Blair, Britain, and the March on Baghdad

What baffles me is that any politician would go along with him.

Plus the outfall of the summit just concluded, plus the simmering resistance to globalisation and all that go with it.

American attitudes to this war I can't speak for: obviously the Bush administration would be in chaotic freefall by now if it weren't for 9-11 and its aftermath — the opportunity for war they were handed by al Qaeda has given them a bit of a free pass, a longer honeymoon, but they are totally gambling on the absence of another Tet, on everything everywhere going right. Public support for wars depends on quick and clear outcomes, something that can plausibly be cast as an improvement. I think Blair has very little capital indeed to draw on: he has asked people "just to trust him" several times too many. I think Bush has a lot less leeway than he thinks also: I've said before that I don't think he'll get a second term, I still think that.

Sorry, Pulpo, I'm reading Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie" at the moment: about America in Vietnam. The threat back then was a great deal more plausible, and the American response a good deal more carefully thought through (ie it was actually slightly thought through): it was also an never-ending disastrous catastrophe, for America as much as for Vietnam.

I really don't know, but I suspect some major shit would go down. Oh to live in somewhere nice and safe and inconsequential, like Norway.

Having encouraged an uprising Bush sr soon left the Kurds and Shi'ites hanging in the wind as soon as he looked at the consequences of 'regime change' in Baghdad. I see nothing to suggest Bush jr has thought this through.

Though if you invade every place that breaks human rights then you've got a big list.

''What do you think would actually happen if Blair was to say "no, George, Britain isn't going to help you with this?"''

UK and US have a so called special relationship but really it would be harder to say no if blair was a tory (the links are stronger because of thatcher). Labour has no obligation.

Asked about the government's role, Rifkind said, well Blair NOW seems to have grasped the need for military action, but Saddam has been a menace for 10 years and Blair has ONLY been saying the right things since Bush was elected. Totally unacceptable, Blair should have realised the need for action sooner. Unfortunately the incompetent interviewer did not ask the obvious question, ie, what was Blair actually supposed to do? Force Clinton to take military action against his will? Send in British troops unilaterally?

There was further farce when Rifkind was asked the sort of thing that could be done. Well, he said, IF the Americans could prove the existence of a site used to develop nuclear weapons, the West could send in aircraft to take it out. He was obviously very pleased with this idea and noted that there would be no warning, the world would wake up the following morning to become aware of a fait accompli. Again the interviewer failed to ask the obvious questions, what if no such site existed, and how did his notion of the importance of secrecy square with Duncan Smith's demands that Blair should tell us all exactly what he intends to do and tell us now.

US readers please excuse the Brit politics but that Rifkind, by no means an idiot and a guy with enough experience to know how the world works should find himself spouting this rubbish is really worrying. Obviously we have got to the point that for even moderate people on the Right it no longer matters whether what you say makes sense, as long as you're more hawkish than the next guy.

Instead, the line is that he's developed some new nuclear capacity (which Rumsfeld apparently failed to impress on a closed door congressional meeting yesterday). Even if that were true there are a few facts to consider:

1. If Sadam said he has a nuke and threatened to use it, then the Israeli's would immediately launch an attack on every possible related target - if Washington, Tehran, Riyadh etc didn't get their bombers in first.

2. If he really had one and either used it in a missile himself on say Tel Aviv, or gave it to Al Qaeda to boat into Manhattan, then his country would not exist anymore, since any response would surely be utterly catastrophic for Iraq (think entire country reduced to glass).

3. The west averted nuclear war with Russia for 50 years and will surely be able to deter a few low-grade weapons from terrorists etc.

I think what the west needs is a stated nuclear attack response outlining the consequences for the countries involved in supplying/using the weapons. This is a proven strategy.

This beggars belief. The credibility not just of the UN but of the world itself (currently of course overwhelmingly against Bush's invasion plans) can only be restored by everyone coming round to his point of view and supporting his war? I can just see the headlines now: 'World loses self-respect following failure to support Bush uncritically'.

