[A-List] What if they gave a victory party and nobody showed up?

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Rest of the West Is Less Than Impressed

By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com Staff
Thursday, April 10, 2003; 8:57 AM

What if they gave a victory party and nobody showed up?

The Western online media outside of North America seems far less
impressed by the news out of Baghdad than their U.S. counterparts. Even
in countries allied with the U.S. war effort, the toppling of statues of
Saddam Hussein is being greeted less an an occasion for joy than an
opportunity to comment quietly on the American way of war.

The French are certainly not in a rush to expound on the Bush
administration's apparent victory. Today's editorial in Le Monde, the
antiwar daily in Paris, was written about the time U.S. tanks rolled
into downtown Baghdad yesterday. But the editors' focus was not on the
imminent demise of the regime, but on the U.S. attacks Monday morning on
the Palestine Hotel and the al-Jazeera offices in Baghdad which killed
three journalists.

These attacks, already ancient history in the speedy American news
cycle, are symbolic of U.S. tactics in taking of Baghdad, say the editors.

"A flood of fire vis-a-vis the slightest threat or what is perceived as
such: air raids and tank fire and heavy machine gun shooting in a
crowded downtown. The civilian victims undoubtedly amount in the
hundreds. It is a military culture which is the cause: the massive use
of force against the least danger, so much the worse for civilians. The
British army gives a contrary example: that of patience and reserve. To
preserve the future, even if it means to take risks."

British critics of the war are subdued but still full of advice.

"On one level the US-British success to date is deeply impressive and on
another, troubling," write the editors of The Guardian, the leftist
London daily that lead the antiwar campaign in the British press.
"Saddam's overthrow is a great boon. But Iraq's 'liberation' must not
lead to internal destabilisation or external exploitation. Pre-war
promises must be fulfilled; there must be long-term follow-through and a
major rethink, too. For George Bush's America must understand that Iraq
does not mean future pre-emptive, unilateral, illegal war-making is now
somehow OK. Sometimes war proves unstoppable; but it is seldom OK."

Compared to getting the water supply running again, talking about
history at this moment might seem a luxury, writes historian Timothy
Garton Ash in The Guardian. "It isn't. Dealing rightly with the past is
more important even than water for the long-term health of a future
Iraqi democracy," he says.

Garton Ash, who made a name for himself writing about transition from
communism to democracy in Eastern Europe, warned that against U.S. plans
to try Iraqi war criminals under American law.

"There's always the suspicion among the defeated in a war that any
subsequent trials are "victors' justice". Nothing could be better
calculated to confirm that view than this crass proposal."

Garton Ash says establishing democracy depends on being sensitive to the
defeated Iraqis.

"Trials should, usually, be confined to the very worst category of human
rights violations and war crimes. They should be conducted by a neutral
international court applying international humanitarian law that was in
force at the time the crimes were committed. Otherwise you violate a
principle of justice by making it retrospective. If you use your own
national laws, or make up new ones to fit the occasion, this, to the
defeated, does not look like justice at all. "

In Switzerland, victory celebrations get short shrift in favor of the
Swiss's favorite topic: banking. The top Iraq story in the
English-language edition of the Zurich daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung
declares, "Saddam's successor has controversial Swiss past."

The story details how Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon's favorite candidate
to run post-war Iraq, ran the Geneva branch of the Lebanese bank, Mebco,
which is owned by his family. The story details why the bank was shut
down by the Swiss Federal Banking Commission in 1989.

In the Madrid daily El Mundo the lead story reports that the war goes
on. Turkish officials are quoted saying the Kurdish advance on the
oil-rich city of Kirkuk is unacceptable. The photo of Iraqis holding up
a sign that says "Bush: Yes Yes Yes" is relegated to second place.

The front page photo in another Spanish daily, El Pais reports, not on
celebrations, but on the arrival of the Red Cross. On the opinion page,
the editors write that Hussein's fall "is a reason for satisfaction, but
adds, "Although the scent of the victory distracts those who carried it
out, this war was avoidable. The world is better without this dictator,
but the management of this conflict contributes to debilitation of the
already fragile international order."

In Australia, the most junior partner in the war coalition, the Sydney
Morning Herald doesn't treat the fall of Baghdad as a big deal. The
paper's lead story is about a battle for a palace north of the Iraqi
capital that "demonstrates the fighting is far from over."

And the paper's cartoons give a more sardonic Down Under view of the
American victory. One shows a U.S. tank pulling down a statue of the
United Nations. Another shows three hooded figures, one adult, two
children (a poke at the dimunitive British and Australian roles)
smashing a bee hive called the Middle East. A swarm of bees is headed
for a nearby group of peacefully picnicking Europeans.
© 2003 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive