Saddam will surely fall, but is a new ‘Cold War’ with France, etc., in the offing?

Britain and the United States have given Iraq’s Saddam Hussein until March 17 to disarm, never mind a United Nations Security Council resolution. After March 17? Obviously, the attack will be launched, with the US and Britain in the lead.

This was revealed, even before the wishy-washy report by UN chief inspector Hans Blix, at a White House press conference in which President George "Dubya" Bush, in reply to a question, categorically stated: "We don’t need anybody’s permission to defend the United States."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair had earlier indicated that the US and the UK would go ahead, whatever transpired at the UN. (He did so more politely and obliquely, but you know the Brits. When somebody throws a monkey wrench into the works, they call it a spanner.)

In his latest statement to the UN Security Council, Blix had said it would take "months" for Iraq to disarm. The Americans and the British replied that they’re giving Saddam Insane "days", not months. This coming week, many suspect, will probably be the day.

NEWSWEEK magazine, a week and a half ago, in its February 24th issue, put it succinctly. The cover photo was one of a pensive Bush, head bowed, hands clasped, with the two-liner blurb: America ALONE. Inside, on the contents page, the magazine spoke of "an increasingly lonely role for the Bush administration and its stalwart supporter, Tony Blair".

One of NEWSWEEK’s columnists, Fareed Zakaria, wrote on page 9 that, indeed, America has the power. ". . . it would be wiser," he cautioned, though, "not to mention it every few days."

He spelled it out: "The poster child for America’s self-defeating machismo is Donald Rumsfeld. He brings to mind another famously impolitic diplomat, John Foster Dulles. Dulles, Winston Churchill once remarked, ‘is the only bull who brings his china shop with him’.

"Most of Rumsfeld’s tart observations are true. In fact, they’re often dead-on . . . (However) To much of the world his jabs convey an arrogance that speaks not of leadership but domination. Everytime Rumsfeld opens his mouth, I think, ‘There goes another ally’!"

Ever since Zakaria started writing for that newsweekly, I’ve grown increasingly impressed with his eye for the jugular and his sharp perception of dizzying events. It’s too facile to say, on the other hand, that Rumsfeld’s remarks and America’s admitted arrogance fosters enemies and alienates friends. They do. But those who’re hostile to America now were hostile to the US long before Rumsfeld.

In yesterday’s International Herald Tribune there’s an interesting piece by New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof (who’s brilliant, Pulitizer-prize winning, but sometimes jumps to wild conclusions – okay, like I do – and, alas, writes on the Philippines constantly with a sneer).

Kristof reported that "last week a member of the Canadian Parliament for the governing party, Carolyn Parrish, was caught on television declaring: "Damn Americans, I hate those bastards."

This is not news. Some of us, this writer included, have heard most Canadians, both here and in Canada, uttering those or similar remarks. This hatred of next-door-neighbor, Big Brother (whose bulk and occasional sometimes unconscious, swagger tend to crush) were expressed a century ago by a former Mexican President – Lazaro Cardenas, I think – who exclaimed: "Ay pobre Mexico – so far from God and so near the United States of America." This dislike of the Gringo and his ways would be far more convincing, naturally, if so many poverty-stricken and hopeful Mexicans were not so enthusiastic about crossing the Rio Grande at night (a small stream, really, not so grand) and pushing into the USA, to seek the Promised Disneyland.

Kristof in yesterday’s column did say something very true: "The worry is that America is taking such losses in terms of its alliances, that one wonders what will happen when the hard part begins – the day after Saddam has toppled, when we may see Shiites slaughtering Sunnis in southern Iraq; thousands of armed Iraqi exiles pouring in from Iran; Turks and Kurds fighting over Kirkuk oil wells in northern Iraq; Iraqi military officers trying to peddle anthrax and VX gas; and radical Islamists trying to take control of nuclear-armed Pakistan."

My reaction to all this hand-wringing, on the other hand, is that leaders – like Mr. Bush – must choose a course of action then follow it, resolutely. If a nation’s leaders spent all their time worrying about what could happen, agonizing over "what might have been", hesitating on which fork in the road to take, or weighing things pro and con, the result would be stultifying inaction, paralysis, and the erosion of confidence.