Of course, Bush is getting the cart before the horse. What he really means is that his own credibility is massively at stake -- along with, it goes without saying, that of his lapdog in London. And what a waste of a good politician Blair's fall as a result of this will be. Because along with his blind faith in the world's least intelligent and most oil-obsessed politician, a host of better policies will tumble dustwards with Blair; his strong commitments to the Euro and African debt relief, for example.

And of course there's also old-fashioned sabre-rattling (the India-Pakistan stuff for example is not quite so scary because there's such a large amount of this going on...)

But the impression I get is of people totally out of their depth thrashing frantically around. Not only do no two pieces fit into the same ideological matrix, there's no attempt to pretend that they ought to.

I cant get too excited about the semantic principles of international law behind getting rid of the fuckstick. Hes mad. He is close to getting Nuclear weapons. Ill let you do the math.

Hmmm Ill say I hope they wipe the fucker out for good. Bush maybe dim but he aint mad. Glad to see you didn’t overstretch yourselves and prattled out the exact same arguments from this time last year.

Oil. Yawn... the No1 anti capitalist-American conspiracy theory ever. Great to reinforce the view that America is concerned only with her own welfare and money. Conveniently forgets such small matters like...the reality of 99% of US foreign policy being based on reasonable principles albeit bent by political realities. (That may be a bit much to swallow, more harm than good anyway.) Also there must have been a shitload of oil on the beaches of France I never knew about 50 years ago. I’m sure you’ve got an urban myth or two to share on this as well.

Fuck em I say also, to a few "corrupt self-serving elites in Saudi Arabia and Egypt”. Hard luck, they had a good run.

So its not "thought out", and the "consequences are too great" for this war. Bollocks, business as usual within weeks is my guess. Palestine is a much bigger worry long term.

"Another Vietnam", has been the dove mating call since 1975. Shhhhh everyone whats that sound? Pleeeease give us all a break.
The Afghan war was "another Vietnam" just like you all so wisely predicted it would be.

Yes you see my heart bleeds again just like it did for the Taliban.

Finally Spencer- do I understand you right. Mutually assured destruction is going to sort this issue out. You’ve got to be kidding- right?

"there are a few facts to consider:"

An important part of research is separating fact from opinion, seems it was missing at Berkley.

Thus invalidating any further point, surely?

lets nuke the yanks before they cause any more shite

why else do it (9/11 gave the US the perfect excuse to at least talk abt it)? as i said, so many places break any human rights laws that no 'world policeman' could stop it.

Neither is Saddam, though, or he wouldn't still be in power. As I understand it Saddam's concerns are to increase and consolidate his power internally (this he has done pretty effectively through ruthless oppression of his own people) and within the region (this he has been pretty useless at, viz. the botched Iran and Kuwait wars). Saddam started researching nuclear weapons in the 80s in order to give Iraq an edge in the conflict with Iran. He's now in a situation where a regional power does have them and he'd like to be in a position of deterrence. I agree that it would be a very bad idea for him to get nuclear weapons but not because I think the chances of him using them in a first-strike are high.

The question I haven't seen an answer for is - what is Saddam's motive for using WMDs against the US or its allies if he does obtain them? I don't think he has any - what he does have a motivation for is having such weapons in order to make sure any future regional moves on eg Kuwait or other gulf states are less opposed, and in order to gain political dominance in the Arab world (i.e. over Tehran). The US understandably would like to prevent this because its strategic interests (a lot of which are oil-based) require a Gulf region with Israel and friendly Arab regimes holding the whip hand. But the US is continually pushing this Saddam-is-mad line, generating the idea that as soon as he gets his hands on useable WMDs he will immediately destroy the world with them like a James Bond villain.

My personal position is that I'm in favour of "regime change" in Iraq but that going to war is the absolute worst way to bring it about because of the vast numbers of people who'll get killed. It's also the most dramatic way, though, which in election year counts for something. And to be fair it's the surest way to get rid of Saddam quickly - I don't believe the US will find itself in 'another Vietnam' in the sense of a long war, I think it'll find itself in exactly the same situation Britain found itself after 'regime change' in the Ottoman Empire, i.e. a nasty, unpopular and hugely expensive mess.

