REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Bush in Lilliput
Delaying action in Iraq is endangering American lives.
Wednesday, March 12, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
Wall St. Journal
"The Bush Administration is putting a special focus on
winning the support of Guinea . . ."--page A3,
yesterday's Wall Street Journal.
We've never visited Guinea, which is perhaps our loss.
But the spectacle of the U.S. government begging that
African nation for permission to sacrifice American
blood and treasure to save the world from Saddam
Hussein exposes the farce that the U.N. Security
Council's Iraq debate has become. Every day of delay
in starting the war matters little to Guinea but it
puts more Americans at mortal risk.
President Bush is of course trying to accommodate his
stalwart friend, Tony Blair. The British Prime
Minister wants a nine-vote majority in the 15-member
Security Council as a shield against his Labour Party
critics. But Mr. Blair's fate will surely rise or fall
on how well the war goes and not on who approves it in
advance. Mr. Bush has already done him the favor of
going for a first U.N. resolution last fall, followed
by weeks of further delay this year to seek a second.
That second effort now looks like a diplomatic
blunder, given Russian and the implacable French
opposition. The process itself has also forced the
U.S. to give up some of the attack advantage of
strategic surprise. And it now risks causing more
tangible harm as the U.S. agrees to more concessions
and extensions--yesterday to one beyond even the
earlier "final" deadline of March 17.
This latest delay is aimed at gathering the elusive
but somehow "crucial" votes of "six swing Council
nations." In addition to Guinea, those countries are
Mexico, Chile, Angola, Pakistan and the always
strategically vital Cameroon. The U.S. has already
been reduced to bribing these countries with cash or
other favors in return for their support. Yet they've
all played hard to get, posing as Hamlet for their 10
minutes of fame on the world stage.
The Mexican and Chilean fandango is especially
insulting given the preferential treatment their
exports receive to the U.S. market. Maybe we should
transfer to Bulgaria--which is supporting us sans
bribery--the trade benefits that these two nations
apparently take for granted. These columns have long
tried sympathetically to explain Mexican realities to
our readers, but President Vicente Fox's U.N. war
straddle will cost his country years of U.S. public
goodwill.
Mexican and French soldiers will not be doing any
dying once the war finally does start. That privilege
will belong to Americans (and some Brits and Aussies),
and every day that they are prevented from starting to
disarm Saddam is one more day he is able to prepare
death traps for them and for us.
There are now daily reports that the Iraqi dictator
has booby-trapped oil wells, dispersed his mobile
poison labs or placed agents among Iraqi civilians.
Yesterday's AP dispatch had him opening "a training
camp for Arab volunteers willing to carry out suicide
bombings against U.S. forces." Every day of delay also
gives him, or al Qaeda, more time to plant or mobilize
agents to attack the U.S. homeland.
There are other growing costs of delay. One is the
economic damage from uncertainty--which is small
compared with life and limb but seems large if you
lose your job. Another is the lesson to other thugs,
such as North Korea's Kim Jong Il, that they can also
use the U.N. to stymie and wait out American resolve.
And then there is the cost to President Bush's own
political standing and credibility as he lets the
world's pygmies tie him down like Gulliver.
We could support further delay in starting the war if
there were any hope at all that U.N. inspections might
disarm Saddam short of costing American lives. The
trend is in fact the opposite. Hans Blix, Mohammed El
Baradei and the other inspectors seem more inclined
than ever to forgive Iraqi intransigence. Mr. El
Baradei made a public fuss last week about one
British-U.S. claim that turns out to have been false,
but which was in any case peripheral to Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction. Mr. Blix buried deep in his
latest report the news of an illegal Iraqi drone
capable of delivering chemical weapons.
As each day passes, the evidence mounts that the U.N.
inspections regime is not about containing Saddam; it
is about containing America. Messrs. Bush and Blair
went to the U.N. in good faith to build international
support, and perhaps in the process to rescue the U.N.
from irrelevance. The U.N. is proving daily that is in
fact another League of Nations. Mr. Bush's obligation
is not to the reputation of the U.N. but to the safety
of American soldiers and citizens.
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John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq:
Your enemy is not surrounding your country � your enemy is ruling your
country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be
the day of your liberation." -George W. Bush 1/29/03
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