The Daily Grasshopper

(Comical op-ed page juxtaposition of the day:

"This week [Bush] said he is undeterred by some 6 million antiwar demonstrators, whom he deemed unrepresentative of world opinion."

- Joan Vennochi, centrist Globe columnist, p. A15

"Across Europe and the United States, 2 million or more protesters took to the streets to denounce the Bush administration's plans to disarm Saddam Hussein."

- Jeff Jacoby, right-wing Globe columnist, p. A15

What's a difference of a factor of three between colleagues?)

The news today - at least as far as war in the Middle East is concerned - is a lot like the news from yesterday. Despite Bush's claim that the worldwide protests have had no influence on his desire to pursue the military option in Iraq, it's clear that his road has gotten a lot rockier since the historic demonstrations of last weekend.

Here's a quick roundup of the obstacles the Bush administration is now encountering in its pursuit of war in Iraq:

Reports out of the United Nations seem to indicate that a Security Council resolution backing military force is going to be hard to achieve:

"Diplomats acknowledged that a US-British resolution still lacks the necessary nine votes it needs to be adopted by the Security Council, and there is evidence that permanent council members France, Russia, or China, which favor continued inspections, might veto a new resolution.

Several other council members, including Mexico and Chile, reiterated privately that they would abstain in a vote on the resolution unless the United States and Britain found a way to ease tensions with France, Russia, and China."

("Resolution, deadline plan are expected" Associated Press article in today's Boston Globe, p. A22)

"The determined neutrality of the two Latin American Council members could complicate the task of winning Council support for a new resolution on military action against Iraq. A new resolution has been sought by Britain in particular, to give the stamp of international legitimacy to a conflict that is widely opposed by British voters.

Opposition is just as intense, if not more so, in Chile, Mexico and Pakistan, which, along with Cameroon, Guinea and Angola, spoke out Friday for the peaceful disarmament of Iraq. Of the four other elected Council members, Spain and Bulgaria have been supporting the United States and Syria and Germany have sided with France."

("Some on Security Council Want to Avoid Taking Sides on Iraq" NYT, p. A12)

"The political rift between Europe and the U.S. over a possible war with Iraq makes it unlikely that finance ministers will be able to devise a coordinated plan to deal with the consequences of military conflict.

The prospects of a new Persian Gulf war will overshadow the meeting this weekend in Paris of finance ministers from the Group of Seven largest industrial powers. The gathering was previously scheduled and had been expected to focus on counterterrorism efforts, but is quickly expected to move to a discussion of how a war might affect oil prices and general economic well-being."

("Rift Over Iraq Haunts Meeting Of G-7 Ministers" Wall St. Journal, p. A3)

Then there's the situation with Turkey (and the Kurds), which I've been commenting on. The front page of today's New York Times offers this assessment:

"White House officials sounded pessimistic today that their offer of $26 billion in aid to Turkey would be enough to win the country's approval for the United States to open a northern front against Iraq if war comes.

Their growing frustration with Turkey came as President Bush was dealing with a variety of recalcitrant allies at the United Nations and in capitals around the world, allies that are urging considerably more time for weapons inspections or a strategy of containment for Iraq. Even Italy, a stalwart ally, today urged that Mr. Bush not take military action unless he had explicit approval from the Security Council. It is far from clear that Mr. Bush can win that approval, and today he spent half an hour on the telephone with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain developing a strategy for introducing a brief resolution that might, in some form, set a deadline for Iraqi compliance.

But the immediate concern was Turkey, and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld was talking publicly about how the Pentagon was already considering alternative deployments."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/20/international/middleeast/20IRAQ.html

Turkey is the "immediate concern" because the Turks know how important it is for U.S. military planners to be able to launch an attack on Iraq from the north, thereby forcing Saddam's soldiers to fight on two fronts and maximizing U.S. military might, guaranteeing a short, bloodless war (for us). The Kuwaitis to the south have already turned most of their country over to the U.S. military as a staging ground. The government in Ankara also knows, from a public relations standpoint, that the U.S. can ill afford to suffer many casualties. With the U.S. public already divided about the war, the prospect of American soldiers dying in large numbers is going to weigh very heavily on the minds of the planners. This reality has factored into U.S. decision-making ever since Vietnam - the people simply will not tolerate large numbers of U.S. military casualties overseas. The Turks know this as well as the U.S. planners do, and they're using that leverage to squeeze enormous financial concessions out of our government.

In its lead editorial today, "Dollar Diplomacy," the New York Times explains how the Turkish government's tough negotiating position is tarnishing the facade of Bush's war rationale:

"After taking a hard look at the poker game being played by President Bush and Saddam Hussein, Turkey, in effect, told Mr. Bush this week to ante up $32 billion if he wants Ankara to take a seat at the table. That's serious money and the demand, which Washington is pondering, says a great deal about the tradeoffs taking place beneath all the lofty arguments about going to war with Iraq. The business of lining up reluctant governments to provide bases and support for possible military action is not exactly an exercise in Wilsonian idealism.

Should the confrontation with Iraq come to war, American military operations would be greatly aided by an invading force from Turkey. But that doesn't make the bargaining any prettier. It undercuts Washington's repeated assertions that the showdown with Iraq is about the defense of great principles and the advancement of democracy in the Middle East. With no agreement reached yesterday, Ankara has put off parliamentary action and Washington is threatening to divert troops and supplies headed for Turkey to the Persian Gulf.