NB Kiwi's mocking of the idea that US foreign policy is about protecting its money and interests - historically that's what EVERYBODY'S foreign policy has always been, in World War II as much as in any other conflict. I pretty much take it for granted that this will be the case as long as nation-states are the key global players, my objection is the idea that large numbers of people have to get killed as an instrument of foreign policy.

kiwi, grow up: if you don't want to discuss issues seriously then go start a playground thread => the point you are making about palestine is essentially identical to the overall point i am making, if you actually bothered reading it -> using the phrase "bleeding heart liberals" and then "change the record" in the same post basically negates your contribution

i don't doubt american technology can blast a huge hole in iraq, and "win" in the short term: the point i was making was about setting out to patrol and police increasingly large (non-adjacent) territories in the medium term (ie strategic policy rather than military tactics)

the US expected to win in vietnam and then lost, for specific historical reasons: i don't think this is "another vietnam" and didn't say that

because the US electorate, like many others, responds favourably to populist conservatism, cheesy rhetoric, easy patriotism and cynically packaged charmless 'charm'. History does not show that right-wing parties do badly in capitalist democracies. For all these kinds of reasons I thought Bush would win in 2000, and thought he would win again pre- 9/11. 9/11 has possibly made this even more likely, but has not altered my overall prediction.

Lincoln/Wilson/Roosevelt/Truman/Kennedy => the american right have NEVER taken the US into major long-lasting wars (they have in fact usually argued against them: as a tendnecy with force, isolationism is a right splinter => even in vietnam, it was the "liberal" wing of US politics that committed the US, and the right that got elected promising to end the war)

I don't believe in the deep cohesion of the American right as currently constituted: I think actual war plus the immensely toxic stuff still blatting abt in the economy will erode that cohesion further => it will come apart FAST when it comes apart

"as before so again"

is not the worst basis for judgment - though needless to say it does not provide certainty, only something like the provisional possibility of probability.

You seem to be saying that Bush's re-election is as unlikely as the sun rising tomorrow morning, or London's streets being clogged with traffic at 5:30 tonight. Even *I* think it's not quite as likely as those things, but in a sense the basis for its likelihood seems to me similar.

rumsfield and cheney are both highly intelligent men, ronan: they just happen to be catastrophically wrong when it comes to their reading of the world

From my limited knowledge of recent history, I'd say that when the American government makes foreign policy decisions, it is primarily looking after the interest of--not even Americans in general--but of an economic elite (i.e., "creating a good investment environment" in other countries). There are limits to how completely this can control policy, thanks to our being to some degree democratic, but generally the public can be kept in line fairly well.

So its not "thought out", and the "consequences are too great" for this war. Bollocks, business as usual within weeks is my guess. Palestine is a much bigger worry long term.

The issue of Iraq and the issue of Palestine are not completely unrelated. An invasion of Iraq is going to tend to make Islamic militants everywhere that much angrier.

A lot of people in the Arab world are already unhappy with the way the U.S. has treated Iraq (and a handful of people in the U.S. agree), and are generally angry over U.S. actions in the middle east (particularly our support of Israel). Invading Iraq is going to create more anger. It's possible that that anger will hit home (in the U.S.) in some way.

The Afghan war was "another Vietnam" just like you all so wisely predicted it would be.

Well, I never predicted that and I'd bet that not everyone who has posted here so far ever used that phrase to describe Afghanistan. It's not a phrase I particularly like, since it puts the emphasis on the fact that the war dragged on, rather than raising the question of whether the U.S. should have been there to begin with.

I'd like to point out, however, that Afghanistan is hardly stable at the moment. The war is not over. The behavior of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, as well as the periodic bombing of wedding receptions, has not tended to endear the U.S. to the Afghan people.

