Bob Kerrey has an oped up in today’s New York Times on his response to Condi Rice’s testimony and on his criticism of Bush’s strategy in dealing with the WoT.
First. let me say what a colossally offensive idea it is to me that someone charged with one of the most serious investigations of my lifetime – more serious in many ways than the Watergate investigation – would , before concluding hearings and outside the context of his fellow committee members – take a public stand like this.
I’ve been critical of these hearings as having been overly politicized, and focussed too much on the good of the respective parties involved, rather than of the Republic and this bit of gratuitous grandstanding validates all of those criticisms.
We need a careful, thoughtful, ruthless examination of the failures in doctrine and practice that led up to the events of 9/11, and based on this column alone, this circus of a hearing isn’t it. The fact that he’s willing to go public with his prejudgement at this point in the process makes a mockery of that process, and in turn damages our ability to look at the real problems that led to 9/11.
But let’s move past my annoyance about the provenance of the document, and talk about it on its merits.
At Thursday’s hearing before the 9/11 commission, Condoleezza Rice, President Bush’s national security adviser, gave a triumphal presentation. She was a spectacular witness.
I was a tough critic of some of her answers and assertions, though I believe I was at least as tough with the national security adviser for President Clinton. At the beginning and end of every criticism I have made in this process, I have also offered this disclaimer: anyone who was in Congress, as I was during the critical years leading up to Sept. 11, 2001, must accept some of the blame for the catastrophe. It was a collective failure.
Two things about that failure are clear to me at this point in our investigation. The first is that 9/11 could have been prevented, and the second is that our current strategy against terrorism is deeply flawed. In particular, our military and political tactics in Iraq are creating the conditions for civil war there and giving Al Qaeda a powerful rationale to recruit young people to declare jihad on the United States.
I’m sorry – they didn’t have a powerful recruiting presence in 2000? The videos of the USS Cole and the ruins in Manhattan weren’t good recruiting tools? What – you’re afraid they’re going to get pissed off at us? Here’s a question for you, Senator: How would we tell the difference?
Of course the attacks on 9/11 could have been prevented. So could the assassination of JFK, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the battle at Little Big Horn. History is contingent, and the chains that lead to large events are themselves fragile. The problem is that we have only partial information at any time, and that we’re selective in what we look at. Looking forward, we’re usually looking at the wrong information, and don’t have all of it.
How many Arab men flew on 9/11? Which ones do we look at, which ones do we devote resources to, which ones do we detain?
How the hell do we know? Today, we know because we had the passenger manifests (and brave members of the cabin crews identified the hijackers by seat in their calls from the doomed planes). We know because we spent millions of investigator-hours poring over the trails left by those 19 men. But how do we do it moving forward in time?
The case for the first conclusion begins with this fact: On 9/11, 19 men defeated every defense mechanism the United States had placed in their way. They succeeded in murdering 3,000 men and women whose only crime was going to work that morning. And they succeeded at a time of heightened alert … long after we recognized that Al Qaeda was capable of sophisticated military operations.
I’ve said in the past that what we had was largely a failure of doctrine and imagination.
We allowed people to freely fly with knives (I flew with a Spyderco Delica for eight or ten years). The only sophisticated thing they did was to find four people who knew they would die and were willing to learn to fly, and 15 thugs who went along for the ride.
Remember, the attack occurred after President Clinton had let pass opportunities to arrest or kill Al Qaeda’s leadership when the threat was much smaller. It occurred after President Bush and Ms. Rice were told on Jan. 25, 2001, that Al Qaeda was in the United States, and after President Bush was told on Aug. 6, 2001, that “70 F.B.I. field investigations were open against Al Qaeda” and that the “F.B.I. had found patterns of suspicious activities in the U.S. consistent with preparation for hijacking.”
Once again I know that President Clinton, President Bush and Ms. Rice all faced difficult challenges in the years and months before 9/11; I do not know if I would have handled things differently had I been in their shoes. It has been difficult for all of us to understand and accept the idea that a non-state actor like Osama bin Laden, in conjunction with Al Qaeda, could be a more serious strategic threat to us than the nation-states we grew up fearing.
