Aug 4, 2003 4 min read

Many Americans have believed, above all because of the White House’s insinuations, that Saddam Hussein in one way or another was involved in the attacks against New York and Washington. With that there was a link to terrorism, internal security and Iraq. Without the events of Sept. 11 the war would have been much more difficult to justify. But now the mood is changing. It has become difficult to trust the president. Where are the weapons of mass destruction? How long are the troops staying? Why are Americans dying every day in Iraq?

No, it’s not like the Vietnam War. But the very experiences from that time, when secrets and lies played a central role, is to a great extent applicable to today’s situation. When the developments in Iraq become complicated, the political leadership is tempted to deny unpleasant facts. And soon they are on a slippery slope that leads to lies and crises.

We are not there yet. But George W. Bush should soonest, out of a self-preservation instinct, study a few of his predecessors’ colossal and tragic mistakes.

On the Middle East:

Last week, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas told U.S. President George W. Bush how he views the road map for peace in the Middle East. Now, it’s the turn of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The road map, as we know, is a multistage plan which, in the end, should result in a strong Palestinian state, security guarantees for Israel and peaceful coexistence. In order for the discussion to continue at all about the difficult questions of borders, Jerusalem and refugees, it is imperative that the month long cease-fire holds. Neither party has succeeded in convincing the other side of their good will.

The security fence which Israel is building around the West Bank has in the past few days again become a source of debate. It is being built to stop terrorists entering Israel on Israel’s conditions. Settlements which perhaps should be torn down are being safeguarded instead. The fence is hindering traffic between the West Bank and Israel that is necessary for peaceful cooperation to function. The fence exasperates the Palestinians in a difficult situation. It is both a concrete and symbolic obstruction to peace.

On pictures of Uday and Qusay Hussein:

Yet again, the United States has chosen to flout international convention. The Bush administration took the extraordinary step of publishing the gruesome photographs of Uday and Qusay Hussein’s corpses. The declared aim was to convince the Iraqi population that Saddam Hussein’s heirs were dead, and sap the will of resistance groups fighting a guerrilla war against U.S. troops. They have failed and the result is, at best, a military, intelligence and PR botched job. At worst, it shows the U.S. disdain for human rights and the enemy dead.

On Kofi Annan:

The United Nations secretary-general, Kofi Annan, was heavily involved in two of the organization’s most catastrophic failures: Rwanda and Srebrenica. He does not want to preside over another failure of intervention by the international community and yet the U.N. response to the disastrous civil war in Liberia has been slow and muted.

The Security Council has yet to meet to discuss a mandate for Liberia and none is planned for the next few days. It is a sign of U.N. weakness in the aftermath of the struggles over Iraq that the focus of calls for intervention has been the U.S. rather than the U.N. …

Liberia is a sad reminder of the urgent need for the U.N. to overhaul its peacekeeping operations. Mr. Annan, who at present has to scour the world, often unsuccessfully, for soldiers, desperately wants reform. He needs a pool of well-trained soldiers to mount multilateral interventions. Such a reform was proposed by a U.N. study two years ago, but Mr. Annan failed to persuade the Security Council to implement it.

The international community is unwilling to supply either money or soldiers. Until it does, there will be messy, unsatisfactory compromises, as in the intervention force being prepared for Liberia, with the U.S. sitting offshore, without a U.N. mandate.