Actually, december, I believe you ought to back this claim up with some proof if you got any:
“France and Russia were never going to allow the Security Council to authorize overthrow of the Ba’ath regime.”
FWIW Cheney made the trip last year.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/03/20/world/main504126.shtml
I’m a she, and I’ll pass on paying for a cite.
Thought I did. Here’s a piece from previous quoted interview w/Chirac:
…which I take to mean, there’s no need for a regime change over disarmament and thus no need for a war. Cross-purposes. Here’s more from de Villepin:
http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/actu/bulletin.gb.asp?liste=20030314.gb.html#Chapitre2
Absence of any understanding that we’re talking about war because of the regime. We do not want to peacefully disarm this very same regime - the inspections offered proof at least of lack of intentions to comply - they want to stick to the narrow business of physical evidence of WMD. I have no idea why, they’d have been aware that lots of people thought it a good idea to be rid of Saddam - it was our official policy for Pete’s sake.
And finally,
I’ll repeat - a lot of people thought it a good idea to be rid of Saddam, you yourself probably agree. We’d have probably had Canada alongside, too, if not for the Montreal influence. Iceland hosts US military, sits between the UK and the US…what exactly would it find so objectionable?
whew
coffee break.
You’re changing the terms of your discussion. You originally objected to my disparaging of small countries. When I pointed out that my remarks were not scornful of the countries but of the Bush policies that sought to get their names on a declaration without actual support, you now ask why they would object. I have no comment on their choices to support or oppose the war decision (although there is a fair amount of rumor that either bribes or threats were used to achieve the “support” position in many cases). I object to pretending that putting their names in a collection of countries that are not participating makes them part of a “coalition of the willing.”
(Iceland does not have much choice regarding air resupply. The U.S. already has the bases in place; Iceland has rather little to say about what kind of planes fly in and out of those bases.)
Just to be clear: I do not object to Iceland (or any country) providing moral support for or opposition to the war. However, adding countries that have not participated in the war effort to a list of “coalition” partners is disingenuous on the part of the administration.
So, Tee, ultimately it was the insistance by the French on the failure of inspections before attacking Iraq that you disagree with? I agree with you that Chirac never said yes to a “30 days then we attack” timeframe. He always was careful to say that France’s position required that the inspectors determined non-compliance before military options were exercised. I can’t say that I disagree.
I agree to your statement regarding being rid of Saddam with qualifications. It was not okay by the means we employed. Saddam bad, bad. Unilateral and illegal military invasion of another country, bad, bad.
I was wondering about both, actually. Which you’ve cleared up. We’ve all seen mention that the entire world community is against this war, and bringing up those who did express or commit support in some way leads to: “Coalition. Bwahaha!” because only 4 countries sent troops. (“A whole 200 troops! Wow!”) This is maddening to me, even for someone who’s not much of a Bush supporter, but I can’t really explain why.
I think if that were the only issue that was relevant - WMD - then I also would have agreed. I see the WMD in the context of…being in a perpetual state of war, I guess. The atrocities, asymmetrical threats, disasters and so on. I would think this was a problem tailor-made for the UN, and yet the UN was routinely unmotivated to deal with it as a whole. That bothers me. So I’m not sorry at all that it went down the way it did, and if it does turn out to be illegal, and consistently condemned, then I’ll probably totally lose what little desire I have now for UN solvency. The Bush administration is finite, but the UN is forever, know what I mean? 
I’d like to repeat what gouda stated. However unpopular Bush was before 9/11, the world was on our side on 9/12. We had a mandate to make a change. This has been totally squandered.
Of course Bush isn’t all wrong. After 9/11 he made a big deal about how terrorism was a threat to civilization in general, not just the US. For a while afterwards, there was unprecedented international cooperation to get the baddies, and support for the US in Afghanistan.
But Bush has reverted. 9/11 is now treated as an American problem only. The “war on terror” has ceased to be an international movement to rid the world of these groups and instead become an umbrella term used for American unilateralism. We are back to talking about rogue states and WMD, even though rogue states and WMD had nothing to do with 9/11.
Iraq was first pinned to terror. The world clamored for evidence, but we produced none. So Bush tried with WMD. The evidence did not and to date has not stuck. Now we have Iraqi liberation, although there are plenty of other people in a similar situation as the Iraqis under Saddam.
