USS Clueless              Voyages of a restless mind

Main: normal long no graphics Contact Log archives Best log entries Other articles Site Search

Stardate 20011128.0708 (On Screen via long range sensors): Thank goodness for The Guardian. When I can't find anything else to write about, The Guardian is always there for me. This article expresses concern over the fact that the US is now eyeing Iraq and making threatening noises. Naturally, the Europeans should be the ones to reign in the impulses of their problem child, only this time American doesn't seem to be willing to listen to mommy and daddy. Oh, dear.

It's not so much that the facts in this article are wrong (actually they're pretty much correct) as that their take on the issues are so different than mine.

In Newsweek, [President Bush] 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

Their take on this? We've lost control of the cowboy nation. My take? Why the hell aren't they helping us?

One proof of [the new American will] 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.

Of course, not everything they say is right; it wouldn't be a Guardian article without at least one ridiculous exaggeration. We are hardly sacrificing our rights. We passed a new law that gives a few new capabilities to law enforcement agencies, but I don't see any attempts to repeal the First Amendment.

The rest of the article is a pretty correct observation that there is going to be an increasing divergence between the US and the European nations on willingness to keep fighting, which is pretty much true. Despite invocation of NATO Article 5, the Europeans (except the British) have never shown much will to participate in this war, and none of them (even the British) seem to have any interest in following it to its logical conclusion. The US, on the other hand, isn't going to rest on this.

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.

It's absolutely correct that the US wants to run this war, and the reason is that the last couple of times it tried to run a coalition war the result was a fiasco. We learned our lesson: we can't trust the Europeans to fight. On the other hand, this is absolutely wrong: the US definitely wants to win the peace. But, and this is important, we're not going to let "winning the peace" prevent us from winning the war, first. Setting up a stable government in Afghanistan is important, but annihilating the Taliban and al Qaeda are more important. And we're not going to let "winning the peace" prevent us from winning the whole war, which means not just in Afghanistan but everywhere else that needs to be straightened out.

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.

Quite right, too; we've spent the last ten years trying that slow road of economic and diplomatic action and it doesn't work. It gave our enemies free reign to attack us. So we're not going to do that anymore.

This whole article oozes with European chauvinism. But at least it does recognize the one fundamental truth: the American people are not interested in cooperating with the Europeans any more if the price of that cooperation is failure. This war will be fought and will be won. The Europeans are welcome to help as long as their help doesn't lead to failure, or they are welcome to sit back and wring their hands and complain (which we'll ignore and which also won't lead to failure). But there is absolutely nothin