The
Tide of Opinion on Iraq
has clearly turned
By
Jonathan
Power
February 24, 2003
LONDON - Until Mr Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons'
inspector, made his presentation to the UN's Security
Council last week it was still unclear which way the
Europeans were going to vote on authorizing war against
Iraq. Many had assumed the French in the end would go
along, to get along - to maintain their status at the UN
and to make sure their serious economic interests in Iraq
were not jeopardised. This is no longer true. Indeed one
can go even further and say that Britain, until now
America's most faithful ally, is beginning to waver. One
can see it in parliament, one can see it in the
newspapers, one can see it on the street and, most
important of all, one can see it on Prime Minister Tony
Blair's face.
The Americans, in particular Defence Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, have tried to divide Europe, to mock the notion
of an emerging common foreign policy, to set "old" Europe
against a "new" Europe, the pro American eastern
Europeans. But, apart from the fact that the east
Europeans are not yet in the European Union and need to
watch their step in case they provoke a delay in their
promised entry, the important development of the last few
days is that it has become clear that the electorate of
Europe has a common foreign policy even if the leaders do
not - and that is to oppose war with Iraq. The Americans,
the crowds on the marches seemed to be saying, may be
assuming the inevitability of war but surely they are not
claiming infallibility! The Europeans want the Americans
to stop, look at the evidence that Mr Blix and his
colleague, Mohamed ElBaradei, from the International
Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, are garnering with an open
mind, and also think hard of the awful, quite terrible
likely consequences of a war.
What are these? The real danger that Saddam Hussein
with his back to the wall and with the end of his life
only hours away gives the order for the use of chemical
and biological weapons. The Americans have said in this
case they might use nuclear weapons and Israel almost
certainly would if they were attacked too. It is quite
impossible to imagine how angry 80% of the world would be
at such an act. It is nearly everyone's greatest taboo
(apart from a relatively small circle of
neo-conservatives who have the ear of President George
Bush - Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney but certainly
not Secretary of State Colin Powell who would certainly
resign taking some of the important service chiefs with
him). Humanity in unison would seethe with anger. America
would never dare show its face again, for a very long
time.
But even if war did not degenerate to this level it
will still trigger enormous waves of political bitterness
against America all over the Islamic world. These tidal
waves of anger will certainly topple the regime in
Pakistan, putting the country's nuclear weapons in the
hands of extremist Islamic militants - although American
troops will probable race to forestall them - and they
will rock to their very foundations the governments of
Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
There will be thousands of new recruits for Al Qaeda,
which will find that the present day social sanction
against further murderous activities, quite rigorous in
most Islamic societies despite the superficial analysis
of American "experts", will have softened by many
degrees. Besides, the way a war is going to be fought in
all likelihood - almost house to house in Baghdad - is
going to produce an appalling loss of civilian life.
No wonder the Pope, no great radical and a staunch
believer in the valuable role played by the U.S. in the
Cold War, has come out against what he sees as an unjust
war. These protests were not the old student kind of the
1960s. They were middle of the road people, professors as
much as students, the thinking middle classes and working
class, people with experience who know quite a bit who
don't even want necessarily to see their government
replaced. They just want it to change its mind.
Whatever economic difficulties there may be in Europe
at the moment the one thing cannot be said is that the
continent is in the grip of Europessimism. That period if
it ever existed has long gone. It is generally positive
and optimistic. Neither is it a "used up" civilization.
There does not have to be a federal Europe for a powerful
Europe to exist, as my colleague William Pfaff has long
and correctly argued. Europeans are aware of their common
experience. They built the European Union to avoid the
mistakes of their fathers - the too ready resort to war.
And increasingly as the demonstrations, the newspapers
editorials and the critique of politicians have shown, a
Europe is emerging that is going to stand up to America
on this need for war. Iraq and its weapons of mass
destruction can be contained as they have been contained
the last decade without another war.
Perhaps Mr Bush has done the world a service. It has
made us all hold Iraq up to the light. But a majority in
Europe have concluded that whilst Saddam Hussein is an
evil man, inured to any sense of human rights, a war
would be the worst of all human wrongs.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2003 By
JONATHAN POWER
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