*

I think that given the history of U.S. involvement in Iraq, the U.S. owes the Iraqi people a lot more consideration than it has given them. Regardless of just how vile Saddam is, the U.S. is an outside force which has a history of bombing civilian targets in Iraq and enforcing sanctions which have resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths (to mention two of its more outstanding offenses). It's hard to imagine the population of Iraq embracing the U.S. as its liberator, given that history. The U.S. government has said that the Iraqi people are not the enemy, but repeatedly it has made them suffer for the crimes of a dictator that it helped to sustain, in significant ways.

I admit that it's very hard to know where the truth is as far as Saddam's capability for mass destruction goes, but I have seen statements from enough people who should know, to make me doubt that it's a serious threat to the U.S. The potential threat to Israel is more likely, but I don't think Saddam is enough of a suicidal Islamic warrior to want to attack either country in a direct form. I could see Bin Laden wanting to bring about such a cataclysmic war, but not Saddam, becasue I don't think Saddam has that sort of religious motivation. His show of religiosity is a matter of expediency. Or at any rate, this is my impression, based on what I've read.

The BBC have made a brief assessment here.

It isn't pretty, but then neither would a similar assessment of the UK's or US's weapons capabilities. The island of St Kilda, for instance, was rendered uninhabitable for decades by UK government anthrax testing many decades ago.

The US remains the only power to have used nuclear weapons on a civilian population. I happen to be living in a house here in Japan with people who lost grandparents in Nagasaki. The US has also killed, by its sanctions policy, over 500,000 Iraqi civillians. And yet the US continues to present this double standard; 'when we kill, it's legitimate. Our war is peace. Your war is war.'

Tony Blair says (of Septmber 11th):

'The people that carried this out didn't have a negotiating strategy. There wasn't a dialogue that you were going to get into. There wasn't a change of heart that was going to come about as the result of talking to them.

'There was the simple brutal fact that they had annihilated thousands of people without any compunction at all, and indeed would have annihilated many thousands more had they been able to do so.

'I am afraid there is no point in mucking around with that situation. You either get them, or they get you.'

Unfortunately, his description of Al Quaeda also fits the US administration, who even Herr Schroeder of Germany says do not 'consult' but simply inform world governments of what they plan to do. And their Iraq policy (which is about the US' need for cheap gas) has killed and will kill many more innocent people than the attacks on the WTC. It's roadkill, really. The US can live with it. What they can't live with is other people, people who don't like them, controlling the oilzone.

Harold Pinter: "If you bomb Iraq you are not going to kill Saddam Hussein. What you will do is kill, as usual, thousands of innocent people. How Tony Blair can work that out morally is beyond me."

Yes, because the Iraqi government had nothing to do with the sanctions against it. Nor does it have anything to with the distribution of wealth in the country.

I assume you are being sarcastic here. Sanctions were imposed for what the government did, but the sanctions hurt Iraqi people, not the Iraqi government. From what I remember reading--and maybe I am mistaken--the distribution of wealth in Iraq is (or was) more equitable than the dsitribution of wealth in other Arab states. I think literacy and infant mortality rates were better as well. I'm not saying it was a paradise or long live Saddam.

I don't trust the U.S. to conduct wars, even in a good cause, without causing a lot of unnecessary civilian suffering and death. Iraq could have been driven out of Kuwait through military action without destroying Iraqi infrastructure and without bombing Iraqi soldiers in retreat and without leaving spent DUI casing to create havoc in the region, etc. etc.

I have read some disturbing things about U.S. operations in Somalia and I have my doubts that the motivation (at the decision making level, not necessarily as the level of individual soliders who were there, or individual Americans who were in favor of it) was fundamentally humanitatian.

See, I think some question quite like this is what is at the root of all my posts on this thread. Not necessarily even re UN policy — the US is not exactly world champion of playing it the UN way, and the UN as stands is kind of a cold-war institution also, which in some ways has somewhat past its sell-by date as a playa — but in re, y'know, some kind of broadly-agreed on framework of International Law. If the US is saying, "What we say goes: we ARE the law" then (right or wrong) that still has to be policed: is there *really* a long-term swell of approval for the work that would require? If it's saying, what the UN decides is law, how d'you police that? If it's saying, what [International Body X: to be convened] decides is law, how d'you police that?

