Why We Should Hate Europe

Trajan · Apr 17, 2003

Quote from msfe:

Rebuilding Iraq

A plan for debt, aid and reconstruction

Wednesday April 16, 2003

It was conceived as a way to heal the "hunger, desperation, poverty and chaos" of the war so that America could do "whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health". That was the Marshall Plan of 1947 when the US pumped the equivalent of $100bn into lubricating Europe's postwar recovery. Churchill described it as "the most unsordid act in history". Fast forward now to Iraq as peace follows war and as the first meetings with the exiled Iraqi opposition start to plan political and economic reconstruction. The sums needed are similar to those of the Marshall Plan but the method is the opposite. First the vast bulk of reconstruction will be self financed from future oil revenues, not provided by allies. Second, the key to the Marshall Plan was that there would be no debilitating restrictions attached: the recipients of the aid should have "ownership" of the plan.

In Iraq the initial contracts for reconstruction are going to designated US companies without any competition from other US firms, let alone the coalition partners or anyone else. The two year contract to fight oil fires - reportedly worth up to $7bn - has gone to a unit of Halliburton which Dick Cheney, US vice president, ran for five years until 2000. Other US engineering giants like Bechtel and Fluor are taking early pickings. This is bad economics because single bids will not necessarily provide the right companies and if they did the excess profits likely to be made are bound to be the subject of future Congressional inquiries. It is bad politics because it upsets not only indigenous Iraqi companies - which would have been at the core of Marshall's thinking - but international competitors as well. It is politically myopic because US companies are strong enough to win most of the contracts in open tendering rather than as hand-outs from a Bush administration with which they have had embarrassingly close ties. Reconstruction must be an international effort to be credible.

Of the two other main pillars of reconstruction, aid and debt, aid is the more urgent. The military should hand over responsibility for humanitarian assistance to the UN and aid agencies as soon as possible, to utilise their expertise and to ensure that relief is clearly seen as an international responsibility and not associated just with the conquerors. Fortunately, many Iraqis have stockpiled supplies of food so there is no immediate danger of mass starvation. But many have not and in key urban areas urgent action is required to restore electricity supplies that have cut off water supplies, sewage systems and hospital services. The reduction of Iraq's huge external debts - estimated at between $60bn and $120bn, or as much as $5,000 per citizen - requires more generosity than would normally be given to a middle-income country because so much of the debt is the result of Saddam's excesses. This is not urgent because Iraq has not serviced its debts for a decade but a framework needs to be in place to make the rest of reconstruction work effectively.

In this context it is imperative that the income from oil production, when it resumes, not only goes to the Iraqi people, where it belongs, but that is seen to do so. This, inevitably, is another job best done under UN auspices. Here there is another Marshall Plan lesson: Democratic President Truman willingly handed his plan over to General Marshall to improve its chances of getting through a Republican Congress. It popularised the maxim that there is no limit to what a person can achieve - as long as they are prepared to let someone else take the credit.
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You mean the U.N. with Syria(don't try come back on this one), China and Russia on the security council? Do you think they would have the Iraqi people's best interest at heart? Why an organization with Libya as the head of a human rights commision? Do you hate America that much?

Trajan · Apr 17, 2003

Quote from msfe:

Blair's alliance with Bush is a damaging strategic error

War has undermined Britain in both Europe and the developing world

Robin Cook
Thursday April 17, 2003

The moment of triumphalism must have seemed tantalisingly brief to the hawks. Within hours, the photo-op of the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue was crowded out of the bulletins by scenes of looting and lawlessness. Having won the military conflict, the Bush administration appeared curiously unprepared for what to do next in Baghdad.

For Britain the question of what to do next must start with counting the collateral damage from the war to our international standing. Most immediately, there is the division it has put between us and our major European partners. Labour's objective on taking office in 1997 was to make Britain a partner of equal importance in a triangle with Germany and France. After the divisions over Iraq, Europe is back to a Franco-German axis, with Britain once again the odd one out.

Then there is the damage to our standing in the developing world, where we are now widely perceived to have supported a war not of liberation but of imperialism. This is particularly true in the Islamic nations. The most difficult strategic question in international affairs is how the west can reach accommodation with the Islamic world. Britain is well placed to contribute to finding the answer because of our multicultural society and tradition of tolerance. Yet the war in Iraq limits our ability to act as an interlocutor with the Islamic and, especially, the Arab nations.

