"A New Power in the Streets"

[cuito61@xxxxxxxxxx]

Some may have seen this already, but I thought it was pretty interesting to see 
this in the NYT.  We really did something special this weekend across the globe 
and I hope we can build on it.  It's up to us to make sure the "political 
consequences" mentioned in this article, as well as other consequences, are 
truly felt if and when this attack on Iraq goes full blast.


February 17, 2003
A New Power in the Streets
By PATRICK E. TYLER

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/17/international/middleeast/17ASSE.html?th

WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 ? The fracturing of the Western alliance over Iraq and the 
huge antiwar demonstrations around the world this weekend are reminders that 
there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world 
public opinion.

In his campaign to disarm Iraq, by war if necessary, President Bush appears to 
be eyeball to eyeball with a tenacious new adversary: millions of people who 
flooded the streets of New York and dozens of other world cities to say they 
are against war based on the evidence at hand.

Mr. Bush's advisers are telling him to ignore them and forge ahead, as are some 
leading pro-war Republicans. Senator John McCain, for one, said today that it 
was "foolish" for people to protest on behalf of the Iraqi people, because the 
Iraqis live under Saddam Hussein "and they will be far, far better off when 
they are liberated from his brutal, incredibly oppressive rule."

That may be true, but it fails to answer the question that France, Germany and 
other members of the Security Council have posed: What is the urgent rationale 
for war now if there is a chance that continued inspections under military 
pressure might accomplish the disarmament of Iraq peacefully?

The fresh outpouring of antiwar sentiment may not be enough to dissuade Mr. 
Bush or his advisers from their resolute preparations for war. But the sheer 
number of protesters offers a potent message that any rush to war may have 
political consequences for nations that support Mr. Bush's march into the 
Tigris and Euphrates valleys.

This may have been the reason that foreign ministers for 22 Arab nations, 
meeting in Cairo today, called on all Arab countries to "refrain from offering 
any kind of assistance or facilities for any military action that leads to the 
threat of Iraq's security, safety and territorial integrity."

War, like politics, is affected by psychology and momentum. The strong surge in 
momentum the Bush administration felt after Secretary of State Colin L. 
Powell's Feb. 5 presentation to the Security Council on the case for war has 
been undermined by at least four converging negatives.

The most obvious is the rupture in relations between Mr. Bush and some of his 
principal partners in Europe: France and Germany, now joined by Russia, China 
and a growing list of other countries. Just weeks ago, it seemed that Mr. Bush 
was successfully coaxing France and Germany into the war camp, especially after 
one of the chief United Nations weapons inspectors, Hans Blix, delivered a 
negative report on Jan. 27 on Iraqi compliance.

But the swell of popular opposition to war across Europe, the second negative, 
plus the corrosive effects of the hawkish jibes that Defense Secretary Donald 
H. Rumsfeld and others have hurled across the Atlantic, have only roiled the 
waters further. Washington discovered just how deeply Western unity had been 
sundered when it asked for defensive NATO deployments to Turkey to protect that 
front-line state from Iraqi intimidation ? a request that brought opposition 
and contentious debate that were resolved today.

The Security Council meeting on Friday that was to be the penultimate step in 
laying the groundwork for war, instead produced two significant negatives. 
Giving his latest report, Mr. Blix indicated that the inspectors were making 
noteworthy progress in forcing Iraq to make concessions on everything from 
allied surveillance flights to giving inspectors greater access to Iraqi 
weapons scientists. Mr. Blix said Iraq was still not cooperating like a state 
that truly wanted to disarm, but there had been progress, he said.

The implication was that Mr. Blix saw the virtue of taking more time, though he 
did not specifically ask for it. But neither was he ready to tell the Security 
Council that inspections had failed as a tool for disarmament.

In another negative, Mr. Powell's performance on Friday appeared to fall short 
of public expectations that he would demonstrate that the threat posed by Iraq 
under Mr. Hussein was so imminent that the only logical response was war as 
soon as possible.

Mr. Powell promised new intelligence on connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda, 
but then did not provide it, at least within public view. And he did not 
respond to Mr. Blix when the arms inspector challenged one point of the 
American intelligence briefing of Feb. 5.

Mr. Blix pointed out that the satellite images Mr. Powell brought before the 
Council were shot two weeks apart and did not necessarily show Iraqi deception. 
A chemical decontamination truck is present in one photo and not the other. 
"Routine" movements were also a possible explanation, Mr. Blix pointed out, and 
Mr. Powell nodded.

Though Mr. Powell was nimble as ever in his extemporaneous remarks, the one 
thing that his presentation did not provide the Security Council was an answer 
to the question that hung over the body: Why war now?

To the rest of the world, it might have seemed necessary that Washington 
provide an answer, if only to respond to the argument of the French foreign 
minister, Dominique de Villepin. He placed an alternative logic before the 
Security Council: Could anyone argue that immediate war would be shorter and 
more effective in disarming Iraq than continued United Nations inspections 
under the threat of force?

It didn't help Mr. Bush or Mr. Powell that the French said their intelligence 
agencies found no support for the American claim of a strong connection between 
Baghdad and Osama bin Laden's terrorism network. It also did not help that Mr. 
Powell's appearance on Friday came just days after Prime Minister Tony Blair's 
latest intelligence white paper was found to have been plagiarized from 
Internet sources.

As if to defy the deteriorating support for immediate war, Mr. Bush's advisers 
warned against playing "into Saddam Hussein's hands," as Condoleezza Rice, Mr. 
Bush's national security adviser, said on Fox News Sunday this morning.

But the more senior members of Mr. Bush's team, especially Mr. Powell, live in 
the shadow of Vietnam, where their careers began and out of which they brought 
a determination not to take the country into war without strong public support. 
Given Mr. Hussein's record, the actions of Iraq over the next few weeks could 
conceivably resurrect that support and reverse the negative psychology and loss 
of momentum that the Bush administration suffered this week.

For the moment, an exceptional phenomenon has appeared on the streets of world 
cities. It may not be as profound as the people's revolutions across Eastern 
Europe in 1989 or in Europe's class struggles of 1848, but politicians and 
leaders are unlikely to ignore it. The Arab states' declaration in Cairo seems 
proof of that.




--
marc rodrigues
sfs> http://qcsfs.tripod.com

'one power.. is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust.. lf there is 
a country which has committed unspeakable atrocities, it is the United States 
of America' -Nelson Mandela


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