence received to prevent attacks with the very chemical and biological agents which Saddam is known to have been manufacturing and which he may plausibly have provided to any of several international terrorist organizations. In this environment the U.S. is given smarmy lectures about "a rush to war" and about the need to "make a case" -- and another and another -- against enemies which have repeatedly and openly called for Death to America! We cannot know can only guess what the consequences will be of all this anti-American malice -- to which our own prime minister added Thursday with his "friendly advice" in a speech in Chicago in which he offered to gently explain to Americans why the world mistrusts U.S. motives. In my view it was among the most shameful speeches ever delivered by a Canadian politician. For the United States the invasion of Iraq remains not an option but a necessity of self-defence -- whether or not foreigners can understand that. The only remaining calculation for the Bush administration is how to do it with the least amount of damage to old alliances. With each passing day however it becomes clearer that the cost must be high and grows higher the longer the wait. By now it has become obvious that supposed allies such as France Germany and Belgium will not give the U.S. any benefit of the doubt that they rather seek to maximize damage to U.S. interests and are prepared to conspire to achieve that end. I apologize to my reader for the rough ride -- I am describing a reality that is not pretty one that I myself find deeply repulsive. But I regret to say it IS the reality; the world can be a very ugly place; and this will hardly be the first time in history that exponents of "peace" have contrived both knowingly and unknowingly to vastly enlarge an unavoidable tragedy. For there are also innocent even well-intended people caught up in this global "march for peace". Alas they know not what they do. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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