The longer the west tries to run Iraq, the greater will be the resentment. Washington shows no grasp that its determined efforts to keep the UN on the margins are against its own best interests. Bush needs to hand over the running of Iraq to a more legitimate international authority before his army of liberation morphs into an army of occupation. He should heed the advice of Iraq's senior cleric: "You toppled Saddam, now leave."

Nor can the west pretend, after such a dramatic demonstration of its power, that it is a passive spectator in the Middle East peace process. The war in Iraq was justified on the grounds that after a decade Washington had lost patience waiting on Saddam to fulfil his obligations under UN resolutions. Yet the Palestinians have waited three decades for Israel to fulfil its obligations under resolution 242 to withdraw from the occupied territories.

In short, restoring the standing of Britain throughout the Islamic world depends on US withdrawal from Iraq and on Israel's withdrawal from the West Bank. The awkward position for us as the junior partner in the coalition is that the key to progress on both lies not in our hands but in those of President Bush. And here we come to the fundamental foreign policy dilemma for Britain. It is what kind of relationship we can maintain with the US while it is under neoconservative management.

Everyone has the problem of deciding how to operate in a world dominated by a hyper power on the march. For Britain, however, US unilateralism raises particularly acute questions because of the intimacy of our relationship with Washington. Tony Blair has pursued a strategy of restoring Britain as the most reliable ally of the US. If there was a model, it was to recapture the special relationship of the Thatcher- Reagan years. The catch is that the Thatcher-Reagan relationship was possible because both shared the same perverse domestic priorities and the same malign world views. While Bill Clinton was at the White House, it was possible to recreate that special relationship of two leaders who shared broadly similar instincts. The strategic error was to attempt to roll forward the relationship with Clinton to his successor.

The political calculation was rational enough. Blair was convinced the Tories would claim that a Labour government could not work with a Republican administration. His rapid moves to make his number with George Bush were motivated by determination to close down this domestic line of attack. The mistake was to underrate the problems of building a special relationship without shared political priorities and common values.The predictable consequence is that Blair has left himself without supporters among leaders of the left within the European Union. Instead he is dependent for allies on rightwing leaders such as Silvio Berlusconi - a curious partner for a Labour leader who shot to prominence on the commitment to be tough on crime.

And it is hard to spot what support we have received in return for our loyalty. As a European foreign minister put it to me last year: "We are all amused that Britain gets nothing in return." The result has been a lengthening list of issues on which the Bush administration has diverged from our international perspective.

The Kyoto protocol on global warming, the Johannesburg agenda on world development, and the formation of an international criminal court are only the more high-profile of the issues on which Bush has done his best to block priorities of British diplomacy. Bizarrely, given his preoccupation with weapons of mass destruction, Bush has even undermined our efforts to strengthen the protocol to the chemical weapons convention, because US industry would not agree to spot inspections.

Perhaps lessons from Iraq are now being learned in No 10. Blair's swift and public refusal to join the Washington chorus of threats against Syria is all the more welcome for its contrast with our faithful echo of Bush on Iraq.

To question the degree of Britain's complicity with a Bush administration is not to be anti-American. The US is not just the country of George Bush, it is also the country of Michael Moore, Martin Sheen and Woody Allen. Most Americans did not vote for Bush; indeed the majority of those Americans who did turn out to the polls voted for AI Gore. Nor will Bush be there for ever. In only a year's time, Blair's aides will be confronted with demands from the White House for signals of endorsement of a Bush re-election. I fear their basic instinct, if they expect Bush to win, will be to oblige. It is vital that they master those instincts: Britain's interest is in a Democratic victory.

Tony Blair is famous for his reluctance to choose between alternatives, but always to seek a third way. But the refusal to recognise that there is a choice between making our number with Bush and maintaining our status in Europe has left us marooned in mid-Atlantic. If the prime minister wants to restore Britain's status as a major European player, he must now accept that moving closer to Europe requires, by definition, putting more distance between Britain and Bush.

