Euroblogger

NYT editorial today. A must read.

The Failure to Find Iraqi Weapons
his page did not support the war in Iraq, but it never quarreled with one of its basic premises. Like President Bush, we believed that Saddam Hussein was hiding potentially large quantities of chemical and biological weapons and aggressively pursuing nuclear arms. Like the president, we thought those weapons posed a grave danger to the United States and the rest of the world. Now it appears that premise was wrong. We cannot in hindsight blame the administration for its original conclusions. They were based on the best intelligence available, which had led the Clinton administration before it and the governments of allied nations to reach the same conclusion. But even the best intelligence can turn out to be mistaken, and the likelihood that this was the case in Iraq shows why pre-emptive war, the Bush administration's strategy since 9/11, is so ill conceived as a foundation for security policy. If intelligence and risk assessment are sketchy — and when are they not? — using them as the basis for pre-emptive war poses enormous dangers.

A draft of an interim report by David Kay, the American leading the hunt for banned arms in Iraq, says the team has not found any such weapons after nearly four months of intensively searching and interviewing top Iraqi scientists. There is some evidence of chemicals and equipment that could have been put to illicit use. But, to the chagrin of Mr. Bush's top lieutenants, there is nothing more.

It remains remotely possible, of course, that something will be found. But Mr. Kay's draft suggests that the weapons are simply not there. Why Mr. Hussein did not prove that when the United Nations demanded an explanation remains a puzzle. His failure to come clean strengthened the conviction that he had a great deal to hide. His history as a vicious tyrant who had used chemical weapons in war and against his own people lent credence to the fear that he could not be trusted with whatever he was holding and would pose a significant threat.

Before the war, we objected not to the stated goal of disarming Iraq but to the fact that the United States was waging war essentially alone, in defiance of many important allies. We favored using international inspectors to keep Iraq's destructive programs in check while diplomats forged a United Nations effort to force Mr. Hussein to yield his weapons.

The policy of pre-emption that Mr. Bush pursued instead junked an approach that had served this country and the world well for half a century. That policy, simply stated, was that the United States would respond quickly to aggression but would not be the first to attack.

The world changed on Sept. 11, 2001. Terrorist groups like Al Qaeda are dedicated to inflicting maximum harm on this country. Since such groups rely on suicide bombers and are therefore immune to threats of retaliation, the United States is right to attack a terrorist group first in some circumstances. It was certainly justified in its war in Afghanistan, which had become little more than a government-sponsored training camp for Al Qaeda. It is quite another thing, however, to launch a pre-emptive military campaign against a nation that the United States suspects poses a threat.

Americans and others in the world are glad that Mr. Hussein has been removed from power. If Iraq can be turned into a freer and happier country in coming years, it could become a focal point for the evolution of a more peaceful and democratic Middle East. But it was the fear of weapons of mass destruction placed in the hands of enemy terrorists that made doing something about Iraq seem urgent. If it had seemed unlikely that Mr. Hussein had them, we doubt that Congress or the American people would have endorsed the war.

This is clearly an uncomfortable question for the Bush administration. Yesterday, Secretary of State Colin Powell met with Times editors. Asked whether Americans would have supported this war if weapons of mass destruction had not been at issue, Mr. Powell said the question was too hypothetical to answer. Asked if he, personally, would have supported it, he smiled, thrust his hand out and said, "It was good to meet you."

