Friends? Who needs friends? Apparently we, the United States, don’t. We are isolating the rest of the world at an alarming rate. Dubya is hell-bent on attacking Iraq and, to the rest of the world, it amounts to nothing more than international thuggery. The American body politic should be shouting at our president to slow the mess down.
The United States has the legal right to attack Iraq. The Iraqi government (read: Saddam Hussein) signed a cease fire agreement on April 6, 1991 that outlined conditions under which the Gulf War coalition would stop making the Iraqi army look like a bunch of little girls.
Officially that resolution was signed by the United Nations, but the United States pays for 22 percent of the United Nations annual budget and 27 percent of the UN’s peacekeeping budget. That is substantial enough to claim that Iraq’s ignorance of the stipulations in that agreement were a snub at the U.S.
One could argue it is short-sighted to think that just because Iraq doesn’t pose a threat now, it never will. Based on that hollow logic, why aren’t we bombing the hell out of China and Russia?
Allow me to draw a picture for you. A bunch of kids are on a playground. There is no authority around with the power to stop them from doing whatever they wish. A bigger, stronger kid sees that a smaller lad has something that he wants. The big kid walks over to the smaller one, kicks his tail, and takes his stuff, all the while claiming he had to do it because the smaller kid presented a clear threat to his well-being. Sounds pretty shaky, eh? Enter the U.S./Iraq dilemma.
The rest of the world knows Iraq presents NO conventional danger to the United States. Even if Iraq had 100 nukes, it has absolutely no means of delivering them to U.S. soil.
But they could attack Israel. Last time I checked that wasn’t a good enough reason to send a loved one to lose their life, at least not for a country that is as aggressive as Israel. We must protect Israel to an extent but we have become the aggressor, a very perilous position for the world’s only super power.
The rest of the world sees the U.S. government as the bully on the playground we call the international community. France, Germany, China and Russia all have serious reservations about a U.S.-led attack in Iraq. Three of those countries wield veto power on the U.N. Security Council (not Germany), so it is becoming more apparent that this will not be a U.N. mission.
The U.S.-led attack, and by “attack” I mean that we are initiating conflict, definitely lends itself to the perception that it is all about oil. This would be what the smaller lad has that the playground bully wants. And that is exactly on what the nay-sayers focus, and by nay-sayers I mean the rest of the world (excepting only a hand full of countries that support action, although, unenthusiastically). Iraq is a very petroleum-rich country, the United States has a lagging economy, and by golly if the United States wants to get on the right track it needs Iraq’s oil.
This perception and the bull-headed, hawkish posture of the Bush Administration has, at a minimum, left a bad taste in the mouth of the global community and, at worst, plain pissed off the rest of the world.
We will not be the only super power forever. If Dubya does not slow down and tone down, the countries’ whose influence we are ignoring will not forget how they were treated.
The Bush administration is singlehandedly ruining the international reputation of the United States. Its isolationist policies will lead to a hatred of the United States that will haunt U.S. citizens traveling abroad, the U.S.’s economy and, most of all, future administrations’ ability to exercise diplomacy for years to come.
It is incumbent upon President Bush to convince the American people and the rest of the world that we are not greedy thugs war-mongering for economic gain. If the administration doesn’t voluntarily, Americans should demand it or demonstrate on a scale never before seen.