Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Mark Steyn: It's not really about Saddam
National Post (Canada) ^ | 02/14/03 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 02/14/2003 3:30:04 AM PST by Pokey78

Saddam is what Alfred Hitchcock called the MacGuffin. Like the top-secret formula in The 39 Steps or the uranium in Notorious, he's the pretext for the movie, but he's not really what the movie's about. Despite the best efforts of the French and Germans, the old butcher will be gone in a few weeks. The real debate in Washington is about the speed and scale of post-Saddam Middle Eastern reform: There are legitimate differences about that but the "post-Saddam" bit of it is taken for granted. As noted in this space many months ago, he's being taken out first because he's the weak link in the chain of Arab despots. All the other stuff -- the chemical weapons, the ties to Islamist terrorism, the material breaches -- is true but ancillary.

Likewise, for M. Chirac, Herr Schroeder and their little Belgian chum, it's not really about Saddam, either. To be sure, they would like him to remain President-for-Life and their joke "plan" to send in blue-helmeted UN troops was designed to achieve just that. This isn't because, as some have argued, they're worried that when the Yanks open up the filing cabinets they're going to find a lot of invoices from France and Germany. As must surely be clear after these last two weeks, Messrs. Chirac and Schroeder don't embarrass easily. The wily Continentals will shrug off whatever turns up in Saddam's basement: It's just business, nothing personal, c'mon, we're all men of the world here, right?

No, for them what this movie is about is much closer to home. To the dozy "experts" on this side of the Atlantic, the notion of a "split" between America and "Europe" is so appealing they don't seem to care that the only real split is between Chirac, Schroeder and Belgium's Manekin Pis, on the one hand, and everybody else. America has never been isolated. Oh, sure, concede the cynics, Bush's Anglosphere poodles in Britain and Australia are snuffling his gusset, but no one else. Well, there's those seven Continental countries that signed that letter to The Wall Street Journal. Hah! scoffed Robert Scheer of The Los Angeles Times, nothing but a bunch of nations "you can buy on eBay." Really? Italy? Spain? Next, the Vilnius Group got on board: That's pretty much every country in the Baltic and Eastern Europe. "Everyone's feeling better. Albania signed on," sneered Mark Shields on CNN.

Oh, dear, oh, dear. Are there no foreigners good enough for Shields, Scheer and the other "multilateralists"? Brits, Aussies, Italians, Poles, Lithuanians: none of 'em count. During the Great War, Irving Berlin wrote a song about a proud mother watching her son march in the parade: They Were All Out Of Step But Jim. In this war, according to the picky multilateralists, they're all out of step but Jacques. Well, President Chirac can do the math: On the Continent of Europe, the majority of nations support the Anglo-American position; Belgium supports the Franco-German position, and the rapid crumbling of support for the Schroeder government at home suggests, if he's not careful, that the axis of weasels is going to be down to Paris and Brussels, Monsieur Evil et Mini-Moi. Chirac is playing a high-stakes game -- Schroeder is merely the dumb moll who's along for the ride and way out of her league -- and it's important to understand that the swaggering Texan gunslinger is a mere proxy for his real target: Tony Blair.

To the French, something very astonishing has happened: "Europe" was supposed to be France writ large, a "union" built in France's image. To that end, they took it for granted that the entire Continent would inevitably come to be as semi-detached from NATO as the French have been since 1966. To M. Chirac, Tony Blair is the odd man out, with his strange Anglo-Saxon hang-ups about the transatlantic alliance. But, as has become obvious, to the Czechs, Poles, Bulgars, Romanians and everybody else, it's Chirac who's the misfit.

What to do about this appalling lèse-majesté?

Answer: Get rid of Blair.

Sounds crazy? Not necessarily. Look what happened a month before the last Gulf War. Mrs. Thatcher: riding high in October, shot down in November. She went to a big EU get-together, fired off a couple of rhetorical volleys that the Eurodefeatists in her own party found a little too vulgar, and next thing you know she was being carried out by the handles. The fact that she was George Bush's buddy availed her naught. Arguably, this changed the course of the war: It was Maggie who'd stiffened Bush's spine after the seizure of Kuwait in August 1990, famously telling him "this is no time to go wobbly"; I think it's safe to assume that she would have advised the President that calling it quits before Baghdad and leaving the thug on his throne was wobbliness of the worst kind, and she may well have carried the day. But by that time she'd been gone three months and the talk was all of "no-fly zones" and "UN-designated safe havens."

