{"id":138,"date":"2003-07-20T06:22:11","date_gmt":"2003-07-20T06:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:16","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:16","slug":"dear_kofi_theyre_our_troops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=138","title":{"rendered":"Dear Kofi: They’re Our<\/u> Troops"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I read the paper and grit my teeth. In today’s<\/a> NT Times:<\/p>\n

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has called on the American-led forces in Iraq to set out a “clear timetable” for a staged withdrawal, noting that numerous Iraqis had told United Nations officials that “democracy should not be imposed from the outside.”<\/p>\n

While welcoming the formation last weekend of the 25-member Governing Council for Iraq, Mr. Annan said in a report distributed to Security Council members on Friday that “there is a pressing need to set out a clear and specific sequence of events leading to the end of the military occupation.”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is the same Kofi Annan who is quite willing<\/a> to put US troops at risk in Liberia:<\/p>\n

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan kept up pressure on the United States to lead intervention in Liberia on Monday as troops strengthened defenses around battle-worn Monrovia in fear of another bloody rebel attack. West African countries pledged troops for a peacekeeping force on Sunday, but they want help from the United States to prevent a bloodbath in the capital and end nearly 14 years of violence that have infected the impoverished region. “There are lots of expectations that the United States will be able to lead the force,” Annan told reporters in Geneva. “But that is a sovereign decision for them to take.”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sorry, Kofi, you’re being a little heavy-handed in asserting the UN’s primacy over my country. We’d really like to have the UN’s help in this, but there’s a cost which is simply too damn high. <\/p>\n

In the same March post I quote below, I criticized<\/a> Bush for doing a crummy job of building an international coalition in the months leading up to the war.<\/p>\n

But Bush has failed to sell this war in three arenas.<\/p>\n

He has failed to sell it (as well as it should have been) to the U.S. people. The reality of 9\/11 has sold this war, and our atavistic desire for revenge is the engine that drives the support that Bush actually has.<\/p>\n

He has failed to sell it diplomatically. Not that he could have ever gotten the support of France or Germany; as noted above, even with an AmEx receipt for the 9\/11 plane tickets signed by Saddam himself, France would find a reason to defer this war. But he should never have let them get the moral high ground, which they have somehow managed to claim.<\/p>\n

He has failed to sell it to our enemies, who do not believe today that we are serious about achieving our stated goals. This is, to me the most serious one, because the perception that we are not deadly serious is a perception that we are weak; and we will have to fight harder, not because we are too strong, but because we will be perceived as too weak.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Somehow Kofi seems to assuming that we’re so weak that he can direct our foreign policy.<\/p>\n

Sorry, don’t think so. <\/p>\n

And if Bush & Co. cave on this, and get outnegotiated in this situation, they’re clowns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Somehow Kofi Annan seems to assuming that we’re so weak that he can direct our foreign policy. Sorry, don’t think so. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}