But here’s the nub of the question: would Al Quieda have been a serious threat as a non-state actor without the explicit and tacit support of states?
But this recognition does not absolve me of my obligation to ask those who were responsible for our national security at the time what they did to protect us against this terrorist threat.
One episode strikes me as particularly important. On July 5, 2001, Ms. Rice asked Richard Clarke, then the administration’s counterterrorism chief, to help domestic agencies prepare against an attack. Five days later an F.B.I. field agent in Phoenix recommended that the agency investigate whether Qaeda operatives were training at American flight schools. He speculated that Mr. bin Laden’s followers might be trying to infiltrate the civil aviation system as pilots, security guards or other personnel.
Yes, and I’ll bet we can find memos from other FBI field agents worried that Aryan Nation supporters are planning to break members out of jail, abortion clinic murders are prepared to attack … and so on. It the process of setting priority that’s critical, and sadly, we’re human and sometimes don’t have the right ones; and when we do have the right ones, it’s often for the wrong reason.
Ms. Rice did not receive this information, a failure for which she blames the structure of government. And, while I am not blaming her, I have not seen the kind of urgent follow-up after this July 5 meeting that anyone who has worked in government knows is needed to make things happen. I have not found evidence that federal agencies were directed clearly, forcefully and unambiguously to tell the president everything they were doing to eliminate Qaeda cells in the United States.
As opposed to all the other competing priorities (white supremacist cells, organized crime, drug smugglers, etc.) which were as high on the radar before 9/11? In reality, at that time the Bush administration was focussed on the ‘long game’ in taking the attack to Al Quieda, from what I’ve read. It was one of many foreign policy issues cooking in the background, and yes, the failure to move it up was a horrible one – but as Greg Easterbrook pointed out – I’m not sure it’s one that could have been changed.
My second conclusion about the president’s terrorism strategy has three parts. First, I believe President Bush’s overall vision for the war on terrorism is wrong. … military and civilian alike.
OK, here’s a conclusion. Let’s see where it goes.
Second, the importance of this distinction is that it forces us to face the Muslim world squarely and to make an effort to understand it. It also allows us to insist that we be judged on our merits … and not on the hate-filled myths of the street. Absent an effort to establish a dialogue that permits respectful criticism and disagreement, the war on terrorism will surely fail. The violence against us will continue.
Yes, that’s absolutely true. We need to be judged on our merits; but the state controlled and sponsored media, and the state sponsored religious institutions are the ones spreading hatred about us. How does he suggest that we pick that puzzle apart?
Such a dialogue does not require us to cease our forceful and at times deadly pursuit of those who have declared war on us. Quite the contrary. It would enable us to gather Muslim allies in a cause that will bring as much benefit to them as it does to us. That’s why President Bush was right to go to a Washington mosque shortly after Sept. 11. His visit … and his words of assurance that ours was not a war against Islam but against a much smaller group that has perverted the teachings of the Koran … earned the sympathy of much of the Muslim world.
One of us – he or I – is completely wrong in our understanding of the nature of the Arab and Muslim political world right now. In my understanding, the governments in the much of the Arab (and non-Arab Muslim) world are faced with increased pressure from fundamentalist religious movements that want to see sh’aria imposed and see the Muslim world in a conflict with the secular West. Who, exactly, does he think he can gather in to think kind of constructive mutual dialog?
How do we have such a dialog with diplomats from a country where we are pursuing ‘those who have declred war on us’? When the act of pursuing them is itself an act of war on the host country?
That the sympathy wasn’t universal, that some in the Arab world thought the murder of 3,000 innocents was justified, caused many Americans to question whether the effort to be fair was well placed. It was … and we would be advised to make the effort more often.
