Did he mean that he was giving the United Nations Security Council one more day to decide – then, ready or not, the Anglo-American-Iberian juggernaut would get rolling?
Everybody’s asking – from those with nervous travel plans to all who’re worried about the price of oil – when the war is going to start. Nobody can say, but it’s got to be soon. Tomorrow? This week-end?
Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, who wanted to keep his job for a few months more, is asking plaintively for an answer. He’s got 160 to 200 UN "inspectors" still on the ground there in Iraq. Do you think that Bush, Blair and Don Pepe, who’re surely pissed off at his urong-sulong are going to tell him, so that this can signal to Iraqi despot Saddam Insane that the blitz is coming? I said blitz, not Blix.
As it is, Saddam has been desperately calling for Hans Blix and his fellow chief inspector (for nuclear weapons) Mohammed El-Baradei to come back to Baghdad immediately so they can discuss urgent "disarmament" with him. Blix is torn, obviously, between going – or staying put in New York, or in his native Sweden. Common sense, not cowardice, ought to tell him that if he flies to Baghdad, his plane might arrive there at the same time the 3,000 "promised" missiles and bombs from the ABB Troika (Aznar, Bush and Blair) start arriving, too.
Another Scandinavian, a Melancholy Dane named Hamlet, once agonized over "to be or not to be". (That’s the college school play line best attributed to former Ateneo "Shakespearean" thespian, now Vice President Tito "Stop America" Guingona.) Blix’s predicament is "to go or not to go".
What does Saddam want from Blix and El-Baradei? That they become "human shields" to protect him? They’ve done a great job of being that, thus far – but enough is enough. This is the Moment of Truth, as they say in the Spanish corrida, when the torero gets ready to plunge his sword into the bull, when the Toro bravo, in turn, thunders towards the matador’s hip, intent on goring him. By the way, that’s what Dubya said, too, a couple of days ago: It’s the moment of truth.
France’s President Jacques Chirac, who’s been demanding 120 days more for further UN inspections, has dropped hints he might be willing to settle for 20 days more. What about whittling that down to 20 hours? Not likely, Le Grand Jacques, the "Bulldozer", has declared he’s determined to veto any second resolution of the Brits, Americans and Spaniards in the Security Council – he growled "whatever the circumstances". When Bush, Blair and Don Pepito decide to bypass the UN, as the Panzers of Adolf Hitler once bypassed the impregnable Maginot Line, then Chirac and his "They shall not pass!" Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin may find themselves left out of the action.
Already, some Americans – who don’t appreciate Gallic humor – are refusing to eat "French fries unless they’re called "freedom fries". What about the French kiss? Will it now be the freedom kiss? And the . . . er, French position? The free position? French leave? Free to leave? The permutations are endless.
However, the present situation is no laughing matter. War – with the death, pain, privation, suffering and destruction it brings – is never a laughing matter. But wars are always waged. It’s the way of the world.
Cable News Network (CNN) reported yesterday that 59 percent of Americans polled now support going to war on Iraq, even without the United Nations. That’s what characterizes Americans. When foreigners attack, insult, humiliate, and taunt their President and their leaders, even those who doubt and many of those who oppose, begin to close ranks around their leadership and the flag. It’s chauvinistic. It’s jingoistic. You can even call it primitive. But it’s what they do. They circle the wagons against outside attack.
So, Saddam – and those who shout support for him all over the planet – will hear that ominous bugle call across the desert. It will announce: The Yanks are coming. And when Tony Blair signals the fleet, the Brits will come charging, too.
And the Spaniards. If you hear the battlecry, "Santiago, España!" This means that the Spanish Foreign Legion (yes, they have one in the Sahara which was once commanded by the late El Caudillo, Generalissimo Francisco Franco) will be coming, as well. Palante, palante!
What fundamental moral principle is involved? Thou shalt not kill? Tell that to Saddam, too, and his insane sons Uday and Qusay who have the blood of hundreds of thousands of their own people on their own hands. (Even the blood of a few thousand Chaldean Christians, who are the Catholics of Iraq.)
