ASHINGTON, Jan. 27 — This week, President Bush hopes to convince the country,
and a largely skeptical world, that Saddam Hussein will never voluntarily
disarm, leaving war as the only remaining answer.
ASHINGTON, Jan. 27 — This week, President Bush hopes to convince the country,
and a largely skeptical world, that Saddam Hussein will never voluntarily
disarm, leaving war as the only remaining answer.
"Today is the beginning of the final phase," a senior adviser to the president said.
Mr. Bush got unexpected help today from Hans Blix, the normally understated Swede who is co-chief of the United Nations weapons inspections program. With his quietly devastating list of questions that Iraq has refused to answer — where are the stores of anthrax and VX? where are the illegal missiles and the artillery shells stuffed with chemical weapons? — he gave the president much, though not quite all, of the support he needs.
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The inspectors' list of continuing acts of intransigence by Mr. Hussein gives Mr. Bush the political opportunity on Tuesday night to argue in his State of the Union address that more time will not solve the Iraq problem.
In the speech, one of the most critical of his presidency so far, Mr. Bush plans "to answer the question, `Why now?' " a senior aide who has reviewed a draft said tonight.
It is a question that, some of Mr. Bush's friends and sympathetic allies concede, he has so far failed to address in any convincing fashion.
That creates even more pressure as he and his staff put finishing touches to the State of the Union address, and map out a series of phone calls and personal meetings intended to bridge the divide between the United States and its closest allies.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Bush is spending the week with the most like-minded foreign leaders, calling the conservative prime minister of Spain today, and inviting Italy's leader, Silvio Berlusconi, to visit him in Washington. On Friday he will take Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain — a loyal partner in public, a voice of some caution in private — to Camp David.
Mr. Blix, who oversees the team of chemical and biological weapons inspectors in Iraq, did not hand Mr. Bush a complete victory today. His counterpart for nuclear weapons, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, made clear that his inspectors had not found any signs of radioactivity or other evidence that Mr. Hussein was reviving a bomb project that was six months or so away from a weapon in 1991 — a central tenet in the administration's case.
That may hurt Mr. Bush's cause, because nothing constitutes a more compelling "smoking gun" than evidence of nuclear bomb-making.
Still, few at the White House expected Mr. Blix to make as much of a case for Mr. Bush as he did today. In private, administration officials have complained that he is usually in "Volvo mode" — the safety-first approach of his country's best-known car. But today was different, and Mr. Blix's frustration was evident.
Iraq, he said, "appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it." He listed, in painstaking detail, the inconsistencies in Iraq's declarations, the blocking of U-2 surveillance flights, and the fact that not a single Iraqi scientist agreed to be interviewed without a government official present.
"Blix laid out the bill of indictment for Saddam Hussein, and it is more credible coming from him than from Bush," said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former national security official in the Clinton administration, who is director of research at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Pollack said he was expecting Mr. Blix to "focus on the positive."
But Mr. Pollack and others cautioned that it is far from clear that Mr. Bush will be able to capitalize on the Blix report. Already today European officials were saying that even if everything Mr. Blix says is true — and they did not dispute it — Iraq has been hiding whatever weapons it has for a decade. And the question that Germany and France have pressed remains: If Saddam Hussein's power is contained by the presence of inspectors and the troops massing on his border, what is the urgency of toppling him now?
"The pressure on Saddam is fine, and we want to keep it up," one senior German official said today by telephone from Berlin. "Why risk everything else that can go wrong — uprisings in the streets, a broken Iraq — if we have him where we want him?"
Mr. Bush's aides know they have to answer that question directly in one of the most widely anticipated State of the Union addresses in recent history. There was evidence today that Mr. Bush understood the challenge, and that he would argue that Iraq is not only a major threat, but also an urgent one.
Over the weekend, his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., a Massachusetts Republican who is usually as understated as Mr. Blix, said it was up to the United States to "protect us and the world from a Holocaust" should Mr. Hussein begin thinking about using weapons of mass destruction.
Today the White House pushed that argument further, sending Secretary of State Colin L. Powell out to reiterate — without providing much new evidence — that there are links between Mr. Hussein and the terrorist organization Al Qaeda. Implicit in that argument is that even if Mr. Hussein does not lash out at America directly, he could pass his weapons to terrorists who will.
Experts say the risk is there. But last week, officials in several European countries argued that terrorists would be far more likely to obtain a nuclear weapon in Pakistan or North Korea — a threat Mr. Bush says far less about — than in Baghdad.
