The Daily Grasshopper

For anyone wondering about the outcome of the Oxford Union's debate last night on whether or not The United States of America is "the world's biggest threat to peace," the answer can be found in today's New York Times. The article is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/28/international/europe/28OXFO.html

For those of you who have better things to do than hit all the links I've been e-mailing out to you, I'll give you the answer: No, we're not. But the vote was pretty damn close, considering Oxford is in England, the one country that has been backing our war on Iraq since the get-go. After a two-hour debate, by a vote of 195 to 151, the decision was made that the U.S. is not "the world's biggest threat to peace."

Here's part of the story:

"What may have swayed undecided voters though was not politics, or power or war or peace but a sense of the other things America has offered the world beyond and before the campaign on terror.

Paul Robinson, a lecturer in security studies, took to the worn, wood-planking floor to mimic a sketch from a Monty Python film in which disconsolate Judeans bemoan Roman rule.

'Apart from jazz, blues, rock 'n' roll,' he said, 'what have the Americans ever done for us?' The answer was among the loudest and most appreciative applause of the evening."

It should go without saying that the opinions of those members of the U.S. population responsible for the aforementioned cultural contributions don't factor much into the foreign policy decision making process - in poll after poll, African-Americans are decidedly more antiwar than their fellow Americans. I guess the thinking at the Oxford Union is that the world has to accept the Bush administration's "War on Terror" as the price of listening to John Coltrane, Muddy Waters, and Jimi Hendrix.

How to account for all the "Yes" votes? It's an interesting question, and I don't pretend to know the answer. But I do know that there is a much more vibrant dissident press in the U.K. than there is in the U.S. Dailies like the Mirror (http://www.mirror.co.uk/), the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/), and the Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/) give their readers a pretty steady stream of dissenting views and opinions - unlike what we get here in the U.S. For a sample, check out John Pilger's latest article (this is from the ZNet site, but Pilger is a regular in the British press):

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=3154

More of his work can be found here:
http://pilger.carlton.com/print

Of course, the result of the Oxford Union debate is going to have about as much impact on the decision to go to war in Iraq as these e-mails will, but they weren't the only people talking about the role the U.S. is playing in world affairs yesterday. Check out some of the following items from today's news:

• Turkey delayed a hearing in Parliament on allowing U.S. troops to be stationed there for the third time this week. According to an article in today's Wall Street Journal, "Delay by Turkey Signals Wider Unease in Region," the vote is likely to be in favor of the troops arriving. But the view of the American government is not exactly charitable, at least in some quarters. "Turkey is like a bystander with a pistol pointed at his head" wrote editorialist Oktay Eksi in the newspaper Hurriyet. According to the WSJ story, "A large antiwar demonstration is planned in Ankara tomorrow, the presumed day of the pariliamentary vote."
• Speaking of large antiwar demonstrations, there was a monster one in Cairo, of all places, yesterday. There's a photo of it in today's New York Times on page A10, accompanied by a story. "Tens of thousands of Egyptians gathered today in this city's main stadium for the largest protest so far in the Arab world, outside Iraq, against an American-led war to topple Saddam Hussein." The crowd was estimated at over 100,000.
• The AFL-CIO has, for the first time, criticized a U.S. president's decision to go to war. From the New York Times article on yesterday's decision: "After backing administrations in the Korean, Vietnam, and Persian Gulf wars, the labor movement departed today from tradition and criticized President Bush's approach to a conflict with Iraq."
• There is also a good article on the hypocrisy of U.S. policy in the Gulf in a New York Times article entitled "Talk of Arab 'Democracy' Is a Double-Edged Scimitar." Here's part of it: "So when President Bush argues - as he did again on Wednesday night - that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein could spread the seeds of democracy across the Arab world, Mr. Said scoffs, naming autocratic Arab countries the United States has long supported as strategic allies, including Egypt."

There's going to be a big protest at Shannon Airport in Ireland tomorrow. The Sunday newspapers should have reports on Ankara and Ireland. I'll keep you posted. Still monitoring the arm-twisting that's being done to establish the "Coalition of the Willing" - we'll see who goes along for the ride.