"Shock and Awe"

[Otto]

Good post with good questions.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Henry Secularpeturbations" <henryssecularpeturbations at yahoo.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003 2:03 AM
Subject: Re: "Shock and Awe"


>
> --- s~Z <keithsz at concentric.net> wrote:
> > Drunken cowboy hoping braggin' loudly in the saloon
> > will intimidate his foe?
>
>
> Attempts to understand the Bush administration's
> foreign policies in term so the President's Texan
> roots are not very convincing.
>
> It's a complicated chess game.
>
> There are the war protests, bigger in Europe, but
> growing in the US. There is the popularity of the
> President, which is still pretty high but waning as is
> support for war with Iraq. Wag the dog? Whatever, it's
> an issue.
>
> What should the administration do about North Korea?
>

They can do nothing, NK has a big army threatening SK, and Seoul isn't very
far from the DMZ.

>
>
> NK has withdrawn from the NPT. What should the Bush
> administration do? Surely they can not sit back and do
> nothing.
>

Well, in fact it's the US-foreign policy that doesn't recognise
international treaties and gives a bad example.

> German and France say there is no smoking gun in Iraq.

No, the weapons-inspectors say that (up to now). Schröders says we won't go
even if they'd find tons of poison gas and hundreds of rockets. Our position
is that war is no solution for the complicated Middle East situation. Today
I've read a sentence in German which says: 30 days of bombing will provoke
30 years of terrorism. Given the Palestinian example this doesn't seem to be
wrong.

> But that's not the point of the Inspections. The Bush
> administration has massed huge forces in the Gulf and
> tried to build a coalition. It went to the UN. It got
> the Inspections going again. Now what? Blix will
> report soon. Will the UN find Iraq in material breach?
> Probably not. Will the US seek to pass another
> resolution? Blix needs more time. Will he get it? How
> much time will he get?

Yes, about two or three weeks, it's forbidden to use the word "month" at
the White House, because then it would be too hot to fight in the desert.

>What if the interviews with the
> scientists turn up a smoking gun?

If they clearly can show that Saddam has lied he'll loose his face in the
Arabic world and that's no small thing.

>What if the US (the
> US claims to have evidence and if they don't this is
> surely a foolish gambit that I doubt Powell & Co.
> would take) presents its evidence and the UN finds
> Iraq in "material breach"?

Then there will be no need for a second resolution and the US and the allies
can do what they want. But the only evidences I can think of are the ones
the US foreign policy has produced itself by supporting Saddam when he was
regarded as one of the good guys.

>Will Hussein be forced to exile?
>

Better than to create a martyr. I think I would prefer a coup d'état from
within.

> If the US attacks Iraq, does it need to attack NK too?
>

No, it's a different situation. NK hasn't led any war since the fifties,
hasn't gassed & slaughtered any minorities. If they decide to build weapons
of mass destruction they should be free to do so but we should tell them
that they won't get any kind of help further on and that they will be
excluded from the free trade.

> NK has toosed out the inspectors and violated
> agreements, withdrawn from NPT too.
>
> It looks like the US can't keep its finger in the
> dike.
> Nukes, and other WMD, or programs to build them and
> launch them, kept away from most nations for decades
> during the Cold War, are showing up all over the
> globe.

It's been said so ten years ago when the USSR ended that this would happen.

> If the US and the UN can't keep those nations that
> have signed NPT from developing these weopons who
> will?

They could but this would require to stop all humanitarian programs, let
millions die.

>And if it pays off, as it might for NK, won't
> other nations follow in NK's footsteps?

As long as the USA, China and Russia keep on supporting their allies like
Pakistan, India and NK this always will be a possibility.

>The US and the
> Russians and others have dismantled thousands of
> weapons over the last few decades, have provided
> carrots and sticks to prevent proliferation. But it
> seems that nations think that having bombs and getting
> the stick pays more than not having them and getting
> carrots.
>

Yeah, it's really strange indeed, but wasn't it Don Rumsfeld who critisised
Germany for "choosing welfare over defense" last fall? NK's leader could
claim that he'd chosen the other way round.

> Why reduce it to a silly cartoon of the President in a
> saloon?

I do think so too that it's an inappropriate image.

> Hell, NK didn't beging its program when W got
> his presidential guns. They started building their
> program under Clinton's wandering eye.
>
> Iraq signed NPT. Yet, it was only after going to war
> with them that the inspectors discovered that Iraq was
> a lot closer to building a bomb than scientists
> thought possible. This has been the trend: nation's
> develope WMD faster than expected.
>

All those unemployed Russian scientists . . .

> What is the world going to do? Sit back on its ass and
> let the Americans deal with while they call the
> President a drunken cowboy or act?
>

Well, tell us how to stop the only remaining superpower (from doing what it
believes is required to keep its interests) in another way than Chirac,
Schroeder and Fischer are trying right now? They try to delay wherever they
can, until it is too late to start the war this year, and then, my guess,
they think it will be too expensive even for the USA to keep the
anti-Iraq-coalition. Mr. Rumsfeld has mentioned the "New Europe" and is
looking at the countries from the former soviet empire, but he should not
forget that these countries wholly will depend on US-money because their
EU-membership forces them to reduce their deficits.

By the way, the "drunken cowboy"-image really doesn't fit and I don't
believe that any European leader is thinking this way about Bush jr.

Otto


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