that left me cold. I recommend that you all look through this old Spiegel article from March 2003. It details the last few days of diplomacy before the Iraq War. I hate to say it, but I feel like France and Germany were the good guys, and the U.S. were the bad guys. I'm sorry, but that's how I feel. Looking at the disaster Iraq is today, I'd go even further and say France and Germany were trying to be good friends to the U.S., trying to prevent us from making one of the biggest mistakes of our history. Like an intervention, BEGGING the U.S. to go back to the Betty Ford Clinic (U.N.) and STAY there before it was too late and we hit rock bottom. Instead of heeding their warnings, the Bush people were like the out of control drunk spewing insults and abusing the friends who were only trying to help.
Here's the link along with a couple of excerpts:
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,239589,00.htmlWhether the name of the Council president is Pleuger or Traoré doesn't make a lot of difference, neither within the Council nor on the outside. Out there in New York, in the U.S., the United Nations has about as much prestige as a student parliament. In the White House they talk of the U.N. as a "debating society." On one of the popular TV late shows, the last meeting of the Security Council was portrayed as a round table of cheese-eating expense account types. Nevertheless, the mobile units of all the major American TV networks are parked in front of the U.N. building. The Security Council makes a good backdrop for special broadcasts with titles like "Showdown: Iraq."
And it produces the sort of material from which spy films are made. An NSA (U.S. National Security Agency) memorandum was passed along to the British publication, Observer. In it the head of a department indicates that the undecided M-6 are to be kept under surveillance. Information is to be obtained that would "give U.S. politicians an advantage in achieving their goals or avoid any surprises."
Nobody denies the report; nobody protests. "It is flattering to be monitored by the CIA," says one of the ambassadors affected by it. "You have to be pretty naïve to be surprised," says the representative from Pakistan. In the German mission to the U.N., Room 1111 is "bugproof." There are no windows and it is as quiet as an Ikea sauna. That is where the Germans and the French met for their discussions. It's like the Cold War.
Negroponte exemplifies the value his government places in the U.N.. Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld consider the U.N. an administrative jungle they will never find their way out of. In the beginning George W. Bush had listened to Secretary of State Powell who advised him they shouldn't do anything without the U.N.. Bush probably does not believe that anymore.
"John Negroponte is a typical diplomat. He's nothing like Richard Holbrooke, his predecessor, who was unable to pass up a photo opportunity. He prefers to remain in the background," Robert Wood, his spokesman says, and after a short pause, "And that's the way it ought to be."
His boss is now sitting somewhere upstairs in the building, exactly where, Robert Wood is not at liberty to say "for security reasons." Robert Wood has served at American embassies in Africa, Latin America, and Asia; he has now been here for one-and-a-half years; in another year and a half he will be leaving again, preferably for NATO, another "hot seat," he says.
When he speaks about the U.N., he does so only in the third person, as though talking about something strange, something he doesn't know what to make of. "The U.N. has to watch out it doesn't become superfluous now," Robert Wood says. "Above all our European, uh, friends are not aware what's at stake. Look, the French foreign minister probably felt very good after his appearance here. He was applauded. But he didn't understand that he only strengthened Saddam Hussein. Our Secretary of State went back to Washington with the feeling that nobody was listening to him. Yet he had very good arguments."
Wood reaches down into one of the big cardboard boxes next to his chair and takes out a CD-ROM. "Take this along, it's all on there," Wood says. "Please do."
On the CD-ROM it says, "Iraq - the failure of disarmament." It contains the pictures that Colin Powell showed the Security Council on February 5th. That was more than a month ago.
Has it already been decided there will be war? "If in the next two or three days we see that Saddam Hussein really intends to disarm, really and honestly, yes, then there would be no need to wage a war. But under his regime there will be no disarmament. We are more and more convinced of it."
The week of the diplomats has come to an end. Now it is the turn of George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Tommy Franks, and perhaps of Saddam Hussein, to decide about war.
Goodbye, New York.
Good morning, Vietnam.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