Third, we should swallow our pride and appeal to the United Nations for help in Iraq. We should begin by ceding joint authority to the United Nations to help us make the decisions about how to transfer power to a legitimate government in Iraq. Until recently I have not supported such a move. But I do now. Rather than sending in more American forces or extending the stay of those already there, we need an international occupation that includes Muslim and Arab forces.
OK, so the UN has been a cesspool of corrupt (or inept while others corruptly took advantage) oversight of the Iraqi export economy for the last decade. In addition, it is essentially the creature of forces who see themselves in opposition to or desiring to extract something from the West – an international version of the ‘poverty pimps’ of the urban programs of the 1970’s. And we’re supposed to hand the keys over to them?
Their effectiveness in Palestine aside, let’s add Bosnia, Rwanda, and a number of other spots on the tourist maps in Hell as places where the blue-helmeted smurfs have shown themselves to be at best ineffective and at worst, a fig leaf for disaster.
Time is not on our side in Iraq. We do not need a little more of the same thing. We need a lot more of something completely different.
Time only isn’t on our side if we say it isn’t, and so demonstrate to the world that we can’t stick with this long enough to win. Pronouncements like that are basically idiotic. Should we broaden diplomatic efforts both within the West and outside it? Of course. But our basic diplomatic position should be borrowed from the Civil Rights days, when people sang “We Shall Not Be Moved.”
More later…
A. L.:
As Michael Ledeen says, faster please.
Posturing and platform go hand-in-hand. No sense making sweeping claims unless you can get the airtime/press. No audience, no need to talk. Once you have an audience though, don’t waste it by stating the obvious, rational or logical…go for the dramatic! Bob Kerry the only one who can see the truth! Oh, that other Kerry knows too.
One major thing bothers me about Sen. Kerrey and others who want to bring the UN in to govern Iraq: On what set of facts do these people rely in claiming that the UN could do anything other than to f**k things up at least an order of magnitude more than they are now?
Bob Kerry’s and Richard Ben-Veniste’s politicizing of the 9/11 commission makes me sick. After 8 years of inaction by the Clinton administration, how dare they twist things to point the finger at President Bush when he did more to deal with terrorism in eight minths than Clinton did in eight years.
The world was different before 9/11. I wasin NYC was labor day weekend in 2001 and spent that whole weekend at a suite at the Millenium Hilton overlooking the WTC. I spent most of Monday, Sept. 3 at the WTC; first for breakfast, then up to the observation deck and then hanging out at borders until it was time to head to the airport.
I remember standing in line for the metal detector and x-ray machine at the WTC and thinking was a collosal waste of time it was. The terrorists already tried to hit the WTC, why would they do it again? In hindsight, this was extremely stupid thinking on my part.
The world is drastically differnt today in its attitude on terrorism because of the scale of the 9/11 attacks. For people to point to one little memo and said that 9/11 could have been prevented in just Monday morning quarterbacking.
We need President Bush re-elected this fall so that he can finish the war on terrorism and eradicate Al Queda. John Kerry does not have the vision or guts to make it happen. Watching members of this important comission trying to make political hay in the name of anti-terrorism is completely disgraceful. Naybe President Bush could have done more; but I know for a fact that President Clinton could have and chose not to.
AL – I totally agree that Kerrey’s early op-ed makes a mockery of the whole process. It’s like a judge pronouncing his verdict half-way through a case, before all the evidence is heard. He may well have his opinions, and be leaning toward one verdict or another, but until the time is right, he should keep his mouth firmly shut, in the interests of justice being seen to be done if nothing else.
ExRat – I don’t think a UN administration in Iraq would fuck things up any more than they have been already – but on the other hand, I don’t think a UN administration would fuck things up any less either.
They key reason to bring in the UN is to demonstrate some kind of international unity. It’s a shame to say, but in a sense it doesn’t really matter how well or how badly Iraq is governed until a complete handover to the Iraqis. What is far more important is that the international community is united in one common goal (whatever that is). Without unity the situation on the ground is confused. Iraqi groups with an axe to grind feel they will get some form of outside support, which in turn will hinder the coalition’s attempts to suppress them. And the whole thing will snowball, as we are seeing now. Someone who, lets be honest, not very important, has been able to dictate events by manipulating global divisions and playing one side against the other. And when this happens, everybody loses.
