Mamamontezz's Mental Rumpus Room

No Longer our allies

Note: I have been giving this topic a lot of thought as of late, generally every time I hear some Kerry apologist claiming that the war was illegal or ill-conceived or worse. Finally today I sat down and thrashed out my thoughts in MSWord so I could post them.

No, I have no Whittle-ian pretenses here. Sometimes it just takes 1,300 words to get my point across.
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Much has been said by the opposition before and during this election cycle about the apparent failure of the current administration to reach out to our international allies and seek their approval for and cooperation in the multilateral action against Saddam Hussain in Iraq.

Looking at the timeline leading up to the war, it is not difficult to see that this is false argument based more on rhetoric than on actual events. Members of the current administration endured months of meetings with the UN, fended off of numerous attempts at extortion by many UN members in exchange for their assistance or approval, and subsequently postponed the already much delayed enforcement of UN Resolution 1441. These points are not even arguable, except by persons who refuse for political reasons to acknowledge clearly documented facts as reported in media sources usually found to be acceptable to them.

Let us instead address the fallacy of the complaint involving the administration's unwillingness to gain the approval and subsequent involvement of our allies in the action in Iraq, and the apparent unilateralism of the action in Iraq.

In addressing the unilateral argument, one need only look at the list of nations, large and small, powerful or relatively weak, which participated in the actions. Small nations like Tonga sent a significant percentage of their armed forces to aid in the security and rebuilding of Iraq for the Iraqi people. It may only look like a handful of personnel, but when you look at the population of Tonga and the size of their military, their contribution is among the greatest of the coalition.

Poland has provided an elite team of personnel that has performed in an honorable and heroic manner, bringing both prestige and respect to their entire nation. Italian members of the coalition forces have also given exemplary service, and their government has supported us in the face of withering disapproval from other EU member nation-states and specific threats from Al Qaida and other terrorist organizations. One amazing member of the Salvadoran contingent has shown the world what a real hero is.

Yet there are those who refuse to acknowledge the contributions of these nations and of these brave men and women with the lock-step misrepresentation of the war as a unilateral exercise in self-enrichment and colonialism. This insistence by members of the opposition, both in this country and abroad, cheapens the contributions of all of the nations involved and denigrates the status of all of the brave personnel serving under savage conditions to nothing more than corporate mercenaries.

To espouse and then continuously engage in such rhetoric when its claims have been repeatedly disproved with facts is irresponsible at best, and dangerous in the long term. By devaluing the actions of our military personnel, this mindset devalues their very humanity. To see the effect of this, one need only put on a set of BDUs with appropriate boots and unit markings and walk across the commons area of most college campuses. Dress in this manner and go to a neighborhood or enclave where the more sensitive and artistic element of any city lives and watch the reactions of the residents.

But I digress.

It is painfully obvious to all who will avail themselves of recent historical evidence and documented facts that the current administration went to great pains to build a multilateral force for an action that was required by UN Resolution 1441 for Saddam’s and Iraq’s failure to comply with countless prior and subsequent resolutions with regard to weapon systems, human rights, and respect for the sovereignty of neighboring nations.

However people point out that our traditional allies, France, Germany and Russia not only withheld support from the multilateral coalition, they actively worked against the coalition for the purposes of preempting any actions against Saddam. We find through documents found after the beginning of action in Iraq that these three nations did not speak out against aggression for any other reason than the preservation of far reaching and immensely lucrative contracts with Saddam.

These “allies” had no interest in the suffering of civilians caught in the crossfire between factions of foreign Islamists intent on subverting any attempts by the Iraqi people in developing democracy. Nor did they have any interest in stopping the far reaching and blatant violations of basic human rights against huge segments of the Iraqi population for no other reasons than their particular denomination within Islam, their sex, or ethnicity. Their sole interest was in improving their place on the stage of rapidly evolving world politics, vainly attempting to become a “World Power” instead of the declining and decadent governments they had become.

It has become increasingly apparent that the same evolutionary process which is reshaping world politics is also realigning allegiances in very profound ways. Nations have realigned as many political differences have been resolved and others have been inflamed. Friendly alliances have degraded into antagonism, and former members of enemy blocs have developed into respectable and sought-after allies.

France, Germany, and Russia have developed one of these allegiances, and through which they have attempted to further subjugate an already oppressed nation for their false gods: Greed, Avarice, and Power. By doing so, they have effectively dissolved all or part of their former allegiance with the United States and the other members of the coalition. No longer can we count them as allies, as they have made their intentions to become a super-power quite obvious by their actions and their pronouncements. They have made it abundantly clear that the idea of a single large world power is a dangerous and unacceptable one, and that new allegiances must be developed to act as a foil against that power, even if doing so means crawling into bed with known despotic and evil nations.

France, Germany and Russia, by their actions and their rhetoric, have only proven what has been obvious to some people for a great many years: they are not our allies, now or since the cold war ended. In the case of France, their capacity as an ally was compromised during the 60’s and 70’s when they actively engaged in espionage against our businesses as they tried to do business in Europe. Diplomatic circles continued to woo them and entice them with ever increasing foreign aid, hoping this period of national petulance would end and all would be made right.

As long as the threat of the Soviet Union loomed over them, they at least made the appearance of wanting to be under the protective umbrellas of NATO and the United States. But now the neighborhood bully has been weakened, the sidewalk is safe to walk, and France and Germany have no further need of the Big Kid to fend him off. They choose instead to point at their former protector and accuse him of being the new bully for no other reason than that he is still the biggest kid on the block.

Still there are vast factions within the United States who insist on maintaining this false alliance, of deferring to former allies on matters where we are at cross-purposes. They seek the approval of these crumbling former powers with the same enthusiasm shown by dysfunctional women with drunken abusive husbands. No amount of logic will sway them from their belief that they love and are loved by these dissolute brutes, and they continue to swear their loyalty even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Eventually the abuse becomes so great that someone ends up in the emergency room or worse.

The problem of playing this household drama out on a world scale is that it isn’t just one person paying the price of misplaced loyalty. The price has been and will continue to be paid with the blood of thousands and potentially of millions of innocents.

Posted by Mamamontezz at September 18, 2004 04:26 PM