Left Margin
Let a Real Debate Begin
By Carl Bloice 2-26-03

Commenting on the caution over Iraq being expressed by some former associates of George Bush the senior, on Sept. 2, 2002, New York Times Columnist William Safire wondered aloud whether the former President realized that any father-son difference on the question would aid opponents of "his son's historic mission of reforming the Middle East." As is usually the case, Safire knows of what he speaks and there is ample enough evidence that the threatened war is part of a much larger project that was in the making long before September 11, 2000.

It is as if there were two debates taking place in the country involving two entirely distinct frames of reference. On one hand, there is the discussion that unfolds in international relations journals and magazines like The New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine. On the other hand, there is the debate over Iraq that fills the cable news networks, talk shows and most major newspapers. In the first, one gets the picture of a radical shift in U.S. foreign policy being played out by the Bush Administration premised on employing U.S. military power to remake not only the Middle East but also to reshape contemporary international relations. In the latter, the message to the larger population is that the only question to be addressed is the aim ridding Iraq of "weapons of mass destruction" and the supposed liberation of the Iraqi people.

No such dichotomy is to be found in most of the media outside our country. U.S. overall strategic objectives and the tectonic shift in U.S. foreign policy are being observed and discussed widely in Pretoria, Kuala Lumpur, St. Petersburg and Lima.

As Carter Administration national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski (hardly a dove) has put it, "the manner in which the United States defined its 'war on terrorism' has struck many abroad as excessively theological ('evildoers who hate freedom') and unrelated to any political context. The evident reluctance to see a connection between Middle Eastern terrorists and the political problems of the Middle East fueled suspicions that the United States was exploiting the campaign against terrorism largely for political and regional ends. Moreover, the increasingly shrill but unsubstantiated efforts to connect Iraq with al Qaeda have also given rise to the question of whether that alleged (or emerging) linkage is the reason for U.S. policy or, increasingly, the result of it." (Washington Post, Feb. 19, 2003)

We frequently read calls like the one that appeared in last Sunday's Post editorial for the U.S President to counter worldwide disdain for the policies of his administration by making "his case more clearly and strongly." The problem is there is no case to be made unless the President is willing to spell out to the world the long range objectives linked to this war - as they have been developed by a small coterie of policy making alchemists ensconced in the Pentagon. However, given the full picture most thoughtful people on the planet, including in the United States, would say, "forget about it."

Washington Post editorial writers penned a remarkably misleading essay on democracy last Sunday. Responding to the notion that leaders of such countries as Spain and Italy ought to be responsive to the anti-war opinion of their citizenry, they declared that while popular opposition to government policy "can" prevent "irrational belligerence," still "… leaders of democracies sometimes must make painful choices, whether to raise taxes or to send young men and women to battle."

Wrong. In our country, raising taxes and going to war must be voted on by Congress and a declaration of war must have the consent of the Senate, something for which the Bush administration hasn't even asked. But the Post editors overlook the more fundamental question: the current direction of U.S. foreign policy has never even - as Senator Robert Byrd has pointed out - been publicly debated.

In this context, last Sunday's New York Times editorial was astonishing. Never once did it even allude to the new strategic objectives of the Administration as spelled out so clearly in public statements by Administration policy makers. Evidently, the editors don't think that it's even worth discussing the idea that after Iraq the next targets in the "war on terrorism" would be Syria, Iran and Libya. Apparently, they don't think the aim of "reforming the Middle East" even enters into the picture.

The main reason for the widespread opposition to Washington's threats to Iraq is that most of the world simply refuses buy the argument that the administration is propelled toward war because it genuinely believes Saddam Hussein's military is a serious threat to the world and that President George Bush's desire is to deliver the blessings of "democracy" to the people of Iraq. "We need another debate," say the Times. We do. But it will be irrelevant to most of the world if it concerns only how to respond to the next report of the United Nations weapons inspectors. What the world - and a growing portion of the people of our own country-- wants to debate is the direction of U.S. foreign policy and how we see our place in the world of the 21st Century.