Personally, I don’t care if the US backs down, or the French back down. Or if they both back down just enough to reach a compromise. Just so long as some compromise is reached.
At this point I think it’s hopeless to change minds about the culpability for 9/11, and I agree that most people with sense will find it difficult to blame Bush. But, for those who have been convinced by this dramaturge of the 9/11 Commission, there is no argument or set of facts that will deter them, because in all likelihood they no longer associate their convictions with any facts or evidence. From a cognative perspective most of the steps that enabled them to arrive at their conclusions have been jettisoned. That’s just the way we’re “wired.”
But in the mean time a tremendous opportunity has been opened up to explain the deep rationale for Iraq. The sordid and questionable logic of Kerry and Clarke never really touches that. At most it presumes a logic it is incapable of defending, and which only looks reasonable in the utter absence of any coherent defense of the Iraq policy from Bush.
If the Bush Administration could somehow make the case for Iraq in broad strategic terms (as, for instance, what Anticipatory Retaliation (and others) call a “center of gravity” then the small logic of Kerry and Ben-Veniste would be swallowed up in the BIG LOGIC of the Bush Anti-Totalitarian Strategy.
Will Bush do this? Have they the political will and political skill to do it? Sadly, I think not. If they had such skill, they’d have already done it. Have we even heard from the President since the most recent round of “troubles” in Iraq began? What sort of leadership does this represent, really? I’m stymied. I am forced to conclude that there is real political incompetence here, Indeed, almost all of the trouble we’ve had in Iraq can be ascribed not to military or foreign policy errors, but to simple political incompetence, in the sense that people in this administration simply have no sense of what voters (either here or in Iraq) feel or experience. They do not have “the gift.”
At this point I think the only thing that can possibly keep George W. Bush in office is either a comparable incompetence on the part of Democrats (which is certainly not out of the question), or a “trimtab role” played by internet blogs like this one. And if we can play such a crucial role, one wonders why we can’t have our own candidate?
(Something to think about for next time, perhaps.)
I agree that the Commission members shouldn’t be doing talk shows and writing Op-Eds. Seems like Hamilton and Kean should have set this as the policy from day one.
That is just about where we part ways, unfortunately.
Well, praktike, the chattering classes wanted an investigation in the middle of an election year, and they got the Clown Car Circus they asked for.
There was no way on God’s Good Earth that this investigation was going to be anything but a political football. Rice’s testimony basically exposed the politicization of the committee.
Had we waited until after the election we would have obtained something more valuable. Now, we’ll get a steaming, fetid pile of partisan fingerpointing on the Democratic side and defensive Clinton bashing on the Republican side.
We will have learned nothing. Had we left Kissinger and Mitchell on as commission chairs, this might have been avoided.
Kerrey’s piece? Another audition for John Kerry’s VP slot, methinks. Sound and fury, signifying nothing.
A sound fisking by Armed Liberal, who, I suspect, is disappointed by the performance of the foreign policy wing of his party so far during this campaign.
One can only take so much of a Richard Holbrooke during one news cycle.
The only sensible explanation is that he’s angling for a VP spot… By throwing away what would’ve made him a good candidate in the first place.
You lost me at “Kissinger,” section9. Hardly a man to fill the public with confidence.
Hart/Rudman, maybe.
Two of the other commission members were interviewed at length on The Jim Lehrer News Hour. It looks like they have agreed that they are all free to speak to the press and that many are doing so.
