Bush shows extra vision, but it doesn’t go all the way to Baghdad

By Ryle Dwyer

At times it seemed that every sentence was greeted with applause and every paragraph with a standing ovation. For the first time in over a century Americans seem eager for war.

They were dragged into the two world wars. Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt had each been re-elected on promises to stay out of those conflicts.

The country had very limited objectives in fighting in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, and Yugoslavia, but now people seem ready to support Bush as he prepares for some kind of crusade against a mythical axis of evil.

Bush's speech was not all blood and thunder. He made more lavish promises in just one address that all of our parties made during the last general election campaign.

He called for immediate tax reductions, for instance, as well as energy and environmental initiatives.

He even promised to promote social security and medicare areas in which the Republican Party has traditionally shown scant interest.

The President proposed spending $400 billion over the next 10 years to fund medicare for senior citizens.

The biggest cheer of the night was for his slap at the legal profession for inflating the cost of healthcare with frivolous lawsuits.

"Instead of bureaucrats and trial lawyers," he insisted, "we must put doctors and nurses and patients back in charge of American medicine."

Aspects of his speech were positively visionary. He called for $15 billion over the next five years to deal with AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. This was a magnificent gesture, even if Nelson Mandela was obviously not very impressed.

Bush made a promise that was reminiscent of John F Kennedy's famous pledge to put a man on the moon before the end of the '60s.

This week's technological pledge was to produce environmentally friendly cars that would be driven on hydrogen. This would have an enormous impact on growing environmental problems and would also lessen the world's dependence on depleting oil reserves.

Americans presented the world with the automobile, and its promised replacement with Bush's hydrobuggy would certainly be a welcome development.

While that pledge echoed the early promise of the Kennedy years for many people, others might be struck by Adolf Hitler's hauntingly reminiscent promise to produce a people's car for the ordinary citizens. That gave rise to the Volkswagen.

Even though most people were probably waiting to hear what Bush would say about the Iraqi crisis, the White House had been playing this down before the address, and the speech contained few specifics about Iraq's violations of Resolution 1441.

The President said that Secretary of State Colin Powell will present that evidence to the UN Security Council next week, but in a poignant show of political muscle, members of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee have been insisting that Powell should inform them first.

The President marred his speech with some rhetoric that one might expect in a gangster movie.

"All told more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries," he declared. "Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies."

"We have the terrorists on the run," he continued.

"We're keeping them on the run. One by one the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice." What the hell did he mean by that?

Not once during the whole speech did he mention any terrorist being brought to trial. Instead, the audience was left with his smug reference to "a different fate", which smacked of lynch law.

The United States has a valid case in calling for the terrorists to be confronted, but we can be absolutely certain that terrorism will be the ultimate victor, if the world stands mutely by and allows Bush and his buddies to use their own terrorist tactics.

The Americans say that they have evidence that Saddam has been trying to get material to build nuclear weapons and that scientists have been intimidated into silence.

Nobody should doubt that, but people might have a lot more respect for Bush if he was prepared to put pressure on Israel in the same regard.

The Israelis have ignored the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to build their own nuclear weapons.

When Mordaci Vanunu warned the world, he was kidnapped by the Israelis in Italy and has been held ever since under inhuman conditions, in solitary confinement for almost 20 years.

Let Bush and the Americans demonstrate their concern for people being able to speak out by putting pressure on their friends to free Vanunu now.

The Americans also say that they have evidence that Saddam has been aiding bin Laden.

There has been no love lost between them, but nobody should be surprised that Saddam would now aid that demented camel jockey, because either of them would use the devil for his own purposes.

Of course, the United States would do likewise. In the past the CIA for its own twisted ends aided both bin Laden and Saddam, especially when the latter waged a savage war on Iran during the 1980s.

The Americans had no problems with that then because, as Lyndon Johnson would have said, he was their son of a bitch. So were a whole series of dictators in Latin America, including Augusto Pinochet, who overthrew the democratically elected government of Chile with the aid and connivance of the CIA, which then backed his murderous regime.

Bush must not be allowed to take international law into his own hands. The UN must take an effective stand now, or it will go the same way as the League of Nations.

We should recognise, however, that Americans do have valid grounds for uneasiness about the UN. This year Libya will chair the UN Human Rights Commission, which includes other member states with dismal human rights records, like China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.

It's like a sick joke. If that's not enough to make you throw up, then get this... in May Iraq is due to provide the chairman of the UN Conference on Disarmament!

Saddam was given his chance to comply with Resolution 1441 of the Security Council.

"All prior experience shows that the Iraqi regime responds only to a credible threat of force," Minister for Foreign Affairs Brian Cowen warned last month.

If the Security Council is to have any credibility it must implement that resolution, not because of what Bush says, but because it is the right thing to do.

Before first applying for UN membership Eamon de Valera warned the Dáil in 1946 that this country should be fully prepared to support a war to enforce the obligations of the UN charter.

"If there is ever to be a rule of law nations must make up their minds that they will take part in such enforcement," he insisted. We knew our obligations then.

"All countries who believe in an international order based on principles of justice and law have to stand up for the authority of the Security Council," Brian Cowen emphasised.

"We cannot pick and choose the easy options."

Facilitating planes at Shannon is the very least we should do.