Wednesday, February 19, 2003

If you have ever read Shakespeare's "Henry V," you'll recall a very memorable scene where the emissary of the dauphine (the French heir to the throne) presents the bellicose Henry with a gift of tennis balls. The implication is that Henry should stick to being a carefree playboy and not bother trying to claim the French throne through his mother's side.

After Henry gets through telling the emissary how he has changed, and the "wasteful vengeance" for which the dauphine will be responsible, he continues: "But all this lies within the will of God to whom I do appeal, and in whose name tell you, the dauphine, that I am coming on, to venge me as I may, and to put forth my rightful hand in a just cause."

We are currently in a blame game with our allies, Germany and France, for not supporting our casus belli with Iraq. They have made known their reservations from the start, and our recent strong-arming has had little effect in bringing them into a war-fighting coalition.

For some reason they believe Iraq poses no uncontrollable threat. For some reason, they don't see the link between al Qaida and Saddam Hussein. For some reason they think such a war will spawn new terrorists throughout the world with which the West will have to deal sooner or later. The U.S. response is the daily Rumsfeld tirade, with an occasional Bush utterance of thinly veiled disgust, acknowledging their sovereignty ("but why the hell can't they do it our way?").

If we examine the George Bush II vs. Iraq chronology, we see very little emphasis on that country until August of last year. There had been no real concern in the press, no attempt at coalition building, no recent intelligence nor photos.

What we did see in August was a slight drop in G.W.'s popularity, and the rising specter of a poor economy and disappearing budget surplus. Additionally, we had the fast approaching November elections with both houses of Congress up for grabs in a non-presidential election year.

Out of the blue, we were confronted with the "Axis of Evil" as presented by our president, and a sudden rush for compliance with U.N. directives by Iraq. Congress, for its part was asked to give the president the power to militarily attack Iraq if, in his view, he feels it necessary.

With one month until elections and the president more popular than ever, the vote became a foregone conclusion with little serious debate, and not much opposition. After the elections, someone (probably Colin Powell) convinced the President to go to the U.N. one more time to give the process an air of legitimacy. He did, and got a somewhat watered down ("serious consequences") resolution.

The inspectors returned and of course were given the usual Iraqi run around. Their declaration of not now possessing weapons of mass destruction would have been laughable were it anyone but Saddam Hussein. The president continued the military buildup, and sent Colin Powell to the U.N. to present evidence of Iraqi noncompliance and possible Iraqi-al Qaida links.

So here we are on the verge of invading Iraq. The rush to coalition by our friends has not materialized. Thus far we have the British in large numbers, and the Australians and Czechs in small numbers, and some "go get 'em, boys" encouragement from the Italians and Spanish and the former Warsaw Pact members of Eastern Europe.

Much of the rest of the world doesn't quite know what to make of this new, very aggressive America that won't sign treaties to reduce pollution but wants everybody to support it in an attack they're not too sure is necessary.

The other Security Council members, China and Russia, are almost certain to veto a U.N.-sanctioned invasion of Iraq while the Iraqi dictator seems to be giving anything.

Has George Bush screwed this up? You bet he has. Mr. Bush, defying his pledge to walk humbly in the world, continues to try to ride rough-shod over everybody else. By putting the cart in front of the horse, so to speak, he has assured his popularity in the short run here at home, and dissipated a gold mine of good will toward us in the rest of the world. He has [linked] Iraq and al Qaida in the minds of many Americans, but produced only a wisp of evidence of even a remote connection (one of the al Qaida lieutenants received medical treatment in Baghdad).

So where do we go now? As I see it, and as history would dictate, we have no choice but to go forward. This won't be an unjust war, perhaps just an unnecessary war. If we turn our backs now, the Arabs will not perceive us as fair-minded, only weak. The nasty little kleptocrats who now rule most of the Middle East think they can keep their populations off balance with a mix of anti-Israeli sentiment coupled with Christian/Western disdain while they sell their blood-laden oil to us. It's no surprise 15 of those murderers were Saudi Arabian.

When we completely destroy the Iraqi armed forces and insert a quarter million armed men in their midst, our "friends" in the Middle East might be encouraged to redirect their energy towards improving the lives of their people instead of scapegoating the West and Israel.

We will just have to live with the rest: degraded relations with our allies; outright Muslim hostility; possible chemical warfare against our troops or Israel; possible urban fighting against troops using civilians as shields; the impetus for a new generation of Muslim terrorists; the willingness of other nations to obviate the only mechanism we have in this world for real international security.

Mostly what we lose is the apparent moral high ground. We are the good guys, and we shouldn't appear to be the unthinking bully lashing out simply because we can. I used to find Rumsfeld refreshing. Now I think he is merely an unsophisticated dolt (like his CIC).

This is all probably not necessary, but we're in a dark tunnel now, and we may have to do some bad things to get out. Tell Saddam we are coming, but remember the fool who led us in here.

Timothy J. Parker

Peachtree City