Â· Robin Cook MP was foreign secretary from 1997 to 2001 and leader of the House of Commons until he resigned from the government last month. This is an edited version of an article in this week's New Statesman
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Micheal Moore and Martin Sheen are outside of the mainstream of America. Sheen is an actor, nobody pays attention to him outside of his appearances on T.V. Moore has as big a following outside of this country as in, the guy is a jackass in whom only the left can place their fantasies. Also, the treaties mentioned had zero chances of passing, absolutely none. Bill Clinton should have never have signed them. The fact Cook could bring them up is an indictement of Clintons foreign policy, the man did great damage by agreeing to such nonsense. As can be seen today, Bill Clinton has no class whatsoever, he has a very poor intellect.

msfe · Apr 17, 2003

Quote from Trajan:

Bill Clinton has no class whatsoever, he has a very poor intellect.
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... contrary to the greatest leader of all times - George W. Einstein

harrytrader · Apr 17, 2003

How politically uneducated you are, perhaps this will enlighten you:

âToday, Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow, they will be grateful. This is especially true, if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond â whether real or promulgated â that threatened our very existence. It is then that all the peoples of the world will pledge with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing that every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished with the guarantee of their well-being, granted to them by their world government.â

â Henry Kissinger, at the Bilderberg Conference in Evians, France, 1991

Trajan · Apr 17, 2003

Yes, exactly. Glad to see your coming around.

Clinton is kind of like QDZ.

harrytrader · Apr 17, 2003

Europe has always wanted you to enter UN and so do also YOUR elites that are not defending Americas people but the World especially European Elites Interests ! Your elites come from Germany like JP Morgan did you at least know that ?

Quote from harrytrader:

How politically uneducated you are, perhaps this will enlighten you:

âToday, Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow, they will be grateful. This is especially true, if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond â whether real or promulgated â that threatened our very existence. It is then that all the peoples of the world will pledge with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing that every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished with the guarantee of their well-being, granted to them by their world government.â

â Henry Kissinger, at the Bilderberg Conference in Evians, France, 1991
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Trajan · Apr 17, 2003

Quote from harrytrader:

How politically uneducated you are, perhaps this will enlighten you:

âToday, Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow, they will be grateful. This is especially true, if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond â whether real or promulgated â that threatened our very existence. It is then that all the peoples of the world will pledge with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing that every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished with the guarantee of their well-being, granted to them by their world government.â

â Henry Kissinger, at the Bilderberg Conference in Evians, France, 1991
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A post by HarryTrader, we are honored.

Harry, you have to be pretty excited by the boycott of Frnech goods, especially of wine. It looks like we'll be able to buy Bordeaux for a realistic price. I think the whole Chirac thing was a conspiracy to provoke a boycott so that the French could actually afford their best wines.

Trajan · Apr 17, 2003

Quote from harrytrader:

Europe has always wanted you to enter UN and so do also YOUR elites that are not defending Americas people but the World especially European Elites Interests ! Your elites come from Germany like JP Morgan did you at least know that ?

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Our elites come from Germany? JP Morgan started in London. Actually, the Irish probably are the most prominent ethnic group. Bill Clinton was Irish.

harrytrader · Apr 17, 2003

I don't care about France and Europe. I know the comedy that France and Europe are playing to trick you ! European and French governments are as evil as Bush government : they defend the UNIFIED WORLD elites interests they are mocking all the people in all countries opposing people to one another whereas THEY are ONE ! Before taking any decision, before speaking a single word, they have already talked about the comedy of opposition they are going to play in front of the world. I know personnaly people in politics who tells me how they "need" to do so so that people think the people decide and not a few of the elites ! And it works seeing the results !

To tell you the truth I hate even more the European Mentality than the american mentality because american mentality has not yet been totally poisoned by the brainwashing of the elites thanks to the youth of America whose fathers escaped Europe's especially british persecution's. And if you could read the London's Times at the beginning of the Century you will hear the Central Bank of London declaring that they will not let America like that and that their government will be controlled by Money System by injecting debts how : by instauring the Central Bank and the Bonds System.

Quote from Trajan:

A post by HarryTrader, we are honored.

Harry, you have to be pretty excited by the boycott of Frnech goods, especially of wine. It looks like we'll be able to buy Bordeaux for a realistic price. I think the whole Chirac thing was a conspiracy to prokoe a boyvott so that the French could actually afford their best wines.
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Trajan · Apr 17, 2003

Quote from harrytrader:

I don't care about France and Europe. I know the comedy that France and Europe are playing to trick you ! European and French governments are as evil as Bush government : they defend the UNIFIED WORLD elites interests they are mocking all the people in all countries opposing people to one another whereas THEY are ONE ! Before taking any decision, before speaking a single word, they have already talked about the comedy of opposition they are going to play in front of the world. I know personnaly people in politics who tells me how they "need" to do so so that people think the people decide and not a few of the elites ! And it works seeing the results !

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So we agree?