The French reaction to Powell’s presentation today says it all:
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin called Powell’s evidence “disturbing,” but he, too, said it fell short of proving the need to resort to force.
He said that in light of evidence suggesting Iraq is attempting to disguise its capacity to produce and use chemical and biological weapons, the “inspection regime must be strengthened.” But, he added, “The use of force can only be a final recourse.”
“Given the choice between military intervention and an inspections regime that is inadequate because of a failure to cooperate on Iraq’s part, we must choose the decisive reinforcement of the means of inspections,” he said.
In other words, yeah, we have even more evidence that Iraq is not complying with it’s “last chance,” so let’s … um … keep looking for more evidence.
The point of the inspections was not to stop Iraq’s programs, but to force Iraq to show they were stopped. They’ve clearly done the opposite — demonstrated that development programs have continued, and that Iraq thinks it can keep playing a shell game. Extending the inspections does nothing at this point. “Decisively reinforcing” the inspections regime does nothing to alleviate Iraq’s “failure to cooperate.”
That the French want that to be the next/continuing/perpetual step shows that their agenda is not the UN-sanctioned disarmament of Iraq, but simple opposition to the US (if not fear of what an invasion of Iraq would further demonstrate about France’s dealings with that country during the sanctions regime).
An interesting scholar speaking about the balance of power in Europe metioned that on the force vs diplomacy debate, Europe has swung completely to the diplomacy angle.
He believes that the idea of force is so antithtical to Europeans (not just their leaders) that they can’t understand why diplomacy might not work work. He points out, also, that for the first time in history all of the European continent is governed by elected leaders, although some are “better” elected than others.
He fears that Europeans may have lost the knowledge of how to deal with a dictator, and that even in the face of overwhelming evidence, they would still back diplomatic strategies.
France is a lost cause. They will not agree with war until it comes knocking on their door. Then they’ll call us to come and help them with open arms.
{Sorry for the venom, but France has put itself on the “I’m a moron” radar too much lately. Remember the Winter Olympics?}
I saw enough to be convinced that after all these years, we may have to go in and finish what we started in the Gulf War. Some may disagree, but at least we won’t be tortured and/or killed for it.
It reminded me of Bugs Bunny…
“Oh yeah? Well, cross this line!”
*crosses line*
“Okay, cross this line!”
*crosses line*
Etc., ad nauseum.
Mary, I’m sure that part of it (the more defensible part) is that Europe has had to focus on diplomacy, rather than force, for its very survival. After two World Wars focused on their soil, and a Cold War that was only averted (they might argue) through diplomacy (ignoring the threat of force), it wouldn’t surprise me for them to be (collectively) gun-shy.
War as a “last resort” is a fine ideal. When it becomes, in effect, no resort, though, then the tools of diplomacy become seriously weakened.
Ahhhh, the Bugs Bunny Reverence is outstanding. I may have to rip it off borrow it.
France doesn’t want to oppose one of their customers. Both France and Germany sold them weapons and France sold to the the verticle boring machines they used in building the Chunnel! That’s where everything is hidden, UNDERGROUND! Do you realize you can bore caverns large enough to house entire industries! And we know this too! We can see it with HAARP. What it does is, it superheats a part of the OZONE (which is BAD which is why we rarely talk about it, we did talk about it recently though when we used it to map out the underground caves in Afghan) and we can bounce all kinds of things off this bubble of superheated O3. This allows us to view through the ground, or relay things without satellites. These are facts, we do have HAARP and Iraq DOES have the boring machines. Now if we can see this, there’s our evidence, so Saddam needs to be dealt with . . . but why stall? Why not give up this evidence? What’s next year? An election. What was under Shrub’s Watch? September 11th. How’s the economy? Bad. So if we hold off until JUST the right moment (soon) we can have a war, that allows us to put into production all kinds of nifty new weapons, stimulate the economy, give us something positive in the Bush administration to make up for the gaping wound, and end it JUST IN TIME to get Shrub Boy re-elected. I wish they would just show the real evidence that made Colin Powell do a 180 and GET IT OVER WITH! Maybe we’re doing it just to weaken the UN, there are a billion possible reasons. Oh well! We should have dealt with SH back in 91, but we didn’t, so we have to deal with him now.
-Speaker
GeekGasm(DOT)net
The f**k?
Basically, the jist of all that blabber I typed was that the French are a bunch of Surrender Monkeys who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
-Speaker