In Italian from the daily Corriere della Sera:

I soldi delle moschee per i fanatici di Allah

di MAGDI ALLAM


MILANO - Non di sola fede vivono i fanatici di Allah. Se il fondamentalismo religioso e il messianismo ideologico plasmano la loro personalità, la linfa vitale che li anima ha un nome assai più prosaico: il denaro. Il familiarissimo dio denaro. I santissimi maledettissimi soldi senza cui non potrebbero affermare il proprio potere. Dispensando favori, plagiando, corrompendo, ricattando, minacciando, uccidendo. E i fanatici di Allah che hanno eletto la culla della cattolicità a propria roccaforte non fanno eccezione. Diverse moschee d’Italia sono double face . La facciata è impeccabile. L’attività in regola. I conti tornano. Ma è nel retrobottega che si fanno i giochi sporchi. Da lì i soldi della zakat , l’elemosina islamica, vanno a finire in Iraq, Palestina, Algeria e Cecenia. Ed è l’insospettabile circuito di enti finanziari, associazioni caritatevoli, agenzie di comodo che regolarizzano i clandestini, macellerie halal , esercizi commerciali, librerie, call center e money transfert che assicurano un fiume di denaro fresco alla jihad, la guerra santa islamica. Dunque: cherchez l’argent . Conoscere il diritto e il rovescio della complessa e torbida realtà dei soldi che ruotano attorno alle moschee del nostro Paese è necessario per una corretta comprensione della portata della minaccia. Ma anche per non generalizzare. Soprattutto per favorire un futuro in cui le moschee d’Italia siano esclusivamente dei luoghi di culto. Trasparenti. Compatibili. Né più né meno.
Probabilmente il personaggio emblematico della realtà delle moschee double face è Abdelhamid Shaari. Il presidente dell’Istituto culturale islamico di viale Jenner a Milano è di origine libica con cittadinanza italiana. Si presenta come un distinto e pacato signore di mezz’età. Da anni abbiamo instaurato un rapporto franco e cordiale. Consumando insieme un pranzo a base di pesce, Shaari conferma pragmatismo intellettuale, disponibilità umana e fiducia personale. Mi confida una svolta nella gestione della moschea più inquisita e sospetta d'Italia: «Ho deciso e ho convinto il direttivo dell’Istituto a trasformarci in una onlus. D’ora in poi sarà tutto trasparente e registrato, dal bilancio all’attività. Daremo tutte le garanzie". E mi anticipa i numeri. Per la prima volta si hanno finalmente i numeri del bilancio di una moschea. E quale moschea! Per la Cia l'Istituto di viale Jenner è la principale base di Al Qaeda in Italia.
Stiamo parlando di un bilancio annuo di 400 mila euro di entrate e altrettanti di uscite. Potrebbero essere molti o pochi. Sono meno dei circa 600 mila euro versati annualmente dall’Arabia Saudita alla Grande moschea di Roma, di cui la metà va alle spese del personale e l’altra metà alla gestione interna. Ma più che l’entità è da rilevare la strutturazione del bilancio dell’Istituto di viale Jenner. Dove la parte del leone la fa il business. L'87,5 per cento delle entrate e il 62,5 per cento delle uscite fanno riferimento alla compravendita di prodotti offerti all’interno della moschea: generi alimentari, pasti caldi, libri e audiovisivi islamici. La formula «moschea-bazar» è assai diffusa. Garantisce l'autofinanziamento e il reperimento dei fondi necessari per promuovere delle attività.
Questa è la facciata pulita. Ma il rovescio della medaglia ci svela una realtà contrapposta, inquietante. La Guardia di Finanza ha recentemente scoperto che l’Istituto di viale Jenner, in aggiunta a società di comodo (General service, Service Scarl, Nafissa service, Work service), è coinvolto in un traffico di regolarizzazione dei clandestini tramite il rilascio di falsi certificati di lavoro che sono il requisito per ottenere il permesso di soggiorno. Dietro questa attività emerge una struttura islamica integralista che raccoglie ingenti somme per autofinanziarsi. Il costo di una pratica di regolarizzazione va dai 2.500 ai 3.000 euro, a fronte di un costo effettivo di 700 euro. Le cifre raccolte sono sicuramente ragguardevoli. L'aspetto peculiare è che viene praticato un pagamento differenziato per i clandestini generici e per quelli che sono invece disposti a favorire la causa islamica. Questi ultimi pagano la metà. In questo modo la regolarizzazione illecita dei clandestini consente due risultati: il finanziamento delle attività terroristiche e il reclutamento di soggetti disposti a arruolarsi per la Guerra santa.