So part of Mr. Bush's challenge is to make Mr. Hussein sound like an urgent threat without overreaching in a way that would make it easier for critics to say he is exaggerating.
"There's a risk to our credibility if we make claims that seem less than fully plausible," one senior American diplomat said last week. "Could Saddam hand off his anthrax or his VX? Sure. Is there any evidence so far he's done that? Not much."
NITED NATIONS, Jan. 27 — Hans Blix, one of the chief United Nations weapons
inspectors, gave a broadly negative report today on Iraq's cooperation with
two months of inspections, providing support to the Bush administration's
campaign to disarm Iraq by force if necessary.
"Iraq appears not to have come to genuine acceptance — not even today — of the disarmament which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and live in peace," Mr. Blix said, summing up a grim 15-page catalog of Iraq's chemical and biological arms programs that provided an exhaustive account of ways in which Saddam Hussein has failed to prove that he has eliminated illegal weapons.
After Mr. Blix spoke, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in Washington: "Time is running out. We've made it very clear from the very beginning that we would not allow the process of inspections to string out forever."
Mr. Powell's allusion to the limited time left for Iraq to avoid war came at the start of a crucial few days in which President Bush will press his case for disarming Mr. Hussein in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night. Later in the week, the president will consult with allies, including Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Only then, Mr. Powell suggested, will Mr. Bush make his plans clear.
Administration officials said the White House was likely to declassify some intelligence information about Iraq's effort to obtain and conceal weapons of mass destruction. But it is unclear whether that information would be released by the United States or by Britain. It is likely to be disclosed days after the State of Union address.
Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief inspector for atomic weapons, was less critical of Iraq today, reporting that his team had found no evidence so far that Iraq had tried to revive its nuclear arms program and appealing to the Security Council for a "few months" more to complete his work.
The clash in the 15-member Security Council over the duration of the inspections sharpened today. The United States ambassador, John D. Negroponte, insisted that they had already gone on long enough to demonstrate that Iraq had no intention of disclosing its secret arms to the inspectors. "There is nothing in either presentation that would give us hope that Iraq has ever intended to fully comply," he said.
Other veto-bearing Council nations, including France, Russia and China, contended that the inspections were still working and should be allowed to continue. Britain, the United States' closest ally, expressed support for a German proposal that the inspectors report back to the Council again on Feb. 14. Such a date for a further interim report would allow the United States and Britain to continue preparations for a war in late February or March while demonstrating to skeptical allies, including France, that they are not rushing to judgment.
Most Security Council nations supported the German proposal today. The United States accepted it, but said no significance should be attached to the date.
Mr. Blix's sweeping and detailed critique of Iraq's failure to demonstrate with documents, interviews and other evidence that it had destroyed its prohibited weapons appeared to put new pressure on France, Germany and other nations that have resisted early military action to respond more forcefully to Baghdad's noncompliance.
Iraq heightened the confrontation today by bluntly rejecting all of the inspectors' criticism.
"Iraq has complied fully with all its obligations," said the Iraqi ambassador, Mohammed A. Aldouri, referring to Resolution 1441, which set up the inspections.
The Council nations are due to give their official evaluations of the chief inspectors' reports on Wednesday. Dr. ElBaradei called on the Council to continue the inspections as a "valuable investment in peace." Mr. Blix skirted the matter, noting simply that his team remains "at the disposal" of the Council.
The Bush administration did not succeed, after an intensive campaign of speech-making by senior officials in recent days, in persuading other Council nations to take the chief inspectors' report today as the opening of a broad debate on whether to authorize military action.
But Mr. Blix's powerfully critical assessment
forced doubting Council members to confront Iraq's efforts to thwart or hamper
the inspectors.
ASHINGTON, Jan. 27 — For months, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has been
the Bush administration's leading advocate of diplomacy, patiently applied,
to rally the international community behind a campaign of pressure on Saddam
Hussein to cooperate with United Nations inspectors.
Today, responding to the United Nations inspectors' report, he sounded more impatient and less diplomatic.
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"The issue is not how much more time the inspectors need to search in the dark," he declared. "It is how much more time Iraq should be given to turn on the lights and to come clean. And the answer is: not much more time. Iraq's time for choosing peaceful disarmament is fast coming to an end."
Mr. Powell insists he has been consistent throughout, arguing that he has always supported diplomacy backed by force.