So look at it from M. Chirac's point of view: Why shouldn't that happen again? Blair's line on Iraq is unpopular with his own parliamentary party and its supporters throughout the country. Why not put the skids under him? Who knows what could happen in three or four weeks? After all, in some ways, Blair is more dangerous than Thatcher: the latter saw herself as an Atlanticist rather than a European; Blair sees himself as both -- which, to the likes of Chirac, is a contradiction in terms. But that's evidently not how Mitteleuropa and beyond views it. Let Blair emerge from an Anglo-American war on Iraq with his worldview resoundingly confirmed, and it's possible that Europe will develop in ways that are not in France's interest.

The EU is far more important to Chirac than NATO is. The EU is a French creation, NATO an American one. So the French decision to block Turkey's request for mutual aid is entirely consistent with its long-term priorities: It has no objection to NATO as a moribund talking-shop, but it has zero interest in supporting it as a functioning mutual defence pact dominated by the Anglo-Americans. For Turkey, on the other hand, NATO membership is an indispensable component of its national identity -- as a modern, secular, western Muslim nation. To flip the finger at Turkey is to risk doing grave damage not just to NATO but to one of the few functioning Islamic states. I think it's very difficult, after the Franco-German-Belgian mischief-making, to carry on dignifying them even nominally as "allies."

The German government is currently in the hands of some pretty grubby characters, the generation whose views on America and terrorism were formed in the student riots of 1968. Belgium is not a serious country: Its last performance on the world stage was the weekend before September 11th, when, in its capacity as President of the European Union, it was at Durban grovelling to Mugabe and Co. for the evils of western civilization. Is it worth maintaining the pretense that the Anglo-Americans and these fellows share common goals? My distinguished colleague John O'Sullivan gets very impatient with the surrender-monkey cracks and thinks the Continentals are still worth the effort. I seem to be making a lot of movie comparisons today, so here's one more: The O'Sullivanite tendency sees this as The Road To Baghdad with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby as America and Europe: they snipe and squabble and scheme and pick each other's pockets and fight over the girl, but in the end they're there for each other. I don't think so. The French have an interest in a Europe that's a counterweight to America, but none at all in a Europe that's as pro-American as Blair and the Vilnius Group are. For them, that's what the picture's about -- and Saddam and Turkey and NATO are just MacGuffins.

For the rest of us, what's at stake since September 11th, since that Durban conference even, is the survival of "the West" -- an elastic term that has traditionally stretched from trigger-happy Texas to statist Sweden. If M. Chirac's vision of Europe prevails, we can pretty much guarantee, from his performance this last month, how the UN, NATO, the ICC, and all the rest will develop. Therefore, it is necessary that he emerge from the ruins of Saddam's presidential palace as dazed and diminished as possible. That's not the main reason for going to war, but it's now an important sub-plot.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Germany; News/Current Events; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: bubyesaddam; bushdoctrineunfold; marksteynlist; surrendermonkey
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-95 next last
To: Lando Lincoln; pgyanke
Ya'll both have been added.
61 posted on 02/14/2003 12:11:17 PM PST by Pokey78
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 58 | View Replies]

To: Renfield
Hellooooo! Wrong thread. Maybe even wrong SITE!
62 posted on 02/14/2003 12:11:40 PM PST by Paul Ross (From the State Looking Forward to Global Warming! Let's Drown France!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies]

To: Paul Ross
I intended that post to go to a thread discussing the Nature Conservancy and the Klamath Basin. Not sure how it ended up here.
63 posted on 02/14/2003 12:36:56 PM PST by Renfield (13)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 62 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78; *Bush Doctrine Unfold; randita; SierraWasp; Carry_Okie; okie01; socal_parrot; snopercod; ..
Please add me to the ping list!

This is starting to make sense! Hmmm!

Lots of ramifications, especially regarding Russia!

Bush Doctrine Unfolds :

To find all articles tagged or indexed using Bush Doctrine Unfold , click below:
  click here >>> Bush Doctrine Unfold <<< click here  
(To view all FR Bump Lists, click here)



64 posted on 02/14/2003 12:41:10 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach (Nuke Saddam ( Bush is thinking about it ) and then what about Germany and France?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 61 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
Good stuff from Steyn. The membership of the Belgium/France/Germany clique alone should give everyone a clue that there's a push going on here for the EU to attempt to flex its political muscle in the absence of any cogent military musculature. This, in the face of a number of new EU members who may or may not go along with the current total domination of EU policy-making by those countries. The latter are, in addition, closer geographically to Saddam and hence to any weapons he may cook up.

