NP? a view from Europe

[Doug Millison]

"Morris"  forgets that dissent -- challenging authority -- is an honored
tradition in the US.  It's the authoritarian/totalitarian/neofascist
elements in our society who currently seek to stifle dissent and otherwise
underine our Constitutional rights.

And, hey, how about that shooting-fish-in-a-bucket "victory" over the
Taliban prisoners in that fortress! Doesn't that make us look swell -- our
Northern Alliance cronies demand a surrender, fail to disarm the prisoners,
then with the help of US forces -- savage missile and bomb attacks
overnight, I hear on the radio this morning, in addition to the CIA
paramilitaries --  slaughter hundreds of prisoners "while trying to
escape".  I guess Rumsfeld meant it when he said the other day that he
preferred bin Laden and the rest dead to alive.  And don't you know this is
going to help US win friends and influence people around the world.  And
check those reports of Northern Alliance troops murdering wounded Taliban
prisoners on their entry to Kunduz and mutilating enemy corpses -- with
friends like that, who needs enemies?  Can't wait for the final act in
Kandahar, I expect it will be bloody enough for even the most jaded
armchair warrior.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,606685,00.html

Americans want a war on Iraq and we can't stop them

Bush is looking for the next target and his country is right behind him

Hugo Young
Tuesday November 27, 2001
The Guardian

President Bush's prime purpose now is gearing up America for a wider war.
"It's not over. It's not over," he told Newsweek, concerned that the people
might think otherwise. "Afghanistan is just the beginning," he roared to an
audience of soldiers at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. "America has a message for
the nations of the world. If you feed a terrorist or fund a terrorist,
you're a terrorist."

In Newsweek, he amplified this with reference to one man. "Saddam is evil,"
he declared for the first time. It could take years to catch Osama bin
Laden, he allowed. But many other targets are now on notice of merciless
aggression.

You do not hear a single word of similar intensity from any European
leader. Even Tony Blair, while regularly reinvoking the global campaign
against terror, seldom talks about the enemy with Bush's slavering passion
for specific eliminations. The president is mobilising an American national
will such as we have not recently seen.

During the cold war it was unquestioning, but static. During Vietnam, it
disintegrated. Now the enemy, though invisible, is unmistakable, and the
national stirring is deep against him. For the first time, the US was
attacked: for the first time, the US doesn't mind if casualties are taken
in the name of vengeance or self-protection. For the first time, therefore,
public opinion is unambiguously ready to come in behind whatever
intervention a president decides he must propose.

One proof of this is what encroachments on their liberties Americans are
willing to put up with. Protests against the repressive gospel according to
the attorney general, John Ashcroft, are few and far between. A country
that guards its constitutional freedoms with meticulous passion is prepared
to surrender them with pious indifference. So easy is such submission to
raison d'état that the quiet torture of recalcitrant suspects surely cannot
be far behind.

Europeans should reflect on this as a measure of the hard-eyed national
commitment that differentiates the American mood from that of any other
country. This, rather than the diplomatic niceties of coalition building,
will mainly determine what happens next.

Though a division over policy is not yet visible among the allies, the gulf
of perception seems likely to become significant. The temper of the times
will remain sternly hot in the US while, barring more terrorism, it
eventually cools in Europe. Far from this campaign yielding a new concert
of civilised nations, it will emphasise the deafening control of the
trumpeter and conductor. The British piccolo, in particular, will find it
harder to be heard. The band continues to play in rough harmony, but only
on condition that it follows the unilateral beat of the big bass drum.

In three theatres, you can see this starting to happen. Afghanistan itself
has become an American operation. Sure, they needed allies in all adjoining
countries, and worked to get them. There's been a huge amount of
transatlantic traffic. When aspiring partners, from Italy to Japan,
thirsted to get in on the action and prove their manly commitment, they
were nominally accepted, their troops probably never to be used. When even
the German Greens, at the weekend, voted to take part, a Rubicon of lasting
importance to Germany and Europe was crossed.

But Washington remains in unimpeded charge. Behind coalitionist talk,
that's how they want it. They speak, moreover, for a different aftermath.
Again the verbiage tries to soften this. But when Mr Blair talks about
rebuilding Afghanistan and not forgetting it in the peace, it's plain he is
sincere whereas Bush's people mouth the words and do not really mean them.

There's nothing wrong with nation-building, but not when it's done by the
American military," said Condoleezza Rice not long ago, speaking as the
president's closest foreign policy aide. Though Washington is pledged to a
large chunk of the $10bn aid Kabul has been promised, it's unlikely to stay
and oversee the maintenance of a stable, semi-decent regime to spend it.
That's not what the new Bush doctrine, a results-oriented, short-vision
construct, is all about.

Second, the world itself will not, I now guess, benefit from a new
internationalism. After September 11, many of us wrote optimistically
otherwise. A unilateral foreign policy was surely dead and buried. When it
comes to collaborating against terror, that may remain so. Washington's
withdrawal from the Middle East peace process is also no longer an option.
But the other litmus tests seem likely to be failed.

Swift smashing of the Taliban can't plausibly be seen as a platform for
reneging on Republican hostility to either the comprehensive test ban
treaty or the international criminal court. On the contrary. Seen from
Washington, what's being achieved is, among other things, the triumph of an
American view of the world that can now be amplified elsewhere.

Third, and most delicately, comes Bush's promise that Afghanistan is not
the end but the beginning. Again, many countries are signed up to that.
Organised commitment to strangle the finances of terrorism should make a
difference. But a choice presents itself, in which it's clear where every
EU country, not to mention Russia and most of the Middle East, stands: on
the slow road of economic and diplomatic action, rather than the fast track
of bulldog threats followed by instant bombing.

Though Iraq may not be the first place that comes under fire, it's by far
the most sensitive, and now the president, talking to Newsweek, gives
Saddam his warning: let the UN arms-inspectors back in, or face the
consequences.

The American mood will tolerate this, perhaps demand it. Not long ago,
speculation about the Iraqi option was linked to an anxious need for
incontrovertible proof of al-Qaida connections. Now, the test is becoming
looser. What looks like a speedy victory in Afghanistan is galvanising US
ambitions to be the world's super-enforcer, whatever the problems, for a
global cause Americans believe in more clearly than they've believed in
anything since the second world war. It's hard to identify a single voice
that might be loud enough to stop it.

Least of all Tony Blair's. Though Mr Blair has done a good job as a major
builder of the coalition, is it credible that he will count for more than
the deep-throated thunder from of the Republican right, smarting with rage
to complete the job Bush's father failed to do on Saddam? Most Europeans
know which side they're on after the criminal obscenity of September 11.
But as time passes, they're drawn ineluctably into a campaign over which
they will have ever less influence.

Their support is an essential token, and their networks are vital to the
political and economic effort. But when it comes to calling the shots,
Washington cannot be denied, at least by Britain. It's impossible to write
the speech one could believe Blair might give to defend his withdrawal of
support. Maybe he wouldn't want to. But, helplessly drawn along, we will
not walk taller in the world.



Doug Millison - Writer/Editor/Web Editorial Consultant
millison at online-journalist.com
www.Online-Journalist.com