Mark Steyn MEGA PING!!!
Posted on 02/07/2003 8:10:04 AM PST by Rummyfan
We're on the road to Baghdad And the United Nations is on the road to oblivion
Mark Steyn National Post
Thursday, February 06, 2003 ADVERTISEMENT
There will now be war. Not just because the only reason to burn those intelligence sources is if you're planning on strolling in to those facilities openly within a few weeks. Yesterday's presentation was also for the benefit of posterity: When Saddam's skeletons come tumbling out of the post-liberation closet, it will not be possible to claim, "Quelle surprise! If only we'd known!" The French have intelligence services, too. When the Americans and British say "This is what we know," the subtext is: The French and the Russians know at least some of this stuff, too. They just don't think it matters.
It won't have changed minds, and it wasn't intended to. If you're the sort of person who thinks Colin Powell has a troupe of Arabic-speaking radio actors on staff to fake audio transcripts, or who genuinely believes there's a perfectly innocent explanation for all that chit-chat about deleting all references to "nerve agents," then nothing will change your mind. There's been an interesting ratchet effect in recent weeks: The left has increasingly given up on even pro forma denunciations of Saddam -- "Of course, I want to see him gone, but ..." As Tony Benn's Monica-style interviewing technique illustrated, the old butcher's becoming a turn-on to them, another Ho, another Fidel.
But, if you take the suppler position of M. Chirac -- which is, broadly, that we cynical Gallic charmers run rings around the UN, so why shouldn't Saddam? -- then the strength of General Powell's evidence is also irrelevant. So, at the end of his presentation, those who were in favour of war were still in favour, and those opposed still opposed. Whether Canada will have been persuaded to take either position is an interesting philosophical question but of no great importance to the world.
The surprise was Mr. Powell's confident assertion of Saddam's links to terrorism and the presence in Baghdad for eight months of key al-Qaeda personnel with links to the recently arrested ricin terrorists in Britain.
The Secretary was at pains to emphasize that these agents' recent schemes have been principally against European targets, and in listing the individual countries he chose to put France first, every time. In other words, if you wish to put your investment in interminable UN proceduralism over your own national security, you do so at your own peril. If you accept what he says, then it moves the debate beyond 1441: If al-Qaeda's in Baghdad, then that's not a UN discussion topic but a threat to U.S. security.
You can choose not to believe that, if you wish. The evidence is circumstantial, and as an unending torrent of alleged experts assure us nightly, the "fundamentalist" Islamists like al-Qaeda revile "secular" Baathists like Saddam. That's a lot of bunk. For one thing, Iraq has recently produced a collector's-item edition of the Koran written entirely in Saddam's donated blood. That makes him rather less "secular" a leader than, say, Hillary Clinton or Gerhard Schroeder. Anyone who regards Saddam's behaviour these past two decades as a reliable indicator of the scale of his ambition will understand that he would have no ideological objection to making common cause with al-Qaeda and several compelling reasons to keep them a going concern, if only as a distraction. You can argue against that, if you want to. But your argument depends on giving both Saddam and al-Qaeda the benefit of far more doubts than their prior behaviour warrants. Your argument is basically: We can't really be sure he'd sell suitcase nukes to terrorists until one goes off in Detroit. Then we'll say, oh, OK, maybe there's a link after all.
The U.S., Britain, Australia, Italy, Spain and their other allies -- a category that does not, alas, include Canada -- are past that stage of the debate. Resolution 1441, painstakingly negotiated syllable by syllable by Mr. Powell and his duplicitous opposite number in the Quai d'Orsay, was never about Saddam. It was about the UN. The choice is: Put Saddam out of business, or put yourselves out of business. To judge from their reactions yesterday, the Security Council members still don't quite get it. The Russians and French responded to Powell with some artful platitudes about the need to strengthen the inspections regime. Even allowing for the fact that these remarks had been prepared ahead of time, their complacency was insulting. Mr. Powell's point is a simple one: Saddam cannot be "inspected" into compliance.
This statement of the obvious was supported by no other Permanent Member of the Council apart from Britain. Jack Straw, the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, began by congratulating Germany and his friend Joschka Fischer on assuming the Presidency of the Council and then went on to write the UN's obituary, as just another bunch of international ditherers, all talk, no walk: "The League failed because it could not create action from its words ... At each stage good men said wait; the evil is not big enough to challenge: then before their eyes, the evil became too big to challenge."
Broadly, the French are still in the first stage. But there's some indication Herr Fischer and his government are already at the second: They've concluded that the informal coalition of Islamist terrorist groups and rogue states is too big to challenge directly. While the French are behaving according to type, the shrillness of the German government's anti-war rhetoric is at odds with half-a-century of the country's political tradition. When Schroeder campaigned for re-election on an explicitly anti-Texan ticket, the realpolitik types argued it was just hustings bluster; after election day, it would be business as usual. But it isn't. What are they so worked up about? With that question in mind, Mr. Powell's remarks about Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi are of particular relevance: today's Süddeutsche Zeitung reports Zarqawi's plans to target "Israeli installations" -- i.e., synagogues -- in Germany.
As a sovereign state, the Germans are entitled to their position. So are the French: The Daily Telegraph reports that Islamic extremists are already conducting a "low-level intifada" in France. In the event of war with Iraq, the "Arab street" in Lyons and Hamburg will be far more incendiary than that in Baghdad. M. Chirac, behind the scenes, seems to be showing some willingness to be helped out of the corner he flamboyantly painted himself into: There wasn't much talk about the French veto in either New York or Paris yesterday. But it's clear from the mood around the Security Council table that there also isn't much will for anything other than yet another last-chance resolution.
That won't do now. The trouble with the UN is simple: At its inception, it reflected the realities of the World War victory parade; from the Fifties to the Eighties, it reflected the realities of the Cold War stalemate; now it reflects not the new reality -- a unipolar world dominated by a hyperpower -- but the denial of that fact. For most of the participants in yesterday's meeting, the UN is not a reflection of geopolitical power but a substitute for it, a means by which the Lilliputians can tie down the Texan Gulliver. The fantastical, unreal character it adopted after the collapse of Communism sealed its fate. Yesterday was merely a confirmation.
Two or three dozen countries will join the war to liberate Iraq. If the Americans and British are wise, they'll play up the smaller fry, let their generals handle some of the press conferences, talk up their war heroics. All the late 20th century arrangements -- the EU, NATO and most definitely the UN -- are about to be re-made.
For most of the participants in yesterday's meeting, the UN is not a reflection of geopolitical power but a substitute for it, a means by which the Lilliputians can tie down the Texan Gulliver.
That's it, and Powell's talk meant so little that the leading responders had their speeches written out in advance. The U.N. truly is going the way of the old League.
L
Pinging the Steyn list.
Same fate, for the same reason, done in by the same nations.
The implications of this are staggering. A schism will run through the EU, with the Axis of Weasel on one side, and most of the rest of Europe on the other.
Turkey will abandon its hopes to get in the EU because of France's unwillingness to commit NATO troops to protect that fellow NATO nation from Saddam.
This is going to be extremely interesting to watch, and I'm not quite sure what it's going to look like afterward.
Just Brilliant. I sure wish I could write (think) like that myself.
The UN is irrelevant. It cannot work, even if it wanted to. Because the UN is nothing. It is merely a collection of countries, all very different.
It cannot work because it allows uncivilized countries not only to belong, but to vote, chair committees (see: Syria- Human Rights, Iraq- Disarmament).
The UN is unworkable as an Enforcement mechanism, it is only valid as a discussion and debating and negotiating society.
I wonder where Germany will end up in the end?
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