The Soviets Russians have decided that they will continue to block the lifting of UN sanctions against Iraq, reports AP, regardless of the damage this does to Iraq and its people.
Why doesn't this surprise me?
Also note the complete silence of France on this issue at the moment.
I suspect that France and Russia are playing tag-team wrestling with the US, and the UN is the ring. France is worried about the economic boycott by the US, so my guess is they asked Russia to take the lead, and hence the heat, this time around. They're such good friends, Russia was likely glad to help.
Remind me again why we ever helped either of these backstabbing losers?
If the US plan to completely lift sanctions is not approved by the Security Council, and pronto, the US should declare that it is repudiating the sanctions, and do what needs to be done in Iraq.
One of the consequences of the Iraq campaign is that tinpot dictators around the world now see a nuclear capability as their only hope of deterring the United States from attacking them.
This is all based on a particular calculation: that the United States will not seriously risk a nuclear strike against us, and would never make first use of nuclear weapons.
I believe they are mistaken on both counts.
Yes, the US has foresworn first use of nukes. We have foresworn lots of things and later done them, not least the preemptive strike against Iraq. We do not change our minds on these things lightly, but there is literally NOTHING that the United States would not do if we decide it is necessary to protect us, or the world.
How soon they forget.
It wasn't all that long ago that we lived in the surreal world of MAD - Mutual Assured Destruction. The United States and the Soviet Union each had literally thousands of major nuclear weapons cocked, locked, and leveled at each other. We could have destroyed the whole world 30 times over.
Think of what that implies. The United States was saying:
Yes, we will destroy the entire world, if necessary, before we will bow our knee to any nation. What's more, we will do it as revenge, after we are already gone, if that is all that is left to us.
We were serious. We weren't kidding then, and we aren't kidding now, in the midst of WW4.
North Korea believes that the United States cannot effectively attack them with conventional weapons (probably true, at least at other than ruinous cost), AND would never preemptively strike them with nuclear weapons. Probably not true.
So, North Korea, and others that are watching, have a care.
Another lovely one out of Europe. What was that about the Americans being crude at diplomacy? We've been masters of restraint compared to the French and Germans.
THE strained relations between Germany and the United States took a turn for the worse yesterday after a senior Berlin diplomat was reported to have told Foreign Ministry colleagues that America was turning into a “police state”.
Ya gotta love it. He's a German, he should know, right?
Huge diplomatic efforts are being made to get Mr Bush and Herr Schröder talking again. There have been only two telephone conversations between the leaders since the Chancellor won the German election last September and only a few sparse words have been exchanged at summits.
No kidding. Shove it, Germany.
Let me get this straight: we're NOT ALLOWED to repair Iraq?
The whole world is beating us up because we can't get things back to "normal" in Iraq fast enough, and it turns out that this same world, embodied in the UN, is holding us back?
When I've heard various comments on "the sanctions", I never really thought they applied this way.
Check this London Times article, "US may bypass sanctions to rebuild country".
Bechtel, the giant Californian company awarded a contract to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure worth up to $680 million, is currently limited to assessing the state of the country’s power plants and electrical grid. The transmitters it would need to import to start work are banned under UN sanctions, as are a host of other essential materials ranging from dynamite to water pumps.
This is screwed up. This is completely out of hand.
THE United States is threatening to open a new rift with the United Nations by bypassing international sanctions to kickstart the rebuilding of Iraq.If the UN Security Council fails to lift the trade embargo imposed on Iraq in 1990, the US would simply ignore it under plans being pushed in Washington.
Let's hope so, for the sake of the Iraqi people, and the world.
Not only is this a great day for our friends in Mexico, and Mexican-Americans, it's a great day for every citizen of the United States of America.
Why? Glad you asked. Let's check a couple of quotes from the website Viva! Cinco de Mayo. (emphasis added as appropriate)
So, why Cinco de Mayo? And why should Americans savor this day as well? Because 4,000 Mexican soldiers smashed the French and traitor Mexican army of 8,000 at Puebla, Mexico, 100 miles east of Mexico City on the morning of May 5, 1862
It gets better, and serves as an illustration of how, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The recent behavior of our French "allies" appears to be, not a recent and aberrant episode as some have claimed, rather just business-as-usual.
The French had landed in Mexico (along with Spanish and English troops) five months earlier on the pretext of collecting Mexican debts from the newly elected government of democratic President (and Indian) Benito Juarez. The English and Spanish quickly made deals and left. The French, however, had different ideas.Under Emperor Napoleon III, who detested the United States, the French came to stay.
Gee, why doesn't any of this surprise me?
They brought a Hapsburg prince with them to rule the new Mexican empire.
The French-German connection, again.
Napoleon's French Army had not been defeated in 50 years, and it invaded Mexico with the finest modern equipment and with a newly reconstituted Foreign Legion. The French were not afraid of anyone, especially since the United States was embroiled in its own Civil War.
French delusions of grandeur. Again.
And French willingness to kick the United States when we're down. Again.
The French Army left the port of Vera Cruz to attack Mexico City to the west, as the French assumed that the Mexicans would give up should their capital fall to the enemy -- as European countries traditionally did.
The French showing an intimate understanding of how to be a cheese-eating surrender monkey. Again.
Under the command of Texas-born General Zaragosa, (and the cavalry under the command of Colonel Porfirio Diaz, later to be Mexico's president and dictator), the Mexicans awaited.
Note the Texas leadership connection. :)
Brightly dressed French Dragoons led the enemy columns.
Note the concern with appearances.
The Mexican Army was less stylish.
Heh. But they get the job done. :)
General Zaragosa ordered Colonel Diaz to take his cavalry, the best in the world, out to the French flanks. In response, the French did a most stupid thing; they sent their cavalry off to chase Diaz and his men...
Hmmm, where have we seen this recently?
The Mexicans had won a great victory that kept Napoleon III from supplying the confederate rebels for another year, allowing the United States to build the greatest army the world had ever seen. This grand army smashed the Confederates at Gettysburg just 14 months after the battle of Pueblo, essentially ending the Civil War.
This connection is oft-forgotten in the United States, and should not be. It was an important element in the fate of the Civil War, and hence of the Union.
Union forces were then rushed to the Texas/Mexican border under General Phil Sheridan, who made sure that the Mexicans got all the weapons and ammunition they needed to expel the French.
We remembered our friends then. We must be as steadfast now.
And let the US and Mexico work to put our misunderstandings and disagreements behind us. We remain family, brothers in blood.
VIVA! el Cinco de Mayo!
In this Command Post article "Animosity Towards The French", xavier responds in the Comments, thusly:
Everyone seems to forget several factors that promptd De Gaulle to deeply mistrust the Americans. It doesn't excuse the French but there's background:
1) FDR supported Darlan and had no compunction or recognizing the Vichy regime and working with it until 1941
2) Even after Darlan's assination, FDR preferred Giraud who stated publically that he was sympathetic to the Marshal (i.e. Pétin and thus Vichy)
3) FDR, before he died personally loathed de Gaulle (sure de Gaulle was arrogant etc but the depth of the loathing was unjustified)
4) After the war, the Americans plays a small role in ensuring the French defeat in Indochina. The Americans prohibited the French from using any Lend lease equipment and those weapons slated for Europan defense. By 1950 the Amricans reverse the prhibition but by then it's too late
5) During the Algerian war, the Americans vetoed the French from transferring their NATO troops to Algeria to fight the independence movement.
6) Before then there was the Suez Crisis.Like I said, these factors don't excuse the French but it does place the animosity in some historical context.
Before I respond directly, hat's off to xavier for arguing the French case fairly and with good manners, not just in this post, but in others.
xavier, not all Americans have forgotten that stuff.
As you point out, the FDR - de Gaulle issues were sometimes personal. Was FDR justified in his feelings? Depends on your point of view.
As to US acceptance of Vichy, etc., at the time the US was formally isolationist, and FDR was severely constrained by the feelings of the US populace. It was hard enough getting through the essential slight-of-hand of Lend-Lease. The relatively "minor" issues like recognizing Vichy simply had to wait for another day.
I don't see how any of this in any way justifies de Gaulle's "deep mistrust" of America. I suspect his reason was actually more simple: anti-Americanism, something that was found aplenty in France before WW2. It almost looks like the French start out from a position of anti-Americanism, and then look around for things to "justify" it.
We liberated the guy's country, and allowed him to become its leader. For this we are rewarded with "deep mistrust". wtf?
As to the lack of US support for the resumption of European colonialism, it was well understood on all sides during the war that the US opposed colonialism. We did before the war, we did during the war, and we did after the war. We still do. Numerous promises, formal and informal regarding freedom and self-government were made by the Allies during the war to various colonies and "freedom fighter" groups in order to get them to fight on our side.
At the cessation of hostilities, we all know what happened. The European colonial powers immediately got to work reasserting control over their colonies. All the promises were ignored, and even sniggered at, by Europe. The US was infuriated, and considered this a betrayal, but we didn't press the issue too far. We believed that the indigenous liberation movements would be successful in the long run anyway, we were tired of war, and the Soviets were shaping up to be a real problem. We decided that there wasn't a whole heck of a lot we could do to stop the colonialists, other than nipping at their ankles a bit (examples of which you note), and let it slide.
A few years later the Soviets built The Bomb (via espionage on the US), China fell to the Communists, and these two things caused all Hell to break loose in the US Government and politics. Now we felt our national security was gravely threatened, and we were willing to deal with the Devil if we had to, to survive. I don't argue whether that was smart or not, just saying this is what happened. So we went along with some things we didn't want to, up to and including taking over from the French in Vietnam.
In any case, all of that was long ago. 50 years, more or less. Sure, Chirac and the French may well have remembered it. So what? France was peeved at things we did 50 years ago (which cut both ways) and so they go out of their way to, not just oppose us, but stab us in the back today?
Sorry, it won't wash. If the French think that ANY of this stuff is even partial justification for their actions against America in the present case, I think they need some more time in front of the mirror.