Now maybe there's a liberal answer to these questions (or several), and a Hobbesian answer (cf Cheney), and a brutal technocratic elite answer (cf Kissinger), and many different kinds of answers, radical, reactionary, horrible, brilliant — but I don't get how unclarity and uncertainty and chaotic opportunist jumpcut switching from one framework to another (which is the current situation) is any kind of a votewinner, in the US or the UK or wherever. Globalisation already happened: it is wreaking havoc, really, with the model which says, We Are A Family of Nations Equal Under the Sun, because many of the forces and institutional players are so much bigger and more powerful than most nations, and yet aren't represented (in the sense of present at meetings and accountable), or sometimes even visible. Voters know this, even if they can't always articulate it (why should they? most political activists, all stripes, don't really articulate it): they will vote for "doing something" if the something seems to address the problem. But if you put yrself up for election as firechief, and there are more fires during your term of office than there were before it began, then (eventually) you will not be re-relected.

As it happens, I think the current world order is a rolling disaster on an economic AND a political-juridical level. I also think the limited areas we tend to think of as secure, safe, stable, getting along, working more or less, are in a much more frangible and volatile condition than usually seems to be declared (this is partly what I meant by the goodwill Blair/Bush etc have to draw on being less than they appear to recognise). The "threat" is not from outside: it's from extensive angry turmoil within, specific nature as yet undetermined. Not the "masses rising", in some cartoony sense: more like unending brush-fires. The solution to that one the cause of the next one.

What's the plan, people? Where are we actually going? Is this really just business-as-usual, same-old same-old? It's not the End of the World I'm worried about — I was bilked of that as a teen, and know not to trust anyone who promises it — and the End of History was just bad yuppy garbage. I think we just entered the Mid-Life Crisis of the World.

DeRayMi: maybe so (I mean, I think that too, pretty much) but nevertheless, doesn't the concept of International Law actually demand a policing structure? Part of the question is, if not policed by the US (+UK+NATO?), then how and by who? Someone infinitely fair and just and disinterest would perhaps be nice, but what if she's on holiday? Something will fill the vacuum left by the Cold War Balance of Terror: in fact I think something just did.

I am off to visit my foax. Have a nice weekend :(

Well mark, I think we're all kind of scared/worried but i think it is business as ususal. A lot of ppl will get killed, with a lot of moralising to come from the ppl who will push the trigger. the only we can do is protest. Though one day, i'm afraid the ones who will get hurt will be us here in the comfortable and well to do west. a lot of innocent ppl in body bags...

There cannot be a policing body either. That's the job of the UN surely but its an useless organisation. laws are words and they can be bent by lawyers.

this is a bit bleak but that's what i'm seeing.

of course if things go badly in Iraq then he could be finished very quickly.

(sod i meant to update RFN: i haf a corkah of a conundrum abt the Ruling Classes...)

(bah where is my beloved sistrah? i shd be on the motorway now not online)

(Not that I think I can make any claim whatsoever to the moral high ground. I could give 90% of what I own to the starving but don't. I DO have too much of a conscience to vote for someone who stands on a platform of "you've already got more than most but we'll make sure you get an even bigger slice of the pie". But it's a fairly small and ineffectual gesture.

But just because we're selfish most of the time doesn't mean our occasional unselfishnessness should be abandoned as mere hypocrisy.

Mark S: you have said many stimulating things as usual, but have made no case (at least on this thread - elsewhere may be a different story) for the likely non-survival of GW Bush. So far the main reason for your taking this position appears to be sth like "Everyone on ILx, and everywhere else, thinks he will win 2nd term: so I think he won't". I would love you to be right, but need more than that to be convinced.

The Guardian reports that a massive war game played over the summer to model an invasion of Iraq resulted in the US losing, although this was covered up and the sunk boats and dead soldiers were brought back to life so that the exercise could continue to the desired result: a US win.

I wonder if this is amongst the 'facts' Bush will be reminding leaders of?