But to Mr. Powell's friends and allies in and out of the administration, the shift in the secretary of state's tone has come about not only for personal reasons — he is said to be truly exasperated by the French opposition to war — but also for tactical reasons.
With Mr. Bush seemingly determined to disarm Saddam Hussein by force, Mr. Powell cannot afford to be a secretary of state out of tune with his president.
Mr. Powell said today: "Hang any label you want on me. I'm a great believer in diplomacy and a great believer in finding a peaceful solution. But I also recognize that when somebody will not accept a peaceful solution by doing their part of creating a peaceful solution, one must never rule out the use of force to implement the will of the international community, but more importantly to protect our people and to protect the world."
Mr. Powell's change in posture from apostle of patience to champion of rapid action was described by one administration official observing it from a distance as "astounding."
But people close to him say it is rooted in cool strategy. Mr. Powell remains determined to persuade Europeans that their best interest will ultimately lie in backing the United States if it decides to go to war.
Despite the fiery French demand that "nothing, nothing" justifies war, there are many in the administration who think that if the inspections are allowed to play themselves out through February, the French might ultimately be at the United States' side.
"We haven't given up on the process of the United Nations," said an aide to Mr. Powell. "But certainly even Powell is now talking within the administration about the option of going to war without United Nations approval."
Still, Mr. Powell is described by close aides as feeling as strongly as ever that an attack on Iraq without the support of France, Russia, China and other nations would pose a dangerous risk of igniting opposition and perhaps turmoil in the Arab world.
But those aides say he understands that American allies have to be reeled in without making it seem to the Pentagon that he is making too many concessions to bring them around. Tough talk enhances that objective, people close to the secretary say.
"He knows that if war can't be avoided, it must be done with the backing of the U.N.," said a foreign diplomat close to Mr. Powell. "He thinks he can achieve that goal by talking, talking and talking again. But he also has to look tough in order to get the administration's hawks on board."
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, over the weekend, the former archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, rose to ask the secretary, who was raised as an Anglican, why the United States seemed determined to exercise the "hard power" of military force rather than the "soft power" of economic and humanitarian aid.
"I don't think I have anything to be ashamed of, or apologize for, with respect to what America has done for the world," Mr. Powell replied bluntly. "There comes a time when soft power or talking with evil will not work — where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that works."
In Mr. Powell's memoirs, one of his dictums is: "Remain calm. Be kind." But the time for talking to allies calmly and kindly, aides readily concede, is most likely a matter of weeks now rather than months.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/28/international/middleeast/28POWE.html
This month’s mass demonstrations against the Bush administration’s imminent war in Iraq took the political and media establishment by surprise. The surge of opposition evaded their political radar screens. They had either ignored the growing resistance or pretended it did not exist.
Once the depth of popular sentiment against war became impossible to disregard, the various factions of bourgeois opinion makers swung into action. They had now to confront the reality of a nascent mass movement emerging outside of their control.
On the one side are political thugs like right-wing commentator Michael Kelly, who launch witch-hunting attacks on the “communist” Workers World Party, which played a prominent role in organizing the protests. (See “Washington Post columnist Michael Kelly red-baits the Workers World Party,” 24 January 2003). This is the crude and filthy face of bourgeois politics. The particular task assigned to these forces is to stir up everything backward and poisonous in the body politic.
The liberal, or erstwhile liberal, establishment, represented most prominently by the New York Times, has undertaken a subtler and more sinister intervention. Its aim is to isolate the left-wing elements and drive them out, so as to bring the movement under the control of reliable political agents of the ruling elite, principally the Democratic Party.
This is the significance of a January 24 Times article, “Some War Protesters Uneasy With Others.” Lynette Clemetson writes that “behind the scenes, some of the protesters have questioned whether the message of opposing the war with Iraq is being tainted or at least diluted by other causes of International Answer, which sponsored both the Washington and San Francisco rallies.... Some of the group’s chief organizers are active in the Workers World Party, a radical socialist group with roots in the Stalin-era Soviet Union.”
The precise meaning of the phrase “roots in the Stalin-era Soviet Union” is not explained. The founder of Workers World, Sam Marcy, was associated with the Trotskyist movement until he abandoned it in 1959 and founded his own group. The evident purpose of the inchoate reference is to drag in the name of Stalin as a political epithet.
The unstated political motivation of the article is indicated by the insinuation that the movement against war in Iraq is being “tainted” by the illegitimate interjection of “other causes.”