From the Axis of Weasels perspective (hereinafter "AOW") it's a win-win situation - they divorce Britain from influence in the EU, they buffalo the new EU members, they neutralize NATO as an active player, and they give everyone on the continent the idea that the only alternative to U.S. hegemony is that of the AOW. Understand that the U.S. and Britain don't have to lose in Iraq for all this to take place - even a swift, relatively bloodless victory there will not affect this ploy.

There is a risk, and appearances are that it's a big one - the other members of the EU have to play along. If they don't, then it becomes painfully obvious that membership in that supposed federation of equals is, in fact, merely a more or less complete surrender of sovereignty in those areas that the bureaucrats in Brussels decide are their rightful demesne. This manifested itself in the form of common economic policy last year, whose lack of success is certain to make people in Madrid and Milan wonder if perhaps adding military and political subordination on top of that is an altogether good idea.

This is a calculated risk. It would be arrogant for Washingon DC to claim that it speaks for all of Europe and despite the noise to that effect I cannot really remember an occasion when it has done so. It is not, evidently, to be considered arrogant for that claim to be made in Paris, Brussels, and Berlin. Not by those in charge of the AOW, at least. By those in Madrid and Milan it's rather another matter.

But one can understand the motivation of the AOW to move the resolution of this situation back into the UN or the like. There, they possess a parity of power with the United States - one does not have to pay for a vote in blood. The AOW possesses three such votes in that venue, and the United States but one, two if Great Britain, God bless 'em, have signed on. That that three-to-two ratio does not represent the respective military and economic power hardly needs pointing out. And that explains a good deal about why the AOW wants it in that court.

65 posted on 02/14/2003 12:52:18 PM PST by Billthedrill
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Billthedrill
there's a push going on here for the EU to attempt to flex its political muscle in the absence of any cogent military musculature.

Excellent analysis, BTD. Kissinger, interviewed on Charlie Rose last night, also said that Franco-German dominance of EU is the AOW's real game. Ol' Henry stated unequivically that the time for war is NOW.

66 posted on 02/14/2003 1:06:38 PM PST by PoisedWoman (Fed up with the liberal media)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 65 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
My solution, when the CDU takes over control of the German government, the members of NATO should vote to expel France and Belguim. Some German armoured divisions should be placed along the Belgian border ready to invade France if necessary. NATO would have gotten rid of its biggest problem, the French-German collaboration would be ended, and the EU would be weakend.
67 posted on 02/14/2003 1:08:14 PM PST by Paleo Conservative
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Will do!
68 posted on 02/14/2003 1:09:42 PM PST by Pokey78
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 64 | View Replies]

To: xm177e2
WHEN SADDAM HUSSEIN joined the Baath party in Iraq in the 1950s, it had only about 300 members. But it was developing the Leninist party structure that Aflaq had observed in France. There were local cells, divisions, and branches, culminating in the ruling elite, the Regional Command and the Regional Command Council. The Arab Socialist Baath party, or ABSP, developed internal security and intelligence networks and even theoretical journals to develop party dogma. From the first, party statements were marked by a highly charged ideological style, which separated the world into the party of pure good (the Baathists themselves) and the party of pure evil (just about everyone else). As Tariq Aziz, a longtime party leader, noted in the 1980s, "The ABSP is not a conventional political organization, but is composed of cells of valiant revolutionaries. . . . They are experts in secret organization. They are organizers of demonstrations, strikes, and armed revolutions. . . . They are the knights of the struggle."

Once in power, the party behaved, in some respects, as Leninist parties do everywhere. It built a parallel party structure on top of the normal government bureaucracy to enforce loyalty and conformity. It established its own army, in addition to the regular Iraqi army, and its own intelligence service, which at first was given the otherworldly name the Apparatus of Yearnings. Ambitious young people were compelled to join the party if they hoped to rise, or even study abroad. Leaving the Baath party to join another political group remains in Iraq a crime punishable by death.
69 posted on 02/14/2003 1:10:25 PM PST by ez (WHERE'S THE OVERNIGHT POLLING ON THE ESTRADA FILIBUSTER???)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 47 | View Replies]

To: Billthedrill

I think there might be another sub-plot going on here that might ultimately come as quite a surprise to the French. The Germans look to be a bit out of phase on this, with rumors running hot and cold of a split between Schröder and Fischer. In the background of all this, peeking out behind this tree and then that one, is Vladimir Putin. Here's Putin on stage with Schröder. Here he is with Chirac. Now we find out that Germany's Fischer is a serious "red," with a long history of Interesting Acquaintances among left-wing terrorist groups, including the Baader-Meinhof gang. The one-time head of Romania's intelligence service thinks Fischer may have been involved with the KGB. Hmmmm.