The Washington Post reports that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's office on Friday night withdrew a 2,300-word article he had written for Sunday's editions making the case for pre-emptive military action. The article cited the three countries Bush has called the ``axis of evil'' — Iraq, Iran and North Korea — as well as Libya and Syria. Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said Rumsfeld withdrew the article because the timing "was not right".

Meanwhile, according to CBS News, newly-discovered aides' notes reveal that Rumsfeld planned the Iraq invasion on September 11th 2001:

'Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld. "Go massive," the notes quote him as saying. "Sweep it all up. Things related and not." '

I think this is true - you have to be more realistic than that to survive in his position as long as he has. But imagine this: that Iraq has the nuclear capability that is one of the allegations (we know that it's a crime when non-whites get nukes); and that the US attacks and is winning a war against Iraq (whatever a simulation says, I find it hard to believe that the US's technical and manpower resources won't overwhelm Iraq's, given the will - comparisons to Vietnam are vacuous, since there is no superpower taking the oppositional position). If Saddam does not fire off nuclear missiles at the US and any associates, does that not prove the theory that he is a murderous maniac with nukes completely untrue?

So either they run a real risk of launching a nuclear war (and yes 'we' would win, but how many nukes have to hit the UK for it to be pyrrhic?), or they have destroyed a leader and regime that is not what is said (for the record, I think this is more likely). (haha this is like throwing witches off cliffs, except you know they don't have the magic nuke capability.) I don't care if Saddam is killed - it seems likely to make the world a better place, in a tiny way (globally: it may be a large difference locally). I do care about all of the people getting killed along the way, and the tensions such a war will increase.

It seems to me that America has a chain of something that is trying to pass for logic. 9/11 => terrorism must be destroyed. Bin Laden is responsible. Bin Laden is in Afghanistan. Afghanistan will not hand him over to the US (were they offered substantial evidence of his involvement?) => US attacks Afghanistan. It's from here that whatever respect one can give the logic so far vanishes. Bin Laden is not captured or killed. Global terrorism has not been crushed. However, different people are in charge of Afghanistan, and this is claimed as a victory. It is this regime change that is to be accomplished in Iraq, apparently, backed up with vague noises about their connections to terrorism. I'm guessing the shift in focus is because America worked out that there isn't a way of winning a war on terrorism.

It's possible that a war could be won swiftly and with comparatively small casualties. It's possible that a new and sustainable and more just regime could be installed in its place. It is possible that the benefits of this new regime could outweigh the costs of the war (I'm thinking lives rather than financial, though that will be immense). It is possible that this will be clear and undeniable to other states, close to Iraq geographically or ideologically, and therefore will be accepted by, most importantly, other Islamic states. As far as I can see, for this war to be a good thing, all of the above needs to be very much true, and every step there seems riddled with multiple, major doubts.

Like Colin Powell? Come on. I agree with your points, basically, but that's just an inflammatory accusation.

Why is this so? Part of it is due to the fighting that occurs in a split governement, which may make Bush look stronger, or stiffen the country's resolve to back his policies. Also, the scope of political discussion in America is so narrow at this point that to solve even one problem would throw off the debate. If Bush, or any Democrat for that matter, ever solves ANYTHING, he will be out of issues to run on in the next election. American politics is solely the concern of strategists, with the problem of winning the only one to be solved. There are more reasons, all just as strange, that I can't seem to remember.

As for the whole question of Iraq, war has always seemed to me to be nonsensical. For me, it has nothing to do with ideology. Whenever I hear the word war, I think of countless kids in America who simply needed money for college, and joined the Army to get it. I know a few myself.

So much of evey discussion regarding Iraq, regardless of venue or media, necessarily degenerates into speculation. It is sad that we all have to discuss war without reliable knowledge that Saddam posesses a formidable (if he has only one weapon and uses it, he can only look forward to his own destruction and nothing else) nuclear arsenal, and that he intends to use it. If only we could start the discussion from there...