Ci sono le prove che i soldi della zakat e delle attività illecite gestite da alcune moschee italiane sono andate a finanziare il terrorismo islamico internazionale. Lo scorso settembre a bordo di una Peugeot 205 targata MI 3S3633 sono stati rivenuti 50 kg di monetine, per un totale di 4.500 euro. Erano i soldi della zakat raccolti nella moschea El Nur di via Massarenti a Bologna, gestita dall'Ucoii (Unione delle comunità e delle organizzazioni islamiche in Italia). I soldi erano di pertinenza dell’imam della moschea, l'egiziano Nabil Bayoumi. I «postini» erano dei tunisini legati all’imam della moschea di viale Jenner, l'egiziano Abu Imad. La destinazione finale del denaro era il finanziamento di un’operazione terroristica all’estero ribattezzata con il nome in codice «Partita di calcio».
Più recentemente, la scorsa primavera, è stato individuato un flusso di denaro che dalla Germania arrivava all’imam della moschea di Cremona, Trabelsi Mourad, esponente del Fronte combattente tunisino. Non erano cifre importanti, tra i 1.500 e i 3.000 euro, ma erano ripetute. Trabelsi, tramite emissari o il sistema del money transfert rigirava il denaro al connazionale Drissi Noureddine, detto Abu Ali, il bibliotecario della moschea di Cremona trasformatosi in gestore del campo di Ansar al Islam, un gruppo terroristico legato a Al Qaeda, nel Kurdistan iracheno.
Nel caos che regna sul piano della rappresentanza religiosa e delle fonti di finanziamento delle moschee in Italia, si fanno strada i personaggi più spregiudicati. Veri e propri boss che gestiscono delle mafie religiose e economiche. Bouriqui Bouchta, il sedicente «imam di Torino», gestisce tre moschee e due macellerie. Noureddin Chemaoui, sedicente «presidente della Comunità islamica di Roma e del Lazio», gestisce due moschee, una macelleria e un’agenzia di regolarizzazione degli immigrati. Esiste un’intensa attività criminosa legata al circuito delle macellerie islamiche.
Un altro filone di finanziamento è la produzione di documenti falsi. E’ Napoli la cartiera del terrorismo islamico che da un lato assicura degli utili a fini commerciali e dall’altro, consente l’attività clandestina delle cellule islamiche. Nella fase di produzione è coinvolta la camorra, mentre la fase di commercializzazione è di competenza degli islamici algerini del Gia (Gruppo islamico armato) e del Gspc (Gruppo salafita per la predicazione e il combattimento).
Non contano tanto i numeri. La valutazione effettiva del valore dei finanziamenti all’attività terroristica non va fatta sulla base del valore assoluto del denaro circolante, che può apparire modesto. Ciò che invece conta è il valore reale del denaro in considerazione del tenore di vita dei Paesi a cui è destinato. Ad esempio, in una intercettazione telefonica dal Kurdistan, il tunisino Abu Ali specifica: «Qui 1.500 euro ci bastano per un mese». In Italia 1.500 euro sarebbero sufficienti a coprire le spese di una sola persona, ma in Iraq consentono di provvedere alle necessità di decine di mujahiddin all’interno di un campo di guerriglia. Soprattutto è stata accertata la presenza di un sistema finalizzato al finanziamento del terrorismo che ruota attorno a talune moschee d’Italia. Questa è la grande novità. Ed è la vera sfida a chi è interessato a estirpare questa piaga e a assicurare la piena compatibilità dell’islam italiano con le nostre leggi e i nostri valori.

