A rchive Date
[ 24-01-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/harris.html
Iraq strike a hard sell
By MICHAEL HARRIS - For The Ottawa Sun
January 24, 2003
It is said that nothing happens in the United States until someone sells something. Call it the national motto of a country where business is king.
These days, the product is war and the salesman is having a tough time closing the deal. And so, nothing is happening - except the massive buildup of military forces in the Persian Gulf poised for the inevitable invasion of Iraq. As Turkey's foreign minister, Yasar Yakis, rather poetically put it, "There is a fire which is moving towards our homes."
According to Russian military intelligence, the United States has already made the decision to attack Iraq and depose its despotic leader Saddam Hussein, probably between Feb. 14 and Feb. 21. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, trying hard to deflect the widely held view that this war is about oil not terrorists, is already promising that the U.S. will seize the world's second largest oil fields and "hold them in trust" for the Iraqi people.
But the world, including the American people, is more interested these days in the evidence supporting the invasion of Iraq than in promises of benevolent occupation after it is flattened. According to the most recent polls, 66% of Americans oppose the U.S. going to war without the United Nations. And if President Bush decides to go it alone, 71% of Americans believe he should present the evidence that UN weapons inspectors have so far utterly failed to produce. In fact, 54% of his own citizens think that George is a tad trigger-happy.
The president's European allies are dead set against a war with Iraq where bellicose U.S. rhetoric has so far substituted for evidence of weapons of mass destruction or any sort of real threat from Saddam. The list of those now opposed to what will happen anyway is growing longer and more embarrassing. French President Jacques Chirac has threatened to use France's veto as a permanent member of the Security Council to block a resolution for war. "War is proof of failure," Chirac said. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder stands beside France, Russia, and China in opposing a UN-sanctioned invasion of Iraq and a unilateral U.S.-led attack based on the evidence as it now stands.
REBUFFED U.S.
Last but not least, the world's most powerful military alliance, NATO, has rebuffed U.S. requests for assistance in the Iraqi campaign. Though NATO went to war against Serbia over Kosovo, none of the member nations are anxious to re-unite the old team, largely because George has failed to make the sale.
The countries in the region with the most to lose in the war scenario - Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Jordan (which gets all its oil from Iraq), Saudi Arabia and Syria - are meeting in Istanbul this week to find a peaceful way out of the firestorm that is about to engulf the region. Worldwide, hundreds of thousands of people took part in anti-war protests, urging President Bush to find a peaceful way of escaping apocalypse now or later.
So what has the salesman done? Sadly, he has belittled his customers for refusing to buy a pig in a poke. The White House response to worldwide anti-war protests, including 200,000 peaceniks in Washington, was the musing that people had once opposed going to war against Hitler. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tried to dismiss the objections of France and Germany as coming from "Old Europe" which he said is being supplanted by other emerging powers. France's finance minister bristled at the insult, noting that Old Europe has resilience and will bounce back. But the greatest outburst of irritation has come from the chief salesman himself, George W.: "It's time for the United States to hold the world to account, and for Saddam to be held to account."
In all that external accounting, one wonders, what about the United States? Who will hold President Bush and his administration to account? It will not apparently be the national media. On any given night, it is impossible to distinguish the reporting from the spin, to see any real difference, that is, between Ari Fleischer and Wolf Blitzer. It will not apparently be the political opposition. Democrats are terrified of falling victim to the fevers of super-patriotism brought on by 9/11: British author John Le Carre has described the political landscape in America as worse than it was in the McCarthy period. Nor will it apparently be international law and the United Nations. The president has repeatedly stressed that if it doesn't get the green light for war from the UN the United States will act alone.
GREATEST THREAT
To America's horror, people like Nelson Mandela are now saying that the greatest threat is not the tinpot dictator of Iraq, but the United States. While President Bush alleges that rogue nations are distributing weapons to terrorists, the U.S. has quietly maintained its position as the leading supplier of weapons in the world - accounting for an astonishing 45.8% of the $12.1-billion global arms market in 2001. Far from liberating the people in some of the world's most repressive regimes, the Bush administration is arming them in the name of the war on terror: Indonesia, the Philippines, and several unstable former Soviet republics have seen their U.S. military transfers double and triple since 9/11.
And remember Pakistan, which the U.S. brought sanctions against in 1998 for testing nuclear weapons? Prior to 9/11, Pakistan received $3.5 million in military aid from the United States. That number is now $1.293 billion, including F-16 jets, M-113 armored personnel carriers, 400 grenade launchers, Aerostat L-88 radar system, UHIH attack helicopters, and six C-130E cargo planes. Wasn't this the country, run by a general with the power to annul the results of democratic elections, that threatened to use nukes in its most recent standoff with India over Kashmir? Osama bin Laden once aimed his U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles at Russian attack helicopters in Afghanistan. Where are they aimed today?
Events are conspiring to bring closure. Next week, Hans Blix and the UN weapons inspectors will make a crucial report on what they have found in Iraq. More importantly, President Bush will also be delivering his annual state of the union address. Arthur Miller could not have contrived higher drama. Will the president close the deal, or will it be the death of a sales pitch? Either way, it is an American political tragedy.
Author, broadcaster and investigative journalist Michael Harris can be heard Monday to Thursday, 1-3 p.m. on 580 CFRA.
Letters to the editor should be sent to oped@sunpub.com.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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