The world is left scratching its head, and it is left with only a few good explanations as to why we would spend billions on a war. None of them are particularly flattering, especially left unstated. Whether it is Rumsfeld showing off his New and Improved US Military v2.0, Neocon New World Order, Bush’s oil connections, or American hegemony, our goals in the region have not been clearly stated to date.
This lack of vision has plagued this administration. It is the core of their problems. They have not felt the need to explain their actions to the rest of the world or to their public. People can only tolerate unanswered questions for so long, and our administration at times seems too arrogant to answer them. It only plays into the air of American Global Superiority that the Bush administration paints day in and day out.
It is human nature to cut the egomaniac down to size. We may be militarily dominant, but decreased foreign cooperation will eventually cause attrition economically and socially. By the time we notice these changes, it will be too late.
Just musing… but if the United States were to be hit with another 9/11-style terrorist attack tomorrow, would we get any sympathy from the rest of the world now, as we did on 9/12/2001? Or have we burned enough bridges that the majority of the planet would just shrug and say “tough cookies, deal with it”?
Perhaps, but I was thinking more of the “hanky-panky” of facilitating their acquisition of biological and chemical weapons, which I do believe was done in secret. I don’t know off-hand if that also violated any SC resolutions.
IMO, you’d still get sympathy, but nowhere on the scale that that 9/11 resulted in. Then, even anti-american states were sympathetic. As of today, god forbid anything happens, I wouldn’t expect half as much sympathy.
Could you please provide me with some cites for this info? I’d be able to do a lot with these.
thanX in advance.
simonX
To disagree, slightly, the Bush Administration’s vision is very clear - to unilaterally and preemptively have things their way. The diplomatic failure was their inability to mask this, and to give reasons for their actions that the rest of the world would accept. (Even in Spain, a member of the coalition, 80% of the public opposed the war.)
Bush’s attitude that either finding WMD or not finding WMD were equally good reasons for war came out clearly. I used to wonder why they didn’t just increase the presssure of inspections until Saddam, to protect the WMD I was sure he had, refused to give in. This would give a good justification for the war. Now I see that Bush was aware that they weren’t going to find much, which explains everything.
If regime change were a legitimate reason for the war, why not offer that from the beginning? I guess they knew it was never going to fly except as an ex post facto justification.
Could you please provide me with some cites for this info? I’d be able to do a lot with these.
thanX in advance.
simonX
You’re contradicting your statement with your own quote :
The president is stating that france will refuse a solution which means “in so many days, we go to war” (IIRC, the “so many days” were something like one week, at this time. I remember this interview), not that it will refuse any military action against Irak. Roughly the resolution France said it would veto would have stated that Irak had some days to prove that it has fully disarmed, and there was no practical way to bring such proofs in so short a time.
But anyway, several posters already wrote that France never stated it would be opposed to a war in all cases. But I suppose you didn’t read these posts…or choose to ignore them…
And also, the main point I forgot to mention ; France stated that the UNSC would have to authorize a war, and opposed any resolution which would allow anybody (in this instance, the US, of course) to decide whether or not a war should be wagged. IOW, a resolution stating that the use of force will be allowed if Irak didn’t disarm within X days (and here also it was what the US resolution would have included) would have been vetoed too, since then, the american would just have to say “Irak didn’t disarm” at the end of the X days, and even if the overwhelming evidences showed that Irak did actually disarm, and the war would still have been in agreement with the UN resolution.
What France would have accepted would have been a resolution along the following line : “Irak has X days to disarm. At the end of the X days, the UNSC (not the US, or Tuvalu alone) will decide whether or not Irak has indeed disarmed. If the UNSC think that it hasn’t, then war will be allowed”.
So France agreed with :
-A set limit of time for disarmament
-War if Irak didn’t disarm
And disagreed with :
-Time limit = one week
- The US can decide by themselves whether or not they think Irak has disarmed. That’s the UNSC job. (It was ovious, due to unsopported statements by american representatives and dismissal of the disarmament inspectors positive reports by same that the US would decide Irak didn’t disarm no matter what)
No, I didn’t contradict myself. Without cites I have no idea what proposals were tabled, so I’m going to believe the President himself when he says he didn’t think a regime change was necessary and that they would oppose invasion. How much simpler can that be? “We might see a need for it later” is still opposing invasion now, “we might decide that war is an option” ignores the fact that the US and UK had already decided to exercise that option. It was common knowledge that they were after more than just locating and removing anthrax, and it’s not as if they all just met.