Magdi Allam

just in case you are wondering who David Brooks is...

Among the Bourgeoisophobes
Why the Europeans and Arabs, each in their own way, hate America and Israel.
by David Brooks
04/15/2002, Volume 007, Issue 30


AROUND 1830, a group of French artists and intellectuals looked around and noticed that people who were their spiritual inferiors were running the world. Suddenly a large crowd of merchants, managers, and traders were making lots of money, living in the big houses, and holding the key posts. They had none of the high style of the aristocracy, or even the earthy integrity of the peasants. Instead, they were gross. They were vulgar materialists, shallow conformists, and self-absorbed philistines, who half the time failed even to acknowledge their moral and spiritual inferiority to the artists and intellectuals. What's more, it was their very mediocrity that accounted for their success. Through some screw-up in the great scheme of the universe, their narrow-minded greed had brought them vast wealth, unstoppable power, and growing social prestige.

Naturally, the artists and intellectuals were outraged. Hatred of the bourgeoisie became the official emotion of the French intelligentsia. Stendhal said traders and merchants made him want to "weep and vomit at the same time." Flaubert thought they were "plodding and avaricious." Hatred of the bourgeoisie, he wrote, "is the beginning of all virtue." He signed his letters "Bourgeoisophobus" to show how much he despised "stupid grocers and their ilk."

Of all the great creeds of the 19th century, pretty much the only one still thriving is this one, bourgeoisophobia. Marxism is dead. Freudianism is dead. Social Darwinism is dead, along with all those theories about racial purity that grew up around it. But the emotions and reactions that Flaubert, Stendhal, and all the others articulated in the 1830s are still with us, bigger than ever. In fact, bourgeoisophobia, which has flowered variously and spread to places as diverse as Baghdad, Ramallah, and Beijing, is the major reactionary creed of our age.

This is because today, in much of the world's eyes, two peoples--the Americans and the Jews--have emerged as the great exemplars of undeserved success. Americans and Israelis, in this view, are the money-mad molochs of the earth, the vulgarizers of morals, corrupters of culture, and proselytizers of idolatrous values. These two nations, it is said, practice conquest capitalism, overrunning poorer nations and exploiting weaker neighbors in their endless desire for more and more. These two peoples, the Americans and the Jews, in the view of the bourgeoisophobes, thrive precisely because they are spiritually stunted. It is their obliviousness to the holy things in life, their feverish energy, their injustice, their shallow pursuit of power and gain, that allow them to build fortunes, construct weapons, and play the role of hyperpower.

And so just as the French intellectuals of the 1830s rose up to despise the traders and bankers, certain people today rise up to shock, humiliate, and dream of destroying America and Israel. Today's bourgeoisophobes burn with the same sense of unjust inferiority. They experience the same humiliation because there is nothing they can do to thwart the growing might of their enemies. They rage and rage. Only today's bourgeoisophobes are not just artists and intellectuals. They are as likely to be terrorists and suicide bombers. They teach in madrassas, where they are careful not to instruct their students in the sort of practical knowledge that dominates bourgeois schools. They are Muslim clerics who incite hatred and violence. They are erudite Europeans who burn with humiliation because they know, deep down, that both America and Israel possess a vitality and heroism that their nations once had but no longer do.

Today the battle lines are forming. The dispute over Palestine, which was once a local conflict about land, has been transformed into a great cultural showdown. The vast array of bourgeoisophobes--Yasser Arafat's guerrilla socialists, Hamas's Islamic fundamentalists, Jose Bove's anti-globalist leftists, America's anti-colonial multiculturalists, and the BBC's Oxbridge mediacrats--focus their diverse rages and resentments on this one conflict.

The bourgeoisophobes have no politburo. There is no bourgeoisophobe central command. They have no plausible strategy for victory. They have only their nihilistic rage, their envy mixed with snobbery, their snide remarks, their newspaper distortions, their conspiracy theories, their suicide bombs and terror attacks--and above all, a burning sense that the rising, vibrant, and powerful peoples of America and Israel must be humiliated and brought low.