“…the chattering classes wanted an investigation in the middle of an election year…”
Actually, there were calls for an independent commission starting on Sept 12, 2001. The Bush administration stalled for time, bringing us to this point. Had the administration done the right thing (which in this case is also the politically smart thing) the commission report would have been finished sometime last year. One of the reasons Rice got such a chilly reception was a history of administration foot dragging and obstructionism (again, politically stupid). From a purely political perspective the best course for the administration is to cooperate fully, get the report out ASAP, accept some small measure of responsibility, and refocus debate on their actions post-9/11. Unless they have something major to hide (which seems unlikely), their attitude to the commission will do them considerable political harm. They’ll get a report right at the point where the election is heating up, they’ll have pissed off some of the commission members who might have been allies, and they’ll look defensive.
The administration’s actions with respect to the commission are part of a pattern of poorly thought out actions that are a hallmark of this administration. I was willing to cut Bush a lot of slack initially, but it’s slowly become apparent that he refuses to think carefully through the full consequences of his decisions. It’s becoming painfully clear that the traditional conservative hostility to nation building continues with this administration, despite the fact that nation building is exactly what is required in order to accomplish the restructuring of the muslim world that the neocons envision. Either the US and its allies will succeed in that enterprise or the failure will leave the world a much more dangerous place. Going to war wasn’t the hard part. The postwar reconstruction is the hard part, and that requires leadership willing to sweep away the competing agendas of the various factions within the administration and impose a single, coherent vision. Bush has failed to do that. The problem with this administration isn’t a matter of policy (though there’s certainly a number of policies I disagree with) – it’s competence. America deserves better than a gentleman’s C.
Andy thinks: “What is far more important is that the international community is united in one common goal (whatever that is).”
That is a vacuum, an absence of thought. The ‘international community’ could unite behind sharia leadership, and Andy would rejoice at its unity as the Christians were subjugated and murdered.
So, Andy, what’s your position on the autocracies in the UN having the same voting power as the democracies that they outnumber in the General Assembly?
Um, I don’t get it. Since when is the CURRENT strategy of the WOT any of the 9/11 Commission’s business?
To be blunt about it, Iraq is simply above Kerrey’s pay grade. He should sit down and STFU.
When I hear the “international community” few things come to mind:
– Rwanda genocide
– Sudan genocide
– France/Germany/Russia opposing any real action in Iraq to protect their current and future business
– Bosnia/Kosowo affair
– Palestine
– Durban conference
– antisemitism in Europe and in Arab/Muslim world
And this augustian body is supposed to solve problems in Iraq? Based on what past experience?
To be blunt about it, Iraq is simply above Kerrey’s pay grade. He should sit down and STFU.
Since every senator considers himself or herself to be a president-in-waiting this would be a hard sell.
I have always thought the popular election of the Senate was a Bad Idea.
**Porphyrogentus** recently summarized **an excellent article** about how the dominance of a certain viewpoint within the Federal Intelligence and Law-Enforcement agencies made a 9-11 style attack more likely to succeed than might have otherwise been the case. The author–a lead prosecuter of the 1993 WTC bombers–argues that the U.S. responses to terrorism have been broadly framed in criminal-justice terms. In his view, this makes prevention of terrorist acts very difficult.
One can agree or disagree with Andrew McCarthy’s perspective and prescriptions. These are the kinds of issues I’d thought the Commission would deliberate, which seems pretty laughable after the past two weeks’ performance. Maybe once the partisan sniping at the personal performances of Rice, Clarke, Berger, et al. runs its course, they will approach the more serious questions of bureaucratic structure and philosophy. And to the real conflicts and dangers that exist in implementing an effective anti-terror strategy.
Nah–more fun to see your name on the NYT Op-Ed page.
Insufficiently Sensitive:
So, Andy, what’s your position on the autocracies in the UN having the same voting power as the democracies that they outnumber in the General Assembly?
marek:
When I hear the “international community” few things come to mind:
– Rwanda genocide
– Sudan genocide
– France/Germany/Russia opposing any real action in Iraq to protect their current and future business
– Bosnia/Kosowo affair
– Palestine
– Durban conference
– antisemitism in Europe and in Arab/Muslim world
And this augustian body is supposed to solve problems in Iraq? Based on what past experience?