And if anyone would like to explain this one, please go ahead:
UN Members Want Inspectors Back In Iraq Before Lifting Sanctions
That is too funny.
Tee, I hope it’s ok for me to jump in here.
In that case, I think that is part of the (your:) problem. In the eyes of international law, there is no difference between having a shotgun or having a nuclear bomb - at least not as far as I know. They are both allowed. Of course, there are treaties which nations have chosen to sign to be allowed into the Great World of Free Trade, and violating the terms of such treaties, well, that’s another story.
And before you jump in saying that the UN should have fixed this little problem long ago, let me just mention that the UN cannot create “law” out of thin air; a resolution has to be introduced to the body by a member nation. The US could of course take the lead to create such “law”, making a UN approval mandatory before a member nation could possess WMD. In that case I guess all the nuclear powers would out-veto each other, making the world a nuke free zone (hey wouldn’t that actually be a good thing?)
Regarding Iraq and WMDs, two things: First, the reason Iraq was not allowed to have WMDs, as opposed to Syria for instance, was because it said so in the UN supervised truce treaty after GF #1.
Second, the inspectors never found any evidence of Iraq possessing WMDs. The big problem with Iraq, WMDs and the inspections was that the US basically said (simplified) : “You have 1000 barrels of WMD X and we know that because we sold it to you during the Reagan administration. Now you’re not allowed to have them anymore. So were are they?” On which Iraq answers: “We emptied out those barrels in the desert”. So the inspectors go to the site in question and take a sample, which contains traces of WMD X, apparently confirming the Iraqi claim. The problem: There is no way of knowing if 1 barrel or 1000 barrels were emptied out (again, simplified). It’s like a catch 22. Who should hold the burden of proof?
And BTW, IMO Tom’s right about France, they said no to the resolution on the table, which would have given Iraq 7 days (give or take) to provide information that the inspectors never would have been able to verify in the small time allotted, - France never said they would reject military action when the inspectors were done with their work. To state they would
is short-sighted.
To get back to the OP, I agree with what Tom said (no, I’m not Tom : ). I think Bush pretty much lost all international support/public opinion when he sent troops to the region and said he considered to go outside the UN even before 1441 was crafted. From there on it was all downhill in the eyes of the international community.
Alien, good post. Welcome to the board.
rjung :quote
From my amateur armchair perspective, the entire Bush Foreign Policy has been essentially:
quote:
Dear rest of the world,
The United States is now the world’s sole superpower. We’re the biggest dog on the block, and we can do whatever we want, because we’ll stomp anyone who opposes us. If you don’t like it, EAT SH*T AND DIE.
Sincerely,
George W. Bush
quote:
Now, while this approach may work for a drunken hick getting plastered in a backwoods bar somewhere, it’s not the approach to take in international diplomacy, where the entire game is to convince the other nations how digesting fecal matter and terminating their own autonomic functions is ultimately beneficial to them. Failing to convince them is bad enough, but failing to convince them in such a ham-handed manner is outright embarassing.
Just the fact Bush is a go it alone screw the rest of the world can’t talk his way out of a paper bag hick from Texas makes him just that more scary.
Do you know what these terrorist countries are saying to the terorist groups? They are saying you have to leave this country because that crazy Bush will come here and kill all of the civilians he only kills civilians. We don’t have a big enough army to stop him. I can’t be responceable for all the civilian deaths you will cause SO YOU MUST LEAVE NOW.
This is what will make America safe, a crazy cowboy who has watched so many violent american movies that he does not know the real world from hollywood.
The real world doesn’t work like that, BeatenMan. Terrorist groups are relatively fluid, and as al Qaeda adequately demonstrated, a host country is totally secondary. Ignoring diplomacy only turns more of the world against you, and secondarily probably generates more terrorists.
To take the drunken hick analogy a step further: drunken hicks walking around enforcing their own brand of justice has not had a particularly good track record in this country. Might makes right is not the best way to run a neighborhood; it is certainly not the best way to run the world. The reasons for international law and diplomacy is the same reason for a justice system. It gives us somewhat of a standard that extends beyond our own vision.
It sometimes (most of the time) seems that Bush acting to “save the world” from terrorism is only acting to save himself and a small segment of the population of the USA, and everyone else can go to hell. This is what I am against. I realize that the standards of civilization are not only set by the USA alone, and I think that a good diplomat would be able to unite the civilized world against a clear threat, horribly demonstrated to all of us on 9/11. Bush has been totally unable to do this.