Bushing the world

Even before George W. Bush has spoken at the UN, word is out that he intends to lean heavily on the organisation to get Iraq to disarm or se...

Even before George W. Bush has spoken at the UN, word is out that he intends to lean heavily on the organisation to get Iraq to disarm or seem forever redundant. But the US president cannot be unconscious of the irony inherent in the fact that while all the leaders of the world who had assembled for the UN General Assembly session in New York had in one voice condemned the terrorist attacks that felled New York8217;s Twin Towers 8211; and that at the very site of the outrage on its first anniversary 8211; almost every nation in the world, with a few exceptions, has expressed grave reservations about any unilateral US attack on Iraq.

The gains of the international consensus achieved over 9/11 is thus quickly undermined by the stated intention of the world8217;s only super power to act in a manner that is not just violative of international law but of the even more universal humanitarian law.

It has caused many who have supported Bush unconditionally through the last year to draw a line against it and provoked reputed US columnists like James Carroll to ask, 8216;Do we rightly memorialise those who died so violently by making them patrons of more violence?8217; Remarking on the 8216;cavalier belligerence8217; of the US president and his advisors, Carroll asks again: 8216;Do they know that death is about to become our nation8217;s purpose?8217; The proposed Iraq action 8211; by despatching 600 military personnel to its Middle East airbase, the US government has just signalled how deadly serious it is about it 8211; lacks the moral justification of last year8217;s war in Afghanistan.

In that case, there was evidence of a link between the 9/11 attacks and the Al Qaeda presence in a country presided over by the Taliban. In the Iraq case, no evidence of links between the perpetrators of 9/11 and the Iraqi political establishment has surfaced. It is this that invests USA8217;s proposed action with the patina of bad faith.

Saddam Hussein may be everything that Bush says he is, but that still does not answer the question that may yet come to haunt the US president: Why now? Why a decade after Operation Desert Storm? So far his administration has failed to come up with a convincing answer to this question and the world would want him to hold his fire until he can convincingly explain to them why he must attack Iraq at this particular moment of world history. If it is the threat of nuclear and biological warfare emanating from this region, then send in the UN weapons inspectors by all means.

In his address to the nation delivered on September 11 against the lighted silhouette of the Statue of Liberty, Bush stated that 8216;8216;our generation has now heard history8217;s call, and we will answer it8217;8217;.

It is to be hoped that the US president will allow himself a moment of pause and listen to that call again. Maybe, just maybe, it is a call against rushing blindly into war.