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Perhaps
"we are all Americans now".
By
Jonathan
Power
November 22, 2002
LONDON - The new Bob Woodward book "Bush at War" tells
us that the Bush entourage has been at times quite
rattled by the criticism of its policies towards
Afghanistan and Iraq. That gives me comfort. As a long
time proponent of the thesis that the pen in the end is
mightier than the sword it is good to know that some of
the scribblers' darts have found their target. Thus we
critics should keep up our good work, particularly when
we are so convinced the policy from Washington is both
wrongheaded and counterproductive.
Yet and but. Perhaps for now we should be a little
quieter. The United Nations has spoken and it has spoken
at its highest level and with an amazing, almost
unprecedented, unity on a matter of such dire
consequence. Is not this what many of us in the critical
camp have always yearned for- life being breathed into
the moribund institution of the UN? I think it is, and
the fact that for decades now the UN has been kicked
around like a political football shouldn't inhibit us
today for seeing what a transforming event has taken
place and what a chance it offers to put the UN into a
central place in our political life for the next few
decades, and perhaps even longer.
Over Kosovo, the Clinton administration (supposedly a
pro-UN administration, but clearly, since its duplicitous
and misleading behaviour over the UN operation in
Somalia, in practice the reverse) blithely walked right
round the UN and unilaterally lead the Nato bombing
campaign, one that probably triggered the massive ethnic
cleansing it said it was attempting to forestall. With
the bombing of Afghanistan the U.S. likewise ignored all
the strictures of the UN Charter which, whilst allowing
members that are imperilled to act in self- defence,
abjures them to bring the matter before the Security
Council as soon as possible and get it to take up the
baton of authorizing the fighting of a war if needs
be.
This time round with Iraq, despite the arguments to
circumvent the UN once again from deep inside the
administration, from vice president Dick Cheney and
defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld- all of whom we were
told by insiders were the ones whom the president
instinctively listens to- George Bush has decided to
ignore them. It was not an easy decision for him. It
didn't fit with his visceral desire to get on with the
job that had been decided on, to defang Saddam Hussein
once and for all. But he decided to do it. He went
through the UN and its tortuous hair splitting procedures
and reminded us, as Anthony Blinken, a former U.S.
National Security Council member, argued so well in
Prospect magazine last year, why there is still more that
binds Europe (and Japan and Canada, not to mention a host
of other democracies) to the United States than divides
it.
And the biggest unifying item of all is this question
of a relatively free press and free debate. We too often
take it for granted. But if, as the Nobel prize winning
economist Amartya Sen has argued, it is the main reason
why India the last fifty years has not suffered a major
famine- because the bureaucrats can't cover it up as in
China- then it is very much the principal reason why Bush
has turned 180 degrees on a dime. Somehow deep down,
despite the shenanigans of the general election count, he
is democratic enough to listen, or at least has the good
sense to realize he owes his political future to the
voters and the opinion makers.
So now perhaps we have to do our part and support
Washington. Of course we can still see the weaknesses. We
can see that the whole Iraq confrontation might be an
unnecessary distraction from hunting down Al Qaeda. This
requires, as it did with the pursuit of Adolf Eichmann,
the Nazi exterminator-in-chief of the Jews, long term
police work not massive bombing. The Clinton
administration was offered Osama bin Laden by The Sudan
and turned the suggestion down. The Bush administration
could have run him down in Afghanistan if it had been
clever instead of bombing the place to smithereens. And
now, obsessed with Iraq, they have taken the eye of the
ball, convinced themselves he was probably dead, only to
find he is still there and the hydra has grown heads all
over the world. You can only do one job of these
proportions at a time and Iraq is a distraction, all the
more so since very few believe Saddam has a nuclear
weapon or could build one any time soon, and anyway if he
did whom would he use these terrible weapons of mass
destruction against- unless he was attacked?
But this is only half the point. The other half is
that Security Council members solemnly and rationally
considered the American argument and judged it as worthy
of not their "no" or even abstention but a "yes".
The U.S. has at last realized it may be the world's
only superpower but that it can only wield that strength
if the world at large supports it. And countries such as
Russia, China and France have likewise realized that the
only way they can any longer bring influence to bear in
Washington is to make it feasible for the U.S. to work
through the UN. This is momentous progress, the most
significant development since the fall of the Berlin
Wall. Perhaps, after all, we will soon be saying, "We are
all Americans now".
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 By
JONATHAN POWER
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
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