.Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basm Özeti
Kouchner does not want 'a war. He
says it is practically impossible to. support
George W. Bu.sb,who he beli~ves
transferred Amenca's rage agaInst,
Osama bioladen onto Saddam.But he
regards Saddam as an affront to humanity.
Kouchner says that Saddam's regime
..~ no legitimacy. He also believ~s.that
backed by an ongoing show of m1htary .
force, Europe and the United States,
through the United Nations, haye
enough in common to pressure a delegltimized
Saddam from power.
"There's a little window to get this
done," he says of pushing for Saddam's
departure. "We succeeded in Kosovo
and in Timor. i.et's end this diplomatic
arm wrestling, this overflow of male
hormones." .
His proposition, whatever. its practicality,
gives Kouchner .the lDtellectul!-1
and rhetorical foundat1on to match hIS .
disdain for Bush - "unfortunately, the
least credible spokesman for human
rights around," he says - with a searin~
judgment of French and German attl- .
tudes and policy. .
Since the Sept. 11attacks on Amerlcl!->
he said "the coalition of German pacIficism
~nd French vehemence" has been
deeply damaging.
After Europe's reflex statements of
solidarity with the United States follow- .
ing 9/11, Kouchner insisted, "We we~
extraordinarily selfish. We thought If
we could separate ourselyes from ~the
Americans], we won't risk anythmg.
TWit's not only in France, but all over."
"The motor of French foreign policy
remains anti-Americanism. Sometimes
opposition is justified, of course.'!hin~
of Vietnam. OfKyoto, of the Amencans
resistance to an international criminal
. court. But our manner of being .op- :
posed, making it a ba~is.for everyt~mg,
without any thought, ISJust stupid. .
And soliciting the support of Russl.a
and China to bolsterthe Fre.nch pOSI,,:
tion hardly brought it moral
credit, considering Russian
atrocities in Chechnya, he
said .. It was also essentially
anti-Arab n9.t to admit $eJ'e
was a miserable people in
Iraq and to act as if "we don't
think they deserve anything
but a monster." .
, Was France showing a
complaisant att;tude towatd
Saddam? "Yes." Did he agree
with the idea of a French veto
of a new U.S.-backed Security
•.Council resolution that
.would tacitly .authorize a
strike on Iraq? "No. Otherwise
we're going to be seen as
very clearly on the side of
Saddam. My vision is one of a
. France that proposes a real
compromise."
"Eighty percent of the
. Iraqis are ready to accept
their liberators. What's our
goal? Defending Saddam's legitimacy?
I hope not."
o
It should be said that Chirac's
poll scores are terrific, if .
not as high as Kouchner's. But with
French industry just now lapsing into
recession, and growth predictions dramatically
cut back last week, Chirac's
good polls may not last forever if Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder is any example.
Anti-war campaigning or no,:
Schroeder's Social Democratic Party
recently touched historic lows of about
24 percent in approval ratin~s.
With unemployment leapmg over 10
percent and next to no growth forecast,
Germany's prospects are more palpably
miserable than France's, but. there
. seenlS to be room for the argumeilt that
in politics over the long term, bad economic
numbers will trump disdain for a
distant war.
But the situation in Germany, as it is
in Britain, is vastly different. Schroeder
faces an array of newspapers that want
Saddam out and that make clear that he"
not Bush, is the bad guy in all of this.
The lay of the media landscape is not
dissimilar in Britain.
In France, however, the unanimity of
the media's opposition to Bush - who
is this Saddam, anyway? ~ is total, to
the extent tbä:t'Liberation, the nondoctrinaire
left-wing daily, ran a headline
the other day pointing it out. In its nationalism,
Le Figaro, which passes. for.
the country's most conservative ~;itlOnal
daily, reads a lot these days hke Le .
Monde, both hovering close to the gov-
'ernment line.
Liberation, in its orneriness, has described
this as a stifling climate ~nd
suggests it's reminiscent of the penod
after Jean-Marie Le Pen bu~t into the
runoff round of the presidential el~ctions
last spring. The newspaper left 1tS
observation there, but the time was one
when all of French society seemed to
don a coat of virtue, damning Le Pen
while fleeing an examination of the
racism and rot that brought it to shame.
Unanimity, all the same, has a near
inevitable way of cracking at the seams.
On Friday, when France as host of a conference
of African countries produced a
closing document that showed them in
complete agreementwith its war-isthe-worst
solution line, President Paul
Kagame of Rwanda piped up to say to
that at the meeting he attended there
had been no discussion and no vote.
Kagame, whose country suffered
close a million dead in ethm-: massacres
in 1994,instead described war or
. intervention as "sometimes the best
worst option" - in any event, a better
choice than genocide.
"I don't know how this matter has
been presented," he said, "because
what's at stake is not a choice between
war and peace but war and weapons of
mass destruction" in the hands of Saddam
Hussein.
Quite exactly, the French press 'poin-.
. ted out. afterward that Kagame 1Snot
France's most comfortable client in
Africa. While Kofi Annan, the United.
Nations secretary-genera!, and Belg.ium
have officially apologized for the1r .
support of the extremists behind the
Rwanda massacres and their failure to
stop them, it said, France has continually
refused.
w)
tU
=::I
cogm~~--After Saddam
~ t'f'l It would be perilously easy for the
Eo-< g United States and coalition partners
'0 N . to win' a war against Saddam Hussein
1! ...ë: but10se the peace that follows. The
~. N Bush administration should avoid ere-
~ ating a situation in Iraq;that Iraqis and
1:;.their neighbors will.perceive as a 21st-
Q = century American replay of European
i ~cOlonialism in the Fertile Crescent.
a.. ~. In recent days adm~nis~tion .omtU
cials havebeen saying the right thingS.
! In.co,ngressional testioiony and in media
appearances, they have repeated a
formula of good intentions.
. As Douglas Feitb, undersecretary of
defense for policy, told the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee recently, the
primary aim()f any American postwar
policy will be to "~e~onstrate to th~_
Iraqi people and the world that the
. United States aspires to liberate, not
occupy or control them or their economic
resources." .
, If there. is one thing certainin the .
event of a war that deposes Saddam
and his Baath Party, itis that Iraqis will
want the Bush administration's profes.
sions of good intentions for Iraq's fu- .
ture to be matched by good deeds ...
Above all, this means that political
power and administrative authority in .
a postwar period ou~t to be transferred
to Ir;tqi hands as completely and
as quickly. ns possible; . .
..qt thiS hanclover of ~on~l .to IraqIS, .
there should be certain guldmg pnnciples.
First must be an American commitment
to enable Iraqis to construct a
democratic constitutional state based
on federalism, the rule of law, guaran-.
tees of human rights for all citizens,
equal rights for women, ana -protec- .
tions for minorities. Inseparable from
this goal of representative government
is the need for what Iraqis call de-
Baathification. That would be something
like the de-Nazification of W~st
Germany after the defeat of the Thud
Reich. Saddam molded the Arab nationalist
Baath Party into his instrument to
rule a fascistic police state twined
around his own .cult of personality.
President George W. Bush and his
advisers now need to demonstrate. that
they are not m~rely indulglng in empty
rhetoric when they repeat their wish to
liberate - not occupy - Iraq. Their
planning for a postwar administration
ofIraq ought to reflect an understanding
by Americans of Iraqis' need to
prosecute Baathist murderers and torturers
and to dismantle the remaining
structures of Saddam's police state. .
- The Boston Globe
-)
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