Becoming What We Detest: Bush Says ‘Time Is Running Out’ as Forces Move Into Place. Rapid action is necessary both for reasons of logistics, with the proverbial harsh Afghan winter approaching, and for U.S. credibility. The Times quite correctly discerns that behind the words about consensus and coalition is the U.S.’s momentum toward acting alone. Rumsfeld’s trip this week resulted in no public permission from five “friendly” nations for us to use their territory to launch attacks, but the U.S. “insisted that it had what it needed —
overflight rights, limited basing rights and open political support…” Unnamed sources concede that one reason for unilateral action is “that the United States is determined
to avoid the limitations on its targets that were imposed by NATO allies
during the 1999 war in Kosovo, or the hesitance to topple a leader that
members of the Persian Gulf war coalition felt in 1991… A senior administration official put it more bluntly: ‘The fewer people you
have to rely on, the fewer permissions you have to get.’
A sign of Washington’s insistence that its hands not be tied was its rejection
of United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan’s entreaties that any
American military action be subject to Security Council approval,
administration officials said. At the same time, the Bush administration
decided it was not necessary to make public its evidence against Mr. bin
Laden. .At first, the Pentagon was even unwilling to have NATO invoke the
alliance’s mutual defense clause requiring members to defend one other
against an armed attack, senior administration and European officials
said. “The allies were desperately trying to give us political cover and the
Pentagon was resisting it,” one senior administration official said. “It was
insane. Eventually Rumsfeld understood it was a plus, not a minus, and
was able to accept it.” “
It seems clearer that, despite the legitimizing ‘spin’, the U.S. is embarking alone on as irresponsible and dangerous a path as some of us have been dreading all along. From 9-11 onward, we eschewed mechanisms that might have legitimated and framed bringing the perpetrators and their backers to justice as police actions under the rule of international law. Even granting that we take a military rather than a law enforcement approach, we have ignored legitimate vehicles for international action such as the U.N., utilizing which could have strengthened existing mechanisms for world peace and security that instead we scoff at. The much-vaunted international consensus we claimed to build for U.S.-led action now sounds like so much smoke and mirrors. (My speculation is that, in its injured entitlement after the attack, the administration expected other nations’ full cooperation out of the goodness of their hearts. Now that it is clear that, instead, almost every nation expects something in return, we are unwilling to accept the demands of mutuality.) We have made a travesty of establishing the credibility of our accusations before the court of world opinion. We seem to be intent on evading rules of engagement on which the civilized world agrees. In essence, we become after all the rogue state we claim to detest…