For that matter, let’s not be hypocrites. In the 11th century, another Pope, His Holiness Pope Urban II, in part as a ploy to unify the Christian forces on the European continent, whose internecine strife threatened to fragment the Holy Roman Empire, called on all Christian kings and warriors to unite around the Cross and march down to liberate the Holy Land, and the Holy City of Jerusalem from the oppression of the Muslim infidel. The "crusaders" stormed down through what are now Syria and Lebanon to the Holy Land (geographically Israel, the West Bank and Gaza) slaughtering and looting. They cried out, Deus vult! (God wills it!)," then fell mercilessly on both the Muslims and the Jews there not sparing, if truth be told, local Christians of the Eastern Orthodox Church. If you think I’m kidding, please consult the National Geographic’s newest volume, History and Faith: Cradle & Crucible in the Middle East (National Geographic Society, Washington, DC, 2002) The pertinent reference is page 212. Or The Middle East: 2000 Years of History from the Rise of Christianity to the Present Day (Phoenix Press, London, 1995) by the famed authority on the subject, Prof. Bernard Lewis.
One of the bloodiest crusaders of them all was Godfrey de Bouillion who hacked his way and waded through a sea of Muslim blood to "liberate" Jerusalem on a Good Friday and later to be proclaimed "king of Jerusalem". If you want to know where Godfrey came from, you’ll find his statue in a main square of Brussels (a stone’s throw away from the European Union headquarters and a few kilometers away from NATO HQ). Yep, bloody Godfrey, although the place wasn’t called Belgium yet, hailed from that neighborhood – in the Brabant. Very Catholic, of course.
This is why Osama bin Laden and his murderous bunch keep on trumpeting that they’ve declared jihad or holy war on all "crusaders and Jews". The "crusaders", naturally, are Christians like you and me, and our Bishops, and Bush. The Jews, naturally, are headed by that hate-object, Ariel Sharon, a.k.a. the Butcher of Beirut in the not-too-distant past. Is anybody pure? Let him who is without sin among you, cast the first stone. (Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Who said that first?)
For the Muslims, the civilized world was defined by religion from those turbulent centuries to the present day. For them, the civilized world is Dar al-Islam, the House of Islam. On the other side is the barbarous Christian infidel, called in Arabic, Dar al-Harb, meaning the "House of War". The archbishop and his bishops may call for peace, but they belong, like you and me, to the House of War.
As for the millions around the world who’re marching to condemn Bush, Blair and Pepito, and their "coalition of the willing" partners (including the noblest Roman of them all, with apologies to Brutus, Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi) I recall the "People Power" which was exhibited in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus Christ.
If a SWS or Gallup poll had been taken on that fateful Good Friday, the results would have been: Barabbas (100 percent), Jesus Christ (zero).
Do you recall that? It was democracy in action. Pontius Pilate, surely not the noblest Roman of them all but then Rome’s Governor in Palestine, asked the people to choose between Christ and Barabbas, the hoodlum and robber (probably killer, too). And the crowd chose Barabbas. What did the people want Pilate to do with Jesus? That’s what the Guv asked. The demonstrators shouted back, clenching their fists (and burning Roman flags, or whatever?): "Crucify him!"
The cute axiom goes – in the Latin of Imperial Rome – vox populi, vox Dei. This means: "The voice of the people is the voice of God."
Sometimes, alas, God gets misheard, or His command gets garbled in translation – or distorted by distance.
When one is a student of history, like everyone should be, the first discovery is that there’s nothing new under the sun. History provides a reality check against the hysteria of the present.
Will the Americans, Brits and the Spaniards hit Saddam and Iraq soon? Yes, sir.
The United Nations won’t cheer. As for myself, I would be far unhappier if I found that the safety of the world depended on the vote of Angola. Or – for that matter – on the Security Council veto of China, Russia, and France. None among the above is entitled to cast the first stone.
As for our bishops: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Who said that originally? Sounds familiar, as well.