Clemetson elaborates on this theme: “Answer’s critics say they simply wish that when it sponsors antiwar rallies, it would confine its message to opposition to the war.” She cites the comments of Tikkun magazine editor Rabbi Michael Lerner, whose concerns include “pro-Palestinian speeches.” Lerner observes, “It feels that we are being manipulated when subjected to mindless speeches and slogans whose knee-jerk anti-imperialism rarely articulates the deep reasons we should oppose corporate globalization.”
In a hopeful tone the Times notes that the next major rally, to be held February 15 in New York, is being organized by United for Peace, “a coalition of more than 120 groups, most of them less radical than Answer.”
The political message is clear. The Times wants an anti-war movement that does not go beyond the confines of the existing social order. The newspaper’s editors are alerting sections of the middle class: you can have your rallies and protests, but not on the basis of anti-capitalism.
The Times’ editors are arguing for a protest movement that accepts certain basic premises—above all, the defense of US imperialism and its right to dominate the world. They fear the development of a movement that links the struggle against war to critical social issues in America and makes a direct appeal to the working class.
The Times’ sudden interest in the anti-war movement is cynical and self-serving. The newspaper has been one of the chief drum-beaters for war. Only Saturday, in an article calling on Bush to delay a conflict only until the necessary international support can be built up, Op-Ed columnist and senior writer for the New York Times Magazine Bill Keller asserted: “So far in its showdown with Iraq, the Bush administration has mostly done the right things.... There are compelling reasons for war with Iraq.”
How should serious opponents of US militarism respond to the attempt by the Times to politically tame and strangle any movement against imperialist war?
In our view, they should make every effort to expose these attempts and drive such pro-imperialist elements out of the anti-war movement. As events have already shown, together with the Democratic Party and the establishment liberals come the red-baiters. And behind the red-baiters come the state and the police.
The anti-war movement must be built from the start as an anti-capitalist movement. At the heart of building a mass movement is the struggle to mobilize the working class independently of the bourgeois parties, above all, the Democrats. Long and painful experience demonstrates that any movement that remains subordinate to the parties representing the interests of big business is doomed to impotence and failure.
Here is where fundamental political differences between the World Socialist Web Site and the Workers World Party emerge. The latter seeks to maintain a political alliance with sections of the Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO trade union bureaucracy. Indeed, Workers World facilitates the domination of the anti-war movement by these elements.
It hopes to cajole and win over such forces. This is the reactionary heritage of Stalinism and its perspective of subordinating the working class to the liberal bourgeoisie—a policy that attained a finished, and politically disastrous, expression in the “popular fronts” engineered by Stalinist Communist Parties in the 1930s.
Today, with the protracted crisis of American liberalism resulting in utter prostration before the most right wing sections of the ruling elite, this political line assumes the most noxious forms. Thus Workers World prides itself in parading the likes of Al Sharpton before anti-war protesters. It genuflects to such charlatans and presents them as legitimate “people’s leaders,” providing them with much needed credibility.
An alliance with the Democrats and the trade union bureaucrats is possible only on the basis of repudiating any serious opposition to capitalism. This alliance cannot be combined with a genuine appeal to working people. Far from “broadening” the anti-war movement, the influence of the Democratic Party and AFL-CIO bureaucrats would guarantee the strangulation of democratic debate, narrow the movement’s social base and transform anti-war activity into a harmless sideshow, a pressure-valve regulated by the Congressional Democrats. The end result would be to alienate the working class and keep it on the sideline.
Imperialist war cannot be stopped by moral appeals to sections of the ruling elite, or the application of pressure on the Democratic Party. Nothing could be more futile and self-defeating than such a strategy. Only the international working class can halt the drive to war against Iraq and the danger of world war, because only the working class is capable of replacing the capitalist system with an egalitarian and truly democratic society.
A movement of broad masses of workers and youth must not only articulate their general concerns, including opposition to war, but provide a program to address their needs and interests: decent jobs, education, health care, housing, democratic rights. Only a socialist program can fulfill that need.
A truly broad and democratic anti-war movement will intervene boldly in the working population, explaining the link between social inequality, poverty, homelessness and the criminal policies of the Bush administration. It will raise the necessity for a decisive break with both big business parties and the need for a new, independent socialist movement. It will openly state that a successful struggle against war and militarism means going to the source of these evils, the profit system. It will be an international movement, armed with an international strategy.
And it will have sufficient political consciousness
to distinguish between its friends and its enemies, and reject with contempt
the malevolent advice of such pillars of American imperialism as the New
York Times.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jan2003/nyt-j28.shtml
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