The Chinese Emperor Shih Huang Ti, the Tiger of Qin (the "hero" of the movie Hero, next to Jet Li) once burned the books of Confucius and buried hundreds of scholars alive because he believed that if his subjects were induced to think, they would begin thinking of rebellion.

Along a similar vein, perhaps thinking too much leads to hesitation, and, as the old adage goes, "He who hesitates is lost."

To our own GMA, I commend that same maxim: "She who hesitates is lost."

As for "Dubya" Bush, at least he’s not hesitating – right or wrong. He’s performing the lonely job of leader (stormed at by critics within and without, and the curses of angry crowds) and calmly repeating that Saddam has failed to obey UN Security Council Resolution 1441 of November 8, which demanded "total, complete and unconditional disarmament".

Bush already knew, last Thursday, when he gave his White House press conference, that the UN Security Council would never pass the second resolution proposed by the US and Britain, even the watered-down compromise version offered by Tony Blair in his back-channeling efforts. It has already been intimated by French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin that France (a permanent member of the Council, hence with veto powers) would use its veto to scrap that second resolution. Russia, and another permanent member, China, might invoke their veto too.

Will Bush still insist on a vote, knowing its fate?

Well, that’s what he calmly asserted: "It’s time for people to show their cards and let the world know where they stand with respect to Saddam Hussein." He wanted, he added, "for people to show their colors."

My interpretation of this, really, is that Bush is saying that he wants people, whether friend or foe, to let the world know where they stand with respect to America.

Spain’s formerly less-than-colorful Prime Minister, Jose Ma. Aznar, has already shown that flash of the spirit and Castillian phlegm which once impelled Spain to imagine it could conquer and divide for her imperium half the world. By so openly backing Dubya and the US, Aznar risked the dissent of the majority of his own nation, but he propelled Spain for the first time in more than a century to a place within the conclave of the powerful.

England’s doughty and articulate Mr. Blair has been from the very beginning in the forefront of the "Blair Eight" (the "coalition of the willing" which includes Spain, Italy, Portugal, etc.) and the Vilnius Ten, which includes the former Eastern Block or former Soviet Warsaw Pact members, who’ve swung themselves firmly – almost joyfully – into lockstep with their erstwhile antagonist, the USA.

What is more worrisome than Saddam, whose overthrow may be bloody but is inevitable, is the new "Cold War" which has begun to develop between the US and Britain on the one hand – and, ranged against them, France, Germany, and Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

The Russians are already grunting resentfully about American "arrogance".

The Germans are surly, and follow the lead of their Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (who remains politically shaky, but mindful of the fact that he won by a scant two percent on a wave of anti-Ami and no-war-in-Iraq feeling), plus their "Green" Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

The most irritating bête-noir in America’s eyes, though, is French Foreign Minister Villepin, who seems to bask in his combative role of opposing the US initiatives in the Security Council, and, behind him, the resentful and forceful would-be rallying point of what the tart-tongued Rumsfeld derived as "Old Europe," France’s Gaullist President Jacques Chirac. In the latest UN meeting, British Foreign Minister Jack Straw, who’s demonstrated eloquence and unexpected wit in recent parliamentary debate, was provoked to retort to Villepin by first name, calling him "Dominique" – a no-no in the UN’s usually starchy and self-conscious diplomatese. Straw said that it was wrong of Dominique to insist that a "disarment in peace"would be preferable to a "disarmament in war". If a disarmament in peace would suffice, Straw remonstrated, "then we could all throw up our hands and go home." The fact that the Security Council is still discussing it, Straw pointed out, shows that Saddam won’t disarm except if compelled by war.

Surely, the Brits are ready to go to war. They already have 35,000 troops in the Gulf, and 17 warships from the Royal Navy, including aircraft carriers and RAF units.