Chirac may have one plan for the EU, with one fan in Schröder. Putin may have a different plan, and Fischer may be part of it.


70 posted on 02/14/2003 1:26:27 PM PST by Nick Danger (these Frenchmen are all cheese and no moose)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 65 | View Replies]

To: Nick Danger
Well we have this, no mention of Fischer though:

Putin keeps options open on Iraq war ...

71 posted on 02/14/2003 1:47:02 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach (Nuke Saddam ( Bush is thinking about it ) and then what about Germany and France?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 70 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
bump
72 posted on 02/14/2003 2:36:56 PM PST by GOPJ
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: XJarhead
You're right. A ring of truth...

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. It's not France being different "just to be different". It's France being "different" to wreck the Atlantic alliance, sever European ties to America, and remake the Continent in its image. It's the one explanation that fits the evidence best.

73 posted on 02/14/2003 2:39:05 PM PST by GOPJ
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 33 | View Replies]

To: Nick Danger
Yeh - isn't it lovely? France and Germany are trying to pull the EU tiller, Russia is merrily wiggling it both ways and laughing as the boat rocks. Fact is, Russia stands to gain from a weakened NATO since she has a military and the EU does not. I'd like to think that Chirac and Schroeder took that into account, but those two incompetents don't seem to have it in them, and Putin is more than capable of eating their lunch and handing them the bill.
74 posted on 02/14/2003 2:43:46 PM PST by Billthedrill
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 70 | View Replies]

To: G L Tirebiter

I predict that when push comes to shove the French will abstain and not veto. They have pulled this kind of maneuver before.

Tony Blair is betting the ranch on Iraq and we had better back him up and give the Brits a lion's share of the spoils after Hussein is gone.

The Bush team has been insensitve to the growing Franco-German threat in Europe to try set "Fortress Europe" and freeze us out. We need to become engaged in Europe and try to help our Continental allies steer the EU back to its original vision.
75 posted on 02/14/2003 3:20:27 PM PST by ggekko
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
thank the Lord that Al Gore invented the internet

Steyn is brilliant as usual but maybe too serious today, so this remark of yours did remarkably improved my spirit.

Please, please Pokey... would you mind if I use it as my own?

76 posted on 02/14/2003 3:33:08 PM PST by Neophyte
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: ggekko
In his SOTU speech, Bush warned that "one vial"of Saddam's biological WMD would be sufficient to inflict "a day of of horror like none we have ever known" (and 9/11 sets a pretty high bar for that). Obviously, by joining an attack on Iraq, France would be setting itself up for just such a "day of horror" -- as would we be, and as would any country which allied with us. You can therefore take it to the bank that we are not about to launch such an attack, notwithstanding the saber-rattling and posturing, and that we have never had any serious expectation that France, Germany, Russia, etc. are about to join us in an attack. Something else is going on.
77 posted on 02/14/2003 3:35:50 PM PST by The Great Satan (Revenge, Terror and Extortion: A Guide for the Perplexed)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 75 | View Replies]

To: The Great Satan
Something else is going on.

Like what?

78 posted on 02/14/2003 4:06:37 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach (Nuke Saddam ( Bush is thinking about it ) and then what about Germany and France?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 77 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
Can you add me to the Steyn ping list? He's fantastic.
Thanks!
79 posted on 02/14/2003 4:51:49 PM PST by HanneyBean
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: The Great Satan
Even if I concede your argument about US attempting to bluff Saddam, France's actions still don't make a great deal of sense. That is to say, France's stated reasons for opposing an attack are not credible.

During the Cold War and facing a similar situation, France would have a made public stink about opposing us and then at the list minute they would abstain from a security council vote and then cut a secret deal to protect their interests. They did in fact cut a secret deal this time about 6 weeks ago but then for reasons that remain obscure they repudiated that deal. I am most inclined at this point to believe Steyn's explanation for France's duplicity. Either that or Chirac is a complete idiot who has backed himslef into corner by letting fawning press coverage go to his head. If the 2nd explanation is correct, then maybe Chirac will have a nervous breakdown after a successful invasion just like Anthony Eden did during the Suez crisis of 1956.

I don't think we are bluffing; we would never have deployed the 101st Airborne division to the Gulf for a bluff.
80 posted on 02/14/2003 5:08:31 PM PST by ggekko
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 77 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-95 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson