Bush er ingen tusseladd, skriver Woollacott her. Han står rank og
fast i sitt forsvar av fantasilandet sitt.
Woollacott nevner også holdningen til den internasjonale
straffedomstolen -- men uten overhodet å nevne det som her kalles «het
Den Haag invasiewet» -- Haag-invasjonsloven. Selv ihuga
pro-USA-politikere i Nederland er temmelig rasende over den, men
ellers later det til å herske total taushet. Etter en lederartikkel
for et par måneder siden (da loven først ble lagt frem?) har det også
i Klassekampen hersket taushet om loven. Anses det virkelig ikke som
noe å skrive om, at Senatet i USA mener at USA skal ha rett til å
invadere Nederland for å «redde» USAske krigsforbrytere ?
Marooned on his fantasy island, Bush stands firm
The lesson from Vietnam is to listen to the people on the ground
Martin Woollacott
Thursday June 27 2002
The Guardian
Anybody who has done some foreign reporting knows that the views of
correspondents on the nature of the crisis or war which has brought
them to a particular place tend to be similar. Day-to-day experience,
constant discussion, and the weight of numbers produce a consensus
which only a few resist. Thus most of the correspondents who covered
Vietnam felt that the war was in some way wrong, a feeling reflected
in their stories, and thus today most of the correspondents who cover
the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians would agree
that Sharon is more of an obstacle to peace than Arafat. The point
here is that the consensus is multinational and, especially, that
there is not that much divergence between Americans and non-Americans.
The picture painted for readers of, for example, the New York Times,
Le Monde, or the Guardian by the reporters on the spot in Israel and
the territories is in essentials the same. Comment, put together in
the metropolis, is a very different matter, as are the stories
reporting on the views and decisions of policy makers in capitals,
above all Washington. But this argument from journalism on the ground
is of interest because it contradicts the notion that an almost
genetic difference can now be seen between Americans, as citizens of
the imperial centre, and non-Americans, and it reminds us that we have
been in similar situations in the past, long before anybody was
talking of the single superpower. The difference it suggests is not
that between Americans and everybody else but between the sensible
conclusions of people on the spot and the overly abstract, unreal and
sometimes fantastical conclusions of people in power.
The Vietnam war in Washington was a construct shaped by ideology and
national pride, constantly being refashioned by rival institutions,
personalities, and factions. The Vietnam war in Vietnam was a terrible
fight in which men, women, and children were extinguished every day,
and that touched the consciences, sharpened the minds, and inflamed
the passions of those reporting the conflict. Although less free to
express their views publicly, soldiers, diplomats, and intelligence
people were affected in the same way. The views of the working press
and others on the ground in Vietnam, first that the war was being
fought in the wrong way and, later, that on balance it had better not
be fought at all, did eventually reach Washington and affect decisions
there.
America is not of course fighting in the Middle East, and this
administration's refusal to fully engage is clear, yet most see
success there as vital to its wider interests. If the question that
the press in Vietnam initially raised through its reporting was "is
this the right way to make war?" that for their successors in Israel
and Palestine is "is this the right way to make peace?" The answer of
the reporters today, with many nuances, is no, and they may be
discreetly joined in that by diplomats and others. But this
scepticism, as President Bush's speech this week makes clear, is not
getting through to the centre. Elements of a response to reality
mingle with elements of what was so evident during the Vietnam years -
an insistence that reality conform to ideology or to the compromises
worked out between Washington schools and factions, and anger at those
who point out that it does not.
Thus the Bush administration does not ask whether it is possible that
the Palestinians pass through the eye of the needle in order to attain
the heaven of a state, it merely asserts that they must. It does not
attend to the evident readiness of the Sharon government to sabotage
any progress toward a political settlement, but assumes a goodwill in
that respect which simply does not exist.
The Bush administration may be especially prone to fantasy in many
fields. The Republican campaign in opposition for national missile
defence, based on the claim that the right technology, with enough
effort and money, was just around the corner, has become in office an
$8bn research programme without the slightest chance of producing an
effective defence for years to come, the Carnegie Endowment specialist
Joseph Cirincione has argued convincingly. The administration has in
effect admitted as much by its new doctrine of preventative attack but
the expensive NMD programme stays in place, soaking up resources that
might contribute far more effectively to American security if used in
other ways.
Another example of fantasy at work is the American campaign against
the international criminal court, which could even undo the Nato
peacekeeping forces in the Balkans. There are legitimate concerns over
how the ICC may operate, but the American demand for immunity rests on
the fantastical notion that the court would reward American risks and
sacrifices in peacekeeping by victimising American personnel, a
concept as far from the purposes of the new institution as can be
imagined.
American governments are of course not alone in being attached to
unrealistic doctrines or pursuing contradictory policies, and the
resistance of rulers to unwelcome news about what is actually
happening on the ground is an old story. The problem is only
particularly American because of American primacy. This, you might
say, is always going on in government, as is the countervailing
process of slowly grasping that policy does not fit reality. It is on
this possibility that the present Palestinian leadership rests its
remaining hopes. As when mediaeval rebels used the device of blaming
the monarch's advisers but not the monarch himself, they have embraced
the positive elements in the Bush speech and girded themselves for the
continuing fight to turn round the American establishment.
Vietnam was less critical for America than it seemed to be at the
time. There is reason to believe, by contrast, that Palestine could
indeed be crucial in determining whether we are entering an era of
vicious irregular war or whether we can contrive a round of
settlements. The achievement of a viable Palestinian state could
produce a domino effect, to use Vietnam phrases, by changing the
hearts and minds of men and women in many societies.
The denial of such a state could bring a domino effect in the other
direction. The Bush administration, of course, thinks of the yet
different domino effect of giving in to terrorism, something that
underlines the connections between the Vietnam time and the present
day. The Vietnam generation has been in charge for a decade. Now that
things have become truly serious on Bush's watch, it would be a good
idea to recall how hard it was, once upon a time in Washington, to
sort out the real facts from the rhetoric, how unready those in power
were to listen to voices that turned out to be telling the truth about
how the war was going, and how they made the mistake of casting the
conflict in apocalyptic terms that made changing policy all but
impossible.
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