Fair enough, but pressures that hated transnational entities like the IMF and World Bank exert on national governments to lower the national debts, control inflation, stifle unionization, elimate tariffs, and so on, sabotage basic attempts to provide any social services to poor people, except those that directly benefit manufacturing concerns. It's pretty easy to see how the bodies that strong-arm poor countries into creating "investment-friendly" environments look really, really bad. They transcend being merely symbolic of the problems poor people face on a daily basis, and look instead like a cause.

And while the standard of living may have improved somewhat in some places (for example, parts of Mexico under the post-NAFTA manufacturing boom), the utter inequity of the way the created surplus has been shared is appalling, and the reason for a lot of legitimate anger. Some people get very rich, while a lot of people in some other country can afford a car. (I'd say "can afford a medical clinic" but the social apparatus in countries that accrue the mild benefits of globalization lags way behind individual spending power-- partly because the governments of those countries are discouraged from doing much besides lowering taxes and paying debt.)

I'm using American manufacturing as an example. but of course European farm subsidies are destructive to the third world in a way that has more immediate consequence than all the Gap factories combined, yet America=late capitalism=evil.

Martin: The skeptical chorus in the American media establishment is getting louder and louder-- on this issue, the question of "why won't inspections work, if you have satellite photos" is being raised again and again. The Iraq issue is becoming easily the most public and involved national debate on foreign policy since the middle of the Reagan administration, and that doesn't bode well for the steamrollers of the Bush administration.

I would really like to see American foreign policy become an issue subject to debate among individual voters. The attention paid to this debate makes me think that, contrary to the conventional opinions of many Europeans, Americans aren't insular and apathetic, but have been closed off from foreign policy debates leading to a sense of total inefficacy. There has been very little substantial difference between the foreign policy elites from the Cold War until the present; it took the arrogance of the Bush administration, and its disregard for even the minimal amount of international co-operation and precedent that previous administrations (both Democrat and Republican) had shown, to create the grounds for meaningful debate.

i think the nation state is pretty much a bad thing(or rather, is today a played-out thing as regards unalloyed social benefit, in particular for the nation-states not at the top table): i happen to think glob's assault on it — in the long run — is both a good thing and a bad thing (you listed some of the good points), but either way, it's here to stay in some form, so the argt shd be, "what are the politics of justice and possibility in a globalised system of interlinked polities?", not "let's all hightail it back to our favoured version of the pre-globalised system"

(as in, for example, working in the interests of whom? obv not Us — but if the Usual Villains, i don't get it)

(i'm actually more inclined to see the apparently mooted Step Back from the Brink in 12-ft-lizard terms than the earlier apparent rush to it...)

sorry all, i realise i'm being cryptic even by my supersonic standards of ellipsis: i'm genuinely trying to work something out i intuit but can't yet grasp so talk among yrselves if you prefer

"I'm gonna tuck my worries underneath my arm/ And scat right back to my pappy's farm"

I am happily surprised that there is as much debate going on in the U.S. about invading Iraq (versus simply rallying behind the president). As someone who works in a library, as well as frequenting bookstores, it seems that a lot of people are reading about foreign policy issues with a level of interest that was maybe lacking a year ago.

"Anti-globalization" is an unfortunate label, and I doubt that everyone involved in that movement really wants to go back to a world of more isolated island nation-states (or smaller units), though I've met some that I think would like to turn the clock back considerably. But the complaints being made are real enough, and Benjamin spelled some of them out above. (Recent example from my reading: no debt relief unless nation's privatize their water supply.)

Things may have always been bad, but I think things may only be getting worse in many parts of the world. Our economic system creates much more frequent disurption and upheaval than traditional forms of life. Natural resources are being used up and the poor have to face the relatively new problem of various forms of polution. (We all do, but the poor are more likely to suffer the consequences most seriously.) Modern medicine has a lot to offer, but most people in 3rd World countries can't afford it, and many governments can't or don't provide it.

Yes, those liberals and their infuriating habit of replying to people who disagree with them!

(The first part deals with Iraq, the rest with Labour Party/TUC relations.) He says he will recall Parliament.