Turkey's role is important, and not just because it shares a border with Iraq. Turkey is also a model of the kind of secular Muslim democracy Washington says it favors for Iraq and the wider Middle East. In the administration's efforts to line up Turkish support, it risks trampling on the very values America claims to be fighting for."

You can read the editorial here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/20/opinion/20THU1.html

Of course, the Turkish "model" also features a willingness to ruthlessly wipe out indigenous minorities and deny the survivors any form of participation in government, as the Turks have done to the Kurds in the southeastern part of the country. This activity, carried on by the Turkish government throughout the 1990s with the active support of the U.S., was not exactly "an exercise in Wilsonian idealism," either. Unless you consider Wilson's true ideals, which included the use of the U.S. Marines to repeatedly intervene on behalf of corporate interests throughout Central and South America, and particularly in the Caribbean, during his tenure in the White House. I somehow don't think that's what the Times' editors have in mind, though.

Out in the Persian Gulf, the impact of the slowdown is also visible:

"A prolonged wait for action could interfere with the Defense Department's maintenance and training schedules. More immediately, there is concern about maintaining the fighting edge of the troops, whom several analysts compared to athletes preparing for a championship game that has yet to be scheduled.

"You get psyched up to go fight a war and then you just sit and lose your edge," said Loren Thompson, a military analyst with the Lexington Institute. "You lose your sense of excitement, your enthusiasm, and that's another problem that you have when you're forward-deployed and not moving."

("Long Wait may dampen morale" Boston Globe, p. A22)

I should point out here that, in spite of my desire to see war avoided, I don't take any grim satisfaction from the degraded capability of U.S. soldiers in the field. I'm as concerned about their safety and lives as I am concerned about the safety and lives of innocent civilians in Iraq. Which is why I think they should be home right now, and not waiting around for orders to invade another country.

And to those conservative commentators out there, like the Boston Globe's Jacoby, who argues in his column today that I and other antiwar activists are "boosting Saddam" by opposing war, I have this to say:

I am consistent in my opposition to the use of violence against civilians to achieve political ends (the definition of "terrorism"), whether it's practiced by Saddam Hussein or George W. Bush. I am consistent in my support of democracy. Not the fraudulent kind of democracy, like Turkey's, which too often has been installed at the point of an American-made gun - the real kind. People having power to make the decisions that affect their day-to-day lives. Not the kind of democracy that buys out a country like Turkey with a $32 billion bribe despite the fact that 94 percent of the population opposes war in Iraq.

Jacoby condescendingly dismisses the antiwar movement by claiming that:

"It goes without saying that many of those in the crowds were well-meaning people who want only to prevent war. Undoubtedly they would bristle at being labeled pro-Saddam. But whatever might be in their hearts, they can be judged only by their actions - and by their actions last weekend they declared themselves pro-Saddam.

As they poured into the streets, as they clamored for peace at any price, as they denounced those who oppose the tyrant of Baghdad, as they counseled passivity in the face of his crimes, they strengthened one of the world's most vicious despots and complicated the task of those trying to bring him down. The demonstrations were a powerful boost for Saddam and a stinging betrayal of Iraq's afflicted people."

It's heartening to know that Jacoby has such sympathy for "Iraq's afflicted people." Of course, they've been afflicted by the most severe economic sanctions on earth for the last twelve years, sanctions imposed and enforced by the U.S. after the Gulf war that have claimed more than a million Iraqi lives by some estimates, and we haven't heard a peep from Jacoby and his ilk about the plight of the people of Iraq until now, when it's suddenly a convenient talking point. His exploitation of the people of Iraq as "ideology shields" is as disgusting as Hussein's use of them as "human shields."

Of course, what Jacoby is loath to admit, or ignorant of, is that the U.S. government did not practice "passivity in the face of [Hussein's] crimes" - it actively encouraged and supported them. He cites the "attack on the people of Halabja, when thousands of Iraqi Kurds were gassed to death."

What he fails to mention is that the U.S. government knew of Saddam's use of gas on the Kurds, and did nothing. In fact, there is evidence that Hussein was using gas on the Iranians in 1984 at the exact same time the U.S. envoy to the Middle East was engaging in diplomatic overtures to re-open relations between Iraq and the U.S. That envoy was Donald Rumsfeld. Here's the March 24, 1984 United Press International story describing what took place:

"Mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian soldiers in the 43-month Persian Gulf War between Iran and Iraq, a team of U.N. experts has concluded... Meanwhile, in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, U.S. presidential envoy Donald Rumsfeld held talks with Foreign Minister Tarek Aziz on the Gulf war before leaving for an unspecified destination."

Didn't know Rummy was Reagan's Middle East envoy to Baghdad in the early 80s? It's not the kind of thing he talks about a lot these days - and don't expect commentators like Jacoby, or the editors of the New York Times, for that matter, to raise such troubling points. But it's true, nonetheless. You can read more here:

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2177

I'm willing to bet that twenty years ago, Jacoby fully supported Reagan's willingness to look the other way when Hussein was on our side, using U.S.-supplied weapons to gas the Kurds in Halabja and, before that, the Iranians.

Jacoby does make one point that's fair: many of the world's citizens have been too tolerant of all kinds of abuses for far too long. Now that a new global movement against war threatens to change that reality, Jacoby should rightly be concerned about how he and his fellow apologists for U.S.-sponsored terror will be remembered by history.