My point, exactly.
By the way, Andy, you may be right that the UN wouldn’t screw things up any worse, considering that the UN cut and run the very first time they were attacked. When you’re not there, you can’t be blamed for the disaster, right? On the other hand, how would a UN administration that consisted of the French, the Russians, the Belgians and the Germans do, as compared to Bremer’s people? Especially since the Iraqis know how the Oil for Food Program was really run.
It’s arguable that the last time the UN was halfway successful in doing anything that involved military operations, it was in Korea ca. 1950-53, and that endeavor was only halfway successful. And the only reason Korea worked out as well as it did was that the US was the primary actor. If anyone can point to a successful major UN military operation since then, I’d love to be educated.
Okay, so iff according to the Leftmedias the ACLU and Barry Goldwater are one and the same in Bush-led 2004 America, it may explain why Democrat POTUS Bill “Republican” Clinton got the credit for the domestic-geopolitical “quiet” that was allegedly Bill’s 1990’s Rockwellian, conservative America, whereas Republican-Moralist Dubya gets all the laissez faire individualist, [formerly] Lefty-Libertarian alternate lifestylers – we know, Hollywood is not nor ever responsible, and even if it did admit to anti-GOP-Right poitics, its FIRST the fault of American everyparents for Janet’s nipple or Alanis’s see-through body “skin”! If the pics are any measure, someone please tell ALanis, ie pseudo-CHER without the hogging USNavy sailors or the battleship USS IOWA, to STOP EATING THE SANDWICHES MEANT FOR LINDA DEY of “The Partridge Family” – God help the Right her butt isn’t JLo’s…etal.!
Kissinger and Mitchell both had enough weight within their respective parties to be able to avoid political pressure. Thomas Keane is a girl scout, period. I have a tad more confidence in Lee Hamilton, but not much more, as his questioning of Rice bordered on the predictable as well.
If you don’t like Kissinger because of Chile or the Christmas Bombing, fine. But he’s no bantamweight, and he would have kept the likes of ben-Veniste and John Lehman from hijacking the hearing to their own partisan ends.
As it stands, the Commission is a joke. I have no confidence that its findings will be worthwhile, but am willing to be proven wrong.
So far, especially in light of Bob Kerrey’s disastrous performance opposite Condi and in Sunday’s NYT, I remain to be convinced otherwise. Once again, btw, props to Armed Liberal for a sound fisking of Bob Kerrey’s piece.
I was defending Kerrey as recently as a few days ago, on both Roger Simon and Yglesias’ sites. His questioing of Rice seemed fair to me. Prosecutorial tactics, I figured.
I don’t think he is saying going into Iraq was a mistake, but he has changed positions quite suddenly. With this editorial, he has suddenly put himself in the John Kerry camp by suggesting the UN take over. Really, really odd. This is a man I was hoping would run for president a few years ago.
The whole bit about terrorism being a tactic, not an enemy is absurd. Fine, let’s call it a “war on Islamic terrorISTS” and see what people say about that.
The Democrats having taken the wrong position on the war are now watching the wheels drop off their campaign.
They are going anti-war in the middle of a very large battle. They are hostile to a black womoan whose position is essentially correct. etc.
An up tick in the fighting and they lose ground.
What Democrats fail to realize is that America is not Spain. Attacks on the incumbent government strengthen the government.
J. Kerry will be lucky to win 5 states.
Insufficient Sensitive – I am not suggesting that the international community should unite behind any old policy, regardless of how good or bad it is. Please don’t twist the intent of what I was saying, otherwise I’ll have to spend thousands of words on every single comment clarifying the exact meaning of my every point. And to do that, I’d have to turn into a lawyer. And that would be boring.
