Sec’y of State Colin Powell is garnering much praise for the alacrity with which he has apparently hammered out a global alliance in support of US, or even joint, action in the wake of the attack. Russian and Islamic assent has been cited. But I fear we will whitewash and minimize indications that we have not really achieved consensus. The non-U.S. press will be a better indicator of what support we do and do not have. Here, from The Independent: “Despite calls from US President George Bush to Russian
President Vladimir Putin, asking for full support in the wake of
the suicide attacks, Russia is making it clear that it will not
back an American invasion of Afghanistan from bases in the
former Soviet Central Asia.”
General Anatoly Kvashnin, the Russian Chief of Staff, said it
was unlikely that the Russian army would take part in any
“acts of revenge” against the perpetrators of the attacks in the
US. “The US has powerful enough military forces that it can
cope with this task on its own,” he said.
Meanwhile, Nikolai Kovalyov, the former head of the Russian
FSB security service, warned the US that an attack on
Afghanistan would fail to capture Osama bin Laden, the alleged
mastermind of the atrocities, and would backfire on the US. “In
Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain it takes a trainload of
explosives to destroy three militants,” he said. “The chance of
hitting bin Laden is zero.”
Especially if agreements do not hold, as Anthony Lewis says in The New York Times,
Beware Unintended Results: “The danger in the current situation is that hasty, ill-targeted military action
could arouse anti-Western sentiments right across the Middle East. That
could threaten such important U.S. friends as the governments of Egypt
and Jordan — and Saudi Arabia, from which Osama bin Laden is an
angry exile and which is at the core of his grievance. He would be
delighted at a United States response that destabilized the Saudi regime.”
Do we really, for example, have Pakistan’s “unstinted cooperation,” as its military leader has been reported to say? Polite statements of support from the broad spectrum of the international community at a time of condolence may not turn into a sustained commitment. The regimes of the moderate Islamic world in particular are likely to be conciliatory at this time to deflect the specter of American impulsive wrath. But, would they be earnest participants in a world war against Islam which would threaten to erode their in many cases precarious hold over their own populaces?
If the Shrub takes a page from his father’s book (he’s already getting a war to be at the helm of, just like Daddy did… although it didn’t do much for Senior’s reelection success), he will create a coalition in name only, like the Gulf War coalition, which fell apart after a much simpler, limited military objective was readily met. And if we bully the world community into cooperation, we perpetuate the hatred for the way in which the U.S. thows its weight around.
In this light, Harry Browne asks When will we learn?:
“Our foreign policy has been insane for decades.
It was only a matter of time until Americans
would have to suffer personally for it. It is a
terrible tragedy of life that the innocent so often
have to suffer for the sins of the guilty.
When will we learn that we can’t allow our
politicians to bully the world without someone
bullying back eventually?
President Bush has authorized continued
bombing of innocent people in Iraq. President
Clinton bombed innocent people in the Sudan,
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Serbia. President Bush,
senior, invaded Iraq and Panama. President
Reagan bombed innocent people in Libya and
invaded Grenada. And on and on it goes.
Did we think the people who lost their families
and friends and property in all that destruction
would love America for what happened?”
