A rchive Date
[ 16-03-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ France ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/leishman.html
French naivete difficult to grasp
The nation's position on Iraq betrays a startling intellectual decline
By RORY LEISHMAN -- London Free Press
March 16, 2003
Why is France so adamantly opposed to a United States-led war of liberation in Iraq?
In an interview on French national television aired Tuesday, French President Jacques Chirac insisted it's a matter of "principle": War cannot be justified, because Saddam does not threaten the Middle East or the rest of the world with weapons of mass destruction.
Chirac argued Saddam has been contained: With 250,000 British and U.S. forces in the Gulf region, the Iraqi tyrant has no option but to lie low and allow United Nations weapons inspectors to do their work. On this basis, Chirac said he has advised President George W. Bush: "The Americans have already reached their objective. They've won."
Prime Minister Jean Chretien advanced the same puerile argument in a nationally televised interview in the United States on Sunday. How he, let alone an intelligent politician like Chirac, can advance such a ludicrous notion is difficult to grasp.
In safeguarding national security, no less than in chess, it's essential to think more than one move ahead. Why cannot Chretien and Chirac foresee that the United States and Britain cannot maintain a massive military presence in the Persian Gulf forever and that once that force is wound down, Saddam will resume his quest for nuclear weapons?
This is not a far-fetched fantasy. It's a real and dire danger. To rely on the International Atomic Energy Agency to prevent Iraq from acquiring nuclear weapons would be folly. Over the past 20 years, this agency has been repeatedly hoodwinked by Iraq. As recently as 1995, it claimed that it had been so successful in suppressing Iraq's attempts to produce nuclear weapons that aggressive inspections were no longer necessary.
Alas, that supposition was quickly discredited by several key Iraqi defectors, including Hussein Kamel al-Majid, a son-in-law of Saddam who was in charge of Iraq's nuclear weapons program. In an article in the New York Times on Feb. 21, Kenneth Pollack, a former expert on Iraq with the U.S. National Security Council, recalled: "These defectors reported that outside pressure had not only failed to eradicate the nuclear program, it was bigger and more cleverly spread out and concealed than anyone had imagined it to be."
Pollack also points out that the American, British, German and Israeli intelligence services all agree that unless he is stopped now, "Saddam Hussein is likely to acquire a nuclear weapon in the second half of this decade."
Consider the grave implications. Once a reckless and unpredictable dictator like Saddam develops an arsenal of nuclear bombs, he would have no compunction about selling a few to terrorists. How long, then, would it take before al-Qaida or some other terrorist organization might set off a primitive nuclear bomb hidden in a container ship in New York, Marseille or Southampton?
Bush and Blair are not prepared to find out. They are determined to thwart nuclear terrorism by overthrowing Saddam's murderous regime.
Regardless, the great majority of the French people support Chirac in opposing a preventive war with Iraq. In an article in the leading French daily Le Monde on Tuesday, Francois de Bernard, a professor of philosophy at the Universite de Paris, derided Bush as "an anointed king of liars" who purports to be concerned about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, while planning a war of aggression against Iraq that is really intended to serve only "the special interests of executives in the oil and armaments industries."
This is what passes nowadays for intelligent commentary on vital issues of defence and national security in France. Pity the moral and intellectual decline of the French.
At least, there still are some lucid dissenters in France. One is Pierre Lellouche, a Parisian deputy in the French National Assembly and a member of Chirac's party, l'Union pour un movement populaire. Lellouche warns: "If the strategy of France carries the day, imagine the consequences for world stability. It would convey the message that the democracies are torn apart. And that would signify to the people who construct weapons of mass destruction and are ready to use them against us that they have nothing to fear."
Write Rory at The London Free Press, P.O. Box 2280, London, Ont. N6A 4G1 or fax 519-667-4528 or E-mail.
Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@lfpress.com
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