Posted 8:23 AM by Blah blah

Tonight on PBS at 8 pm: Frontline. In a two-hour special, "The Long Road to War," FRONTLINE draws on its extensive archives of more than 12 years of reporting on Iraq to tell the history of the U.S. confrontation with Saddam.

The Arrogant Empire (Newsweek): "America’s unprecedented power scares the world, and the Bush administration has only made it worse. How we got here—and what we can do about it now....To support America today in much of the world is politically dangerous. Over the past year the United States became a campaign issue in elections in Germany, South Korea and Pakistan. Being anti-American was a vote-getter in all three places....how to explain the sentiment in Turkey, a country that sits on the Iraqi border? A longtime ally, Turkey has fought with America in conflicts as distant as the Korean War, and supported every American military action since then. But opposition to the war now runs more than 90 percent there. Despite Washington’s offers of billions of dollars in new assistance, the government cannot get parliamentary support to allow American troops to move into Iraq from Turkish bases. Or consider Australia, another crucial ally, and another country where a majority now opposes American policy. Or Ireland. Or India. In fact, while the United States has the backing of a dozen or so governments, it has the support of a majority of the people in only one country in the world, Israel. If that is not isolation, then the word has no meaning....

A war with Iraq, even if successful, might solve the Iraq problem. It doesn’t solve the America problem. What worries people around the world above all else is living in a world shaped and dominated by one country—the United States. And they have come to be deeply suspicious and fearful of us....

[T]he United States will spend as much next year on defense as the rest of the world put together (yes, all 191 countries). And it will do so devoting 4 percent of its GDP, a low level by postwar standards....

But should the guiding philosophy of the world’s leading democracy really be the tough talk of a Chicago mobster? In terms of effectiveness, this strategy has been a disaster. It has alienated friends and delighted enemies. Having traveled around the world and met with senior government officials in dozens of countries over the past year, I can report that with the exception of Britain and Israel, every country the administration has dealt with feels humiliated by it. 'Most officials in Latin American countries today are not anti-American types,' says Jorge Castaneda, the reformist foreign minister of Mexico, who resigned two months ago. 'We have studied in the United States or worked there. We like and understand America. But we find it extremely irritating to be treated with utter contempt.' ...

Does America really want a world in which it gets its way in the face of constant public anger only by twisting arms, offering bribes and allying with dictators?"

Good interview with Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the last Secretary General of the United Nations. (The Guardian).

Blog from Iraq

More by Salam Pax, the guy from Iraq. Please read him! I've changed some of his grammar and wording. (Also, remember to check out the blog of Kevin Sites, the CNN reporter now in Iraq. Kevin is also making audio blog posts and talked about his experiences from covering other wars):
...
Sunday, March 16, 2003
[RANT]
No one inside Iraq is for war (note I said war, not a change of regime). No human being in his right mind will ask you to give him the beating of his life, unless you are a member of Fight Club that is, and if you do hear Iraqis (in Iraq, not expats) saying “Come on, bomb us,” it is the exasperation and 10 years of sanctions and hardship talking. There is no person inside Iraq (and this is a bold, blinking and underlined "inside") who will be jumping up and down asking for the bombs to drop. We are not suicidal you know, not all of us in any case.

I think that the coming war is not justified (and it is very near now, we hear the war drums loud and clear if you don’t then take those earplugs off!). The excuses for it have been stretched to their limits they will almost snap. A decision has been made some time ago that “regime change” in Baghdad is needed and excuses for the forceful change have to be made. I do think war could have been avoided, not by running back and forth the last two months, that’s silly. But the whole issue of Iraq should have been dealt with differently since the first day after GW I [George Bush Sr.].

The entities that call themselves “the international community” should have assumed their responsibilities a long time ago, should have thought about what the sanctions they have imposed really meant, should have looked at reports about weapons and human rights abuses a long time before having them thrown in their faces as excuses for war five minutes before midnight.

What is bringing on this rant is the question that has been bugging me for days now: how could “Support democracy in Iraq” come to mean “Bomb the hell out of Iraq”? why did it end up that democracy won’t happen unless we go through war? Nobody minded an un-democratic Iraq for a very long time, but now people have decided to bomb us to democracy? Well, thank you! How thoughtful.

The situation in Iraq could have been solved in other ways than what the world will be going through the next couple of weeks. It can’t have been that impossible. Look at the northern parts of Iraq: that is a model that has worked quite well. Why wasn’t anybody interested in doing that in the south? Just like the US/UK UN created a protected area there why couldn’t the model have been tried in the south. It would have cut off the regime's arms and legs. And once the people see what they have been deprived of they will not be willing to go back. Just ask any Iraqi from the Kurdish areas. Instead the world watched while after the war the Shias were crushed by Saddam’s army in a manner that really didn’t happen before the Gulf War. Does anyone else see the words ("Iran/not in the US interest") floating or is it me hallucinating?

And there is the matter of Sanctions. Now that Iraq has been through a decade of these sanctions, I can only hope that their effects are clear enough for them not to be tried upon another nation. Sanctions which allegedly should have kept a potentially dangerous situation in Iraq in check brought a whole nation to its knees instead. And who ultimately benefited from the sanctions? Neither the international community nor the Iraqi people, he who was in power and control still is. These sanctions made the Iraqi people hostages in the hands of this regime, tightened an already tight noose around our necks. A whole nation, a proud and learned nation, was devastated not by the war but by sanctions. Our brightest and most creative minds fled the country not because of oppression alone but because no one inside Iraq could make a living, survive. And can anyone tell me what the sanctions really did about weapons? Get real, there are always willing nations who will help, there are always organizations which will find his money sweet. Oil-for-Food? Smart Sanctions? Get a clue. Who do you think is getting all those contracts to supply the people with “food”? who do you think is heaping money in bank accounts abroad? It is his people, his family and the people who play his game. Abroad and in Iraq, Iraqis and non-Iraqis.

What I mean to say is that things could have been different; I can’t help look at the northern parts of Iraq with envy and wonder why.

Do support democracy in Iraq. But don’t equate it with war. What will happen is something that could/should have been avoided. Don’t expect me to wear an [I heart Bush] T-shirt. Support democracy in Iraq not by bombing us to hell and then trying to build it up again (well that is going to happen anyway) not by sending human shields (let’s be real the war is going to happen and Saddam will use you as hostages), but by keeping an eye on what will happen after the war.

To end this rant, a word about Islamic fundis/wahabisim/Qaeda and all that.

Do you know when the sight of women veiled from top to bottom became common in cities in Iraq? Do you know when the question of segregation between boys and girls became red hot? When tribal law replaced THE LAW? When Wahabi became part of our vocabulary?

It only happened after the Gulf War. I think it was Cheney or Albright who said they will bomb Iraq back to the Stone Age. Well you did. Iraqis have never accepted religious extremism in their lives. They still don’t. Wahabis in their short dishdasha are still looked upon as sheep who have strayed from the herd. But they are spreading. The combination of poverty/no work/low self-esteem and the bitterness of seeing people who rose to riches and power without any real merit but having the right family name or connection shook the whole social fabric. Situations which would have been unacceptable in the past are being tolerated today.
[/RANT]