<i>Gordon McLauchlan:</i> Sabre-rattlers scare hell out of me

6 Sep, 2002 06:41 AM5 mins to read

Before I left New Zealand a fortnight ago, I emailed an American friend saying George W. Bush scared the hell out of a lot of New Zealanders with his jingoism but most of us had confidence in the ultimate good sense of the American people.

He replied that Bush frightened him, too, and he was glad about our confidence because his was waning.

If you talk to people here and read some of the major daily newspapers, you realise quickly that my friend represents a substantial body of American opinion. But if your news comes from television you'll search mostly in vain for an expression of it.

The reason is that television reporters talk only to politicians and analysts and among politicians there is no Opposition (with a capital O) of the sort we're used to in New Zealand.

Given that the economy is in serious trouble, that most of the world opposes the American stance on Iraq and global warming, and that the courts are challenging Attorney-General John Ashcroft's assault on civil liberties, the Democrats in this religious country seem to subscribe to the belief that the meek shall inherit the Earth (but probably not the mineral rights).

So as the summer ends, the United States seems to be drifting towards war with Iraq. Drifting, because no one seems to have a firm grasp on the national tiller.

Bush pops up publicly from time to time to make speeches on subjects of his choosing but remains pretty well inaccessible to journalists.

He's not only not of Washington, he's not in it very often, either. And, of course, under the American system Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (an unelected official) can remain airily aloof from any political fray in Congress. Unlike Westminster-style leaders, they don't go near the cauldron of a debating chamber.

The Iraq issue comes down to this:

(1) Does the United States have powerful evidence of imminent and grave danger from Saddam Hussein that would give it the moral and legal right to make a pre-emptive strike?

(2) Can it win a war in Iraq quickly and without loss of thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians (yes, they count, too), and stay long enough to honour its stated obligation to reconstruct the country?

(3) Will an attack on Iraq cause Armageddon-like chaos in the Middle East, especially if Israel lends the Americans a hand? If so, access to oil in that region may become even more precarious than now.

What is most worrying is that no one in the Government and few in the media seem to be laying out these questions and considering them in a statesmanlike way. The case for war is made almost daily in sabre-rattling style by Cheney and Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld - once described by Henry Kissinger no less as "the scariest person I've ever met" - has a face with the colour and texture of a sculpture chiselled from stone.

Neither he nor Cheney looks likely to need sleeping pills to quiet the uncertainties that would arise around 3am in most of us contemplating war. It's all hawk talk about when, not whether, the next attack on the US will come through Saddam, about when he will perfect nuclear weapons (any day now, according to Rumsfeld), and when he will use them.

What most Americans and most of the world wants is detailed evidence of the nature of the threat from Saddam. Cheney and Rumsfeld have so far offered only rhetoric and innuendo, metaphorically tapping the sides of their noses with grim, portentous "trust us" appeals.

The promise has been made that Bush will deliver this information any day now, and Tony Blair has said he will offer Britain's own supporting intelligence. It will need to be compelling stuff to make a pre-emptive strike morally acceptable to millions around the world.

Meanwhile, many people are asking about the political sense of all this. Why does the Administration seem bent on taking such a risk, knowing it could all go wrong?

One offered answer is that George W. and Co have so many political failures to their debit, so many impending domestic disasters, they are trying the age-old ploy of distracting their citizens by constructing a threatening, foreign chimera.

I don't believe the Administration is that cynical or politically primitive, nor the American public that gullible, so like most people around the world I await the evidence with intense curiosity.

My confidence in the ultimate good sense of the American people is not shared by many, if any, of the 30-plus visiting writers I'm with, many from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

As I looked around them at a meeting last night, expressing their despair at what's happening, I thought of the phrase that trips so lightly from the lips of hawks, that Iraq is making "weapons of mass destruction".

As far as I know, no one has been killed by a nuclear weapon since Nagasaki, a handful by biological weapons and a million Kurds by Saddam's chemical warfare.

All that is bad enough but which weapons have killed most innocent people, caused most mass destruction in the past 25 years? Probably the automatic rifle and the land mine. You know, the ones rogue leaders buy from the United States, Britain, France, Russia, Israel and other peace-loving countries.

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