And, when it comes to uniting behind a Shia administration – why not? Not all Shia’s are bent on your destruction. Not all Shia’s are the ‘bad guys’. Unite behind a Shia administration that has sensible policies, or unite behind a Franco-American (Americo-French?) coalition that reaches a sensible compromise. Sure, the US has disagreements with the French, and you personally probably have some reservations about working with them. But lets live in the real world here. You can live in your ivory tower, refuse to compromise your principles, and not work with the French. And the French can sit in their ivory tower, refuse to compromise their principles, and not work with the US. And, meanwhile, you know what’ll happen? Iraq will go to hell in a handcart.
The UN – I don’t really want to get into this debate here. But, you seem to be misinterpreting the whole purpose of the UN. It is not to run the world. It is to provide a talking shop. And, when you talk and negotiate, you sometimes have to talk to people you don’t agree with, and even people who’s views you may find repulsive. Not to talk out your differences usually means to fight out your differences. So, yes, I do think that non-democratic governments have a right to sit at the UN, with an equivalent vote.
ExRat – I can’t point you at a major military success for the UN, because there are none. That is not what the UN is designed for. To be honest the only real value the UN has is as an umbrella for other groups to act under. Even when operations are nominally run by the UN they are usually, in fact, run by individual states, or groups of states.
The reason for bringing in an administration run by the UN (but in reality by a few major states) is that it provides the cover of legitimacy and unity that the coalition quite blatantly lacks in the eyes of many. Note that I’m not getting into whether it the coalition was right or wrong here – I’m just saying very few people think it is legitimate. That is the real problem today, and that is what needs to be addressed.
Another thing that just occurred to me…
ExRat siad: ‘how would a UN administration that consisted of the French, the Russians, the Belgians and the Germans do, as compared to Bremer’s people?’
Why do people always seem to assume that there are only two options in Iraq. A coalition administration that excludes France/Germany, et al, or a UN administration led by France/Germany et al, in which the US is sidelined?
Why not a UN administration in which everybody gets to play. That way, nobody has to sulk on the sidelines. Or am I just a hopeless idealist?
“The reason for bringing in an administration run by the UN (but in reality by a few major states) is that it provides the cover of legitimacy and unity that the coalition quite blatantly lacks in the eyes of many.”
The only many that count is the Iraqis. Let us see if we can figure out what opinion they might have based on events.
There are some who hate the UN as a vector of Western imperialism. Those guys bombed the UN.
There are others who hate the UN because when the bombs explode on their doorstep they cut and run.
Thus if you see clearly at least for Iraq so far America has more credibility.
BTW what do you think the opinion of the UN might be now that its role in the rip off of the Iraqi people is coming out?
What credibility the UN has comes out of the barrels of American guns. Why not just cut out the middleman?
Andy,
You are so right.
Why are we leaving out Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Cuba, and especially North Korea.
Why should the democracies get all the plum jobs? There are more despotisms on the planet than democracies. Shouldn’t they be given a voice in Iraqi reconstruction?
Andy –
I think you misinterpreted, there – Sharia, not Shia. Sharia law, which mandates the stoning of adulterous women, allows honor killings, and provides for very little freedom outside of the freedom to subjugate yourself to islam.
I, for one, have a great deal of trouble respecting, or subjugating my country’s interests to a group that would put a country that still practices slavery (Sudan) on the Human Rights Commission.
Thanks Celeste, I misread Insufficiently Sensitive’s comment. My apologies to all. I promise that in future I’ll try and read things properly before shooting my mouth off! The first paragraph of my response still stands, though.
And, while I agree that it is troubling that we have to respect the views of countries like Sudan, I would say that sadly countries like Sudan do exist, and that they do have a voice. That is the reality of the world today. If we want to continue to order the world along the lines of sovereign states (with all the benefits that entails for the USA & other democratic states) we have to accept some of the bad stuff that comes with that. If we simply refuse to acknowledge their voice, then the whole system will come crashing down around our ears.