Ya gotta love it. Check this story in Time, "When the Food Workers Union stages an impromptu walkout at the U.N., the diplomats start looting for lunch and booze"
In short, food workers in the UN cafeterias went on strike, and UN staffers and diplomats decided to help themselves...to everything, down to the silverware!
Sound familiar?
Where were the UN peacekeepers? Where were those bastions of the International Community, committed to upholding Legitimacy at any price?
Pigging out, it would seem.
Read about it here. And puke.
The lead-in to the article:
Sexual assault is rampant in France's crumbling housing projects. Now a gang-rape victim has broken the silence. Will society confront the crisis?
Will they indeed?
Samira Bellil would have much preferred to live a quiet life that didn't become the basis for a best-selling book. But after years of psychological torment caused by repeated gang rapes in one of the banlieues — the destitute public housing projects that ring most French cities — she penned Dans l'enfer des tournantes ("In the hell of the tournantes"; the last word is a slang term for gang rape). Published last month, the book has shocked France with its graphic accounts of the attacks and Bellil's impassioned denunciation of the increasing violence and sexual abuse committed against young women in the banlieues.In Bellil's own case, it led to a horrific sequence of gang rapes, in which she was brutalized in fetid apartments and on the ground between filthy trash cans. When one attack was over, her assailants offered Bellil compensation in the form of breakfast and a 10-franc coin. Though the assaults occurred in the late 1980s, Bellil didn't speak up or press charges until three other girls attacked by the same gang appealed to her. Bellil decided to write about the experience now to call attention to the spate of banlieue gang rapes and the perverse attitudes toward sex that feed the crimes.
Reports of sexual assaults against women have risen across France, with court convictions for rape having soared by 61% between 1995 to 2000. But specialists and victims' groups say violence against women is especially acute in the banlieues because of cultural attitudes toward women. Banlieue males may adopt the lifestyles of other French youths — pop music, fast cars and pornography — but they also frequently embrace the traditional prejudices of their immigrant parents when it comes to women: any neighborhood girl who smokes, uses makeup or wears attractive clothes is a whore.
The author asks whether their society will confort this crisis. Given other recent demonstrations of the "morality" of French and Islamic culture, I'd say....naaaaah. Too much fun bashing those terrible Americans. So what if women are regularly gang-raped and murdered? They all deserved it anyway. Any woman who doesn't wear the burkha is a whore.
And this is the nation that dares to lecture the US on "morality".
Tip 'o the hat to Merde in France for the link. Read his comments here, "Why take a cheap holiday in Bangladesh when you can take the commuter train to Sarcelles?"
France, you've got some serious work to do. I think you should be paying more attention to domestic matters right now, and not stirring up trouble for the rest of the world.
We've all heard about the latest Palestinian atrocity.
Um, no, I'm not referring to Israeli "aggression". I'm referring to the cowardly, hateful actions of the terrorists.
The [Israeli] soldiers called on the wanted men to give themselves up, or at least to allow women and children to leave the house, but they refused, witnesses said. According to army sources, the men shouted: "Everyone here will die as martyrs, including the children!" The wanted men then began firing at the soldiers.After a gun battle that lasted several hours - in which the Palestinians shot anti-tank rockets and bombs as well as guns at the IDF forces - the soldiers broke into the house. According to Brigadier General Gad Shamni, the commander of the IDF forces in Gaza, this was deemed necessary, despite being more dangerous, in order to remove the women and children.
"[The wanted men] were holed up inside the house, using the women and children as human shields," another senior officer told Haaretz.
Terrorists. They are not freedom fighters, they are animals. You use women and children as shields? You're the lowest of the low. You're scum.
So what's my point, other than a little venting? Simply that this is the same crap we saw in Iraq. Same actions devoid of any sense of honor or decency. Same maniacal pronouncements. Same flouting of the conventions of humanity.
And also the same care on the part of the Army. The same desire to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties, even at risk to their own soldiers.
It's the same enemy. The same war. We won't be done until they're all gone. All the terrorists and terror-sponsoring regimes have to go and, guess what? That includes the Palestinian Authority.
People think there are a lot of things the United States either won't, or can't, do.
For example, there were a number of cries from around the world that the US "couldn't" take out Saddam without the UN's permission. "You can't do that!"
Then there were cries about how we couldn't set up the interim government without the UN's permission. "You can't do that!".
If the Weasels hang tough and try to force the issue of the sanctions, there will be cries that the US can't sell any of the Iraqi oil on behalf of the Iraqis. "You can't do that!".
Guess what? We did the first, and are doing the second. If we have to, we will do the third.
Bush has said that that the Palestinian crisis will be solved. Now that the Roadmap has been released, what will happen if the PA continues on its more-or-less normal course, and the terrorism continues for months or years?
Assuming Bush gets re-elected, something which I think is almost beyond doubt, what will happen is that the US will move into Palestine and force the issue militarily.
I hear the cries already! You can't do that!
We can, and if we have to, we will.
It'll be ugly and messy and dangerous, but we'll do it.