Colin Powell presents the case to the UN...

Salon magazine on the recent Knight Ridder poll which found that 50% of Americans believe there were one or more Iraqi terrorists on the 9/11 planes (click through the Well ads to read the whole thing free):

'At best, the administration hawks have only lukewarm support among the American public, with various polls suggesting that less than one-third of Americans would support military action outside the aegis of the United Nations Security Council. Though we regularly hear talk of drawing together U.S. allies if the U.N. does not sanction war, the only materially committed members of that allegiance appear to be the British and the Australians. Similar recent polls in those nations reveal support of 13 percent and 6 percent, respectively -- thrusting leaders like Tony Blair and John Howard into politically hostile territory with their own citizenry should they choose to follow George W. Bush into non-U.N. battle.

'The Knight Ridder poll raises the specter of an unsettling truth. It suggests that whatever support there is for a war against Iraq, it owes much to the erroneous belief of at least half of the American people that it was Saddam Hussein's operatives who flew the planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.'

I fail to be convinced by the args. of Bush administration that attack = the only way. I will be going to Hyde Park on the 15th to add my voice to others who agree with me.

I don't think public opinion whether pro- or anti- war is neccessarily to be trusted or even taken into account: war fever can grip a population quite easily, as can a disinterested global nimby-ism. What were the public saying before Kosovo, for instance? Or before the Boer War or WWI?

Does it ever occur to you that you're making someone against the war defend the arguments for it? This is persuasive how?

ditto to suzy also; again the evidence means nothing or little to me - I never doubted the worst about Iraq; I still don't think it makes war neccesary.

Oh come on, they can't even get spares for their tanks! The reason Bushco wants to invade now rather than later is because Iraq doesn't have the scary nuclear weapons that bristle from every European country -- and North Korea. The message they are sending to the world is 'Get nuclear weapons quick, because otherwise we'll just roll into your capital, humiliate your leadership, and take your resources.'

(Hey, what's with the HTML syntax checker, it's gone haywire!)

(What's all this bullshit about no debate? I just watched Tony Blair on C-SPAN the other morning doing the back-and-forth in the House of Whichevers...)

The problem we've got is the opposition party are vehemently pro-war. There were minor kickoffs by cuddly Charles Kennedy and a few backbenchers but the debate happened in the mid afternoon when everyone is at work and was 3/4 item on the evening news, buried by more "positive" war news. As a debate it wasn't a debate. PMQ's stopped being a debate a long time ago anyway and this one was particularly ridiculous as no-one was actually going to change their views based on it.

(Powell did it in the UN today... Fleischer and Rumsfeld do it with the press every day)
Dagnammit, those press boys ALWAYS ask the questions I want asked. That 10 second soundbite on the news tells me EVERYTHING I need know. Grow up.

(What the hell are you asking for? What would it look like? Who would participate? You want Bush or Blair on TV taking calls from the public?)

Yes. Yes I am. The Paxman interview tonight should be decent, but is a little too late now things seem inevitable.

(There's a WAR ON. These men have things to do)
Well, you say later on in this thread that "I don't think it's that outrageous that there hasn't been a lot of official explanation of what we will do after we win a war that hasn't started yet". Sort your point out. The line "these men have things to you" . . . sorry that sounds like the tag line to a Steven Segal / Sly Stallone teamup. I can't take it seriously.

judgments of "mood of the country" are doubtless pretty specious (you pick the experts who give you the figures you like), but i wz struck by the absoluteness of the claim (political correspondents don't like to be caught out by events so mostly they just hedge meaninglessly)

The last time the US went into the Middle East in force, to kick Iraq out of Kuwait, did the US seize Kuwaits natural resources? And since they were in Iraq at the time, did the US seize Iraqs natural resources?

If your answer to this question is 'no', then why is it going to be different this time?

Which in turn managed to turn the radical Islamists (more) ferociously against them with consequences we're all now aware of - though nobody was predicting them at the time. One of the tactically astute things about this war is that it provides a great opportunity to give in to Al-Qaeda demand #1, getting American troops out of the Muslim holy places, without looking like it's giving in.

Once the Iraqis were kicked out of Kuwait, the royal family were painlessly restored to power, and they then proceeded to pump away as before (after they put out the fires). The US did not need to sieze anything. If Iraq were invaded, it would be in virtual anarchy for at least a year or two, maybe longer, and would produce nothing without the US "seizing" the oilfields and taking over production.

>And since they were in Iraq at the time, did the US seize Iraqs >natural resources?