If we first refuse to acknowledge the voice of weak Sudan, won’t we then face pressure to ignore the voice of slightly stronger North Korea, then the voice of Saudi Arabia, and then the voice of China? That would be very satisfying, but how will the world work if one of its most powerful members is excluded? I can’t imagine that China will see its isolation as an incentive to democratise. Probably it would see it as threatening instead, pushing it toward more hardline policies, both domestic and foreign.
I am not saying that we shouldn’t be pressing very hard for change in these countries. Just that isolation isn’t the way to do it and, furthermore, that isolation can have dangerous consequences.
(By the way, as an aside, a lot of European’s would say they have significant concerns about subjugating their interests to a country that has the death penalty. Again, to clarify, this isn’t necessarily to say that I disagree with the death penalty, just that people’s views on morality vary throughout the world. What many American’s think of as perfectly acceptable is seen by many throughout the world (including in countries with impeccable democratic credentials) as morally offensive. While the US has the right to set its own moral standards, does it have the right to exclude others from decision making based on their morals? Or, put another way, do Europeans have the right to exclude the US from decision making based on the different moral standards prevalent in the US?).
Andy:
Why not a UN administration in which everybody gets to play. That way, nobody has to sulk on the sidelines. Or am I just a hopeless idealist?
I think you just might be a hopeless idealist. The problem with the scenario you describe is that every player inevitably will attempt to shape the situation to favor its own interest and to interfere with other players’ attempts to favor their own interests. That sort of thing leads to situations like the Oil for Food graft and the failure in Afghanistan of French Air Force pilots to provide air support for US troops because they disagreed with the orders they were given by the US air controllers. Nothing happened to those pilots because the French Air Force maintained its independent control over them.
In short, an undependable ally is much worse in a dicey situation than a fierce and capable enemy, and a UN administration in Iraq “in which everybody gets to play” would be rife with undependable “allies.”
I agree with you that the UN is is a talking shop, in which each nation is out for itself and will try to manipulate outcomes to favor its position. But talk is not a substitute for action, so when talking becomes an end in itself it is counterproductive (e.g., refusal by some UNSC members to enforce 12 years of UNSC resolutions against Saddam. Do you really think he would ever have complied?)
Moreover, too many UN member nations agree to all kinds of resolutions and then blatantly violate what they have voted for. They know that so long as they don’t take on the great powers head on, not much in the way of consequences will come their way. Because of this I think the “legitimacy” that the UN affords is mostly a figment of the imaginations of the editors of the NYT and WaPo, and the major European dailies.
ExRat,
You are right to say that talking becomes counterproductive when it becomes an end in itself, rather than a means to an end.
However, I do think that France, Russia, et al have an interest in seeing a positive outcome in Iraq, and I also think they recognise this. They do need to make more of an effort to move closer to the American position if a compromise is to be reached, but I think the US has to back down some too. Without wishing to tell grandma how to suck eggs – thats usually how agreements are reached.
The other related point about your comment that struck me was that you seem to see allies as someone who should unquestioningly support the US. If they question the US, they should get out. An alliance isn’t everybody supporting one leader, it is a group of countries coming together to form a common position. The very process of negotiating that common position means that none of those countries will get exactly what they wanted. The compromise will inevitably mean that all are dissatisfied to some extent. But the positives of reaching that compromise must surely outweigh the negatives in the case of Iraq, which even the most gung-ho pro-American & pro-British observers would agree isn’t going swimmingly).
Finally, as regards the French decision to not provide air support for US troops in Afghanistan – it would be fair to say that this was not out of a desire to inhibit US operations, but because the US request for air support was in contradiction to the French rules of engagement. The French would have refused the request, even if they were fully in agreement with US aims (as actually they are in Afghanistan). The British, Australians and Canadians have all (quite rightly) made similar decisions from time to time in Iraq, Kosovo and elsewhere. And the US would refuse any British request that went against US rules of engagement. That is pretty standard in coalition warfare.
A guest on one of the news services had it right. They should have waited until 2005 for the hearing. Congress is going to do their own thing regardless of their “recommendations.” Witch hunts in the middle of a presidential election do not make for an optimal election climate.