The US has more than 200,000 service personnel in place, and will have 235,000 by the coming week. The Pentagon has directed 60,000 additional troops, including heavy tank divisions from Germany and Texas, to join the forces massing in the region. The US has already five aircraft carriers and their battle groups in place in the Gulf and the Mediterranean. Each carrier has a complement of at least 80 warplanes. The armada is ready to unleash itself on Saddam and company. The Iraqi chieftain, cheering his generale on, scoffed that aircraft carriers have "no wheels". How then can they reach Baghdad? This elicited, it appears, a laugh from his generals, but it sounded a trifle nervous, I believe.

When all is said and done (despite the "bare your bra" against American imperialism move by some of our own militant women), you don’t move close to 300,000 men and women in your armed services to the Gulf – and leave them to get seasick on the ocean wave or blistering their bottoms on the desert sand. It costs billions of dollars a week just to maintain them, motionless, in the troubled area. As for the rest of the world – including us in our slaphappy island archipelago – it’s costing a mint, too, in suspense, and spiralling oil costs.

If the US and the "coalition" it has mustered are going – I should say "when" – they’d better do so pronto. Then we’ll know who wins and who loses, and, hopefully, get on – however dented – with our lives.

One vital thing is already lost. The Transatlantic Alliance. Nobody can be so dumb as to believe that, after the traumatic confrontations in the UN, "friendship" between America and some of its former allies, specifically France and Germany, can be restored. It will take a long time for the wounds to heal – and trust rekindled. As for Russia, recently deemed a new "friend" of the US, the old suspicions and antagonisms may have been dug out to the world’s detriment, and exposed to the harsh light of hard reality.

Is this a new "Cold War" in the offing – with Paris, Berlin and Moscow viewed by Washington, DC as a Tripartite Challenge?

And what about Beijing, which also strongly opposes the move of Bush and Blair. (North Korea and South Korea, both problems, it’s hinted that will be addressed later). Japan, by the way, has just declared it’s backing the United States.

Ours has become a disconcertingly unstable planet. We’re headed back, apparently, to the old Balance of Powers scheme, in which power blocs checkmated each other in an uneasy relationship.

As for the United Nations, what’s in store for it? If "disunity has come to the fare, how far behind could be the UN’s fragmentation? What if, America – to take the possibility to reductio ad… well, absurdum – should withdraw from the UN?

There may well be a group that will chorus: "Good riddance!" But what they realize "the morning after", could be far different. A world without an America, although sometimes obnoxious, is impossible, for the nonce, to contemplate.

* * *

THE ROVING EYE… The Americans, my sources tell me, are very disappointed with President Macapagal-Arroyo. They believe, whether they’re correct or not, she did a "deal" in Honolulu – and her generals agreed to it, too. Now, they’ve been publicly rebuffed. Among those who did the deal, it’s alleged, was DND Secretary Angelo T. Reyes. Is this true? . . . C’mon. Those who claim that the military provoked a backlash of bombing and rebel attack (including the downing of electrical transmission towers and pylons) by overwhelming the Buliok complex of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) must be kidding themselves. The MILF has always been on the offensive, either through assaults and ambushes of isolated AFP and PNP outposts and patrols (where they intended to whittle our forces down), and by the Pentagon Gang’s depredations as well as "bombings" in Metro Manila and Mindanao. Neither did "neglect" of our Muslim brothers and sisters spur Moro rebellion. True, our Mindanao provinces – whether predominantly Christian or Muslim — were woefully neglected, as were many provinces in Luzon and the Visayas. Much of the neglect was on the part of local politicians, though, since a big chunk of the meager funds budgeted appears to have vanished into greedy pockets. Too many foreign correspondents and commentators, for their part, have swallowed the fable that Muslim-Christian clashes are of fairly recent origin, say the past 30 or 40 years. They have been going on for almost four centuries. Piracy, kidnapping, killing and the taking of slaves have been a way of life in southern Mindanao for generations. The wars are just being fought, sadly, with more deadly weapons . . . The Davao bombing may have been just for openers. We must all stay alert. There is no way a terrorist attack, of course, can be prevented, pre-empted, or headed off – except when an "informer" or deep-penetration agent tips the authorities off. The word has to be: Keep an eye on things, and report anything suspicious. As we’ve all known for a long time, paranoia saves lives. The life you save may be your own.