Because old George (the "wimp") wasn't as foolhardy as his son. And at that time Saudi Arabia didn't look as shakey as it does now. Things change in ten years.

the pro-war line — including genrally unspoken part — is this: the US economy is in the diciest condition it's been in since probably the 1890s, and ANY economic-resource shocks to it which actually induce the crash (which will have huge knock on effect on other economies) will put a vast strain on actually existing democracy (as it exists in the US, Europe, Japan but not eg China)

actually existing democracy is something worth defending (as opposed to throwing it away and hoping we can build it up all over again later) => pre-emptive action*

(i've said elsewhere that i think momus's and stuart's baseline moral positions are much closer than either of them recognise: a specific emotional-idealist attachment to a kind of constitutionality as unshakeable moral core)

*i think that strategically and tactically this is a terrible approach to the defence of democracy; i also think the economic problems are much deeper than a small quick war can solve, while a long war including extensive nation-building worldwide will tremendously deepen the MAJOR MAJOR recession we are headed for anyway

But Iraq has only a finite oil supply. Are we going to continue to wage war after war to extract the last remnants of oil? At some point we will have to fight with real powers (e.g. China) over the final scraps, and it will not be pretty.

>the pro-war line — including genrally unspoken part — is this: the
> US economy is in the diciest condition it's been in since probably
> the 1890s, and ANY economic-resource shocks to it which actually >induce the crash (which will have huge knock on effect on other >economies) will put a vast strain on actually existing democracy (as >it exists in the US, Europe, Japan but not eg China)

All first-world economies at this point are houses-of-cards built on oil. There is no way to save them, only delay their fall.

eg if true that the only hope is to delay the fall of first-world economies, rather than save, then why is it out of order to be working for slowing the change, to give us more to time to find a comfier place to land

(*teenage nostalgia notwithstanding i do not think we are in the end times)

'Whose oil is it?' is an important question in a trade / contract / constitution world. 'I don't care whose oil it is, secure our energy needs' is the attitude of those who have already capitulated to the 'naked imperialism / endless war' model. Let's not do that.

One way it could go is for oil production to gradually decline to nothing while oil prices gradually increase. At some point, if one is optimistic, prices would rise high enough that people will get a clue that they better find a way to get by without oil, and have enough time do so.

The other way is for production to remain constant right up to the very bitter end. Prices would remain the same, then suddenly skyrocket, and then soon after there would be no oil. No society will survive such a catastrophy.

If we were to invade Iraq and control it oil, the production curve will resemble more the second way than the first.

hence momus's floundering when faced with facts abt economics: since he's never given any thought to these, he's reduced to handwaving

i've been arguing since the beginning of last year that 1, the us economy was in an extremely dicey state (this wz based somewhat on ther assumption that enron and worldcom were more the norm than anomalies, a guess that's been proved uncomfortably correct), and that 2, as an attempt to distract us voters from this fact, the bush-push to war would fail, that the us polity is far more divided than bushco are counting on, and that this is a massive political opportunity for his opponents

i think war will make the us economy worse, much much worse: but to make THIS the basis of an anti-war position seems to offend the anti-american wing of the anti-war movement ("why are we suddenly making such a fuss abt the hard times the american middle classes are facing" etc etc)

International agreements which allow full access to markets, less protectionism, etc. All that stuff which was starting with GATT.

and what happens when nations a. fail to agree to agree, or b. break agreements? (when, for example, their inability to grasp the disastrous house-of-cards nature of their own economy — viz the US from the late 90s to date — forces govts to take steps completely out of whack w.such agreements?)

the us isn't out of step w.the idealism at the heart of gatt bcz of the books its presidents read (or didn't) as kids, it's out of step bcz the turning of its own machinery, as currently fashioned, leaves it very little option (this is why the actual economic interests of us citizens who aren't like CEO of CitiGroup shd be key to the anti-war movemement's thinking)

The problem with almost all current economics, especially the dominant-in-the-US neo-classical economics, is that it completely ignores the REAL PHYSICAL WORLD. Witness Momus saying " Most advanced economies continue to grow, if slowly". The physical reality of this "growth" is that advanced countries are wasting more finite natural resources in order to produce a trivial increase (if even that) in the "standard of living". Yet somehow "growth" is the all-important goal of economists.

If the price of oil goes up, then the price of everything goes up, because it takes energy to do anything, and a huge portion of our energy comes from oil. This will cause massive, unavoidable inflation. Then people will look to Mr. Greenspan and think he will work his magic by messing around with interest rates or whatever and solve everything, but they will find out his fancy theories are all shit, because physical reality will lay the smack down on his sorry ass.