BOURGEOISOPHOBIA is really a hatred of success. It is a hatred held by people who feel they are spiritually superior but who find themselves economically, politically, and socially outranked. They conclude that the world is diseased, that it rewards the wrong values, the wrong people, and the wrong abilities. They become cynical if they are soft inside, violent if they are hard. In the bourgeoisophobe's mind, the people and nations that do succeed are not just slightly vulgar, not just over-compensated, not just undeservedly lucky. They are monsters, non-human beasts who, in extreme cases, can be blamelessly killed. This Manichaean divide between the successful, who are hideous, and the bourgeoisophobes, who are spiritually pristine, was established early in the emergence of the creed. The early 19th-century German poet Holderlin couldn't just ignore the merchant bourgeoisie; he had to declare the middle classes "deeply incapable of every divine emotion." In other words, scarcely human.

Holderlin's countryman Werner Sombart later wrote a quintessential bourgeoisophobe text called "Traders and Heroes," in which he argued that there are two basic human types: "The trader approaches life with the question, what can you give me? . . . The hero approaches life with the question what can I give you?" The trader, then, is the selfish capitalist who lives a meager, artificial life amidst "pocket-watches, newspapers, umbrellas, books, sewage disposal, politics." The hero is the total man, who is selfless, vital, spiritual, and free. An honest person might ascribe another's success to a superior work ethic, self-discipline, or luck--just being in the right place at the right time and possessing the right skills. A normal person might look at a rich and powerful country and try to locate the source of its vitality, to measure its human and natural resources, its freedom, its institutions and social norms. But for the bourgeoisophobe, other people's success is never legitimate or deserved. To him, success comes to those who worship the golden calf, the idol, the Satanic corrupter, gold.

When bourgeoisophobes describe their enemies, they almost always portray them as money-mad, as crazed commercialists. And this vulgar materialism, in their view, has not only corrupted the soul of the bourgeoisie, but through them threatens to debase civilization itself and the whole world. It threatens, in the words of the supreme bourgeoisophobe, Karl Marx, to take all that is holy and make it profane.

Some of the more pessimistic bourgeoisophobes come to believe that the worst is already at hand. "Our poor country lies in Roman decadence," the French conservative poet Arthur de Gobineau lamented in 1840. "We are without fiber or moral energy. I no longer believe in anything. . . . MONEY HAS KILLED EVERYTHING." (A great place to read bourgeoisophobe writing is Arthur Herman's "The Idea of Decline in Western History." Bourgeoisophobia is not Herman's theme, but his book does such a magnificent job of surveying two centuries of pessimistic thought that most of the key bourgeoisophobes are quoted.)

And once the bourgeoisophobes had experienced the basic spasm of reaction, they soon settled on the Americans and Jews as two of the chief objects of their ire. Because, as Henry Steele Commager once noted, no country in the world ever succeeded like America, and everybody knew it. And no people in the European experience ever achieved such sustained success as the Jews.

So the Jews were quickly established in the bourgeoisophobe imagination as the ultimate commercial people. They were the bankers, the traders, the soulless and sharp dealmakers who crawled through the cellars of honest and noble cultures and infected them with their habits and practices. The 19th-century Teutonic philosopher Houston Chamberlain said of the Jews that "their existence is a crime against the holy laws of life." The Jewish religion, he said, is "rigid," "scanty," and "sterile."

The American bourgeoisophobe family, the Adamses, contained more than its share of anti-Semites. Brooks Adams lamented that "England is as much governed by the Jews of Berlin, Paris and New York as the native growth." Adams compared the Jews to a vast syndicate and declared simply, "They control the world." Henry Adams protested against the interlocked power of "Wall Street, State Street and Jerusalem." Later, the English historian Arnold Toynbee argued that the Jews, with their "consummate virtuosity in commerce and finance," had infected Western civilization with a crass materialism. Through their arrogance and viciousness, they were responsible for capitalism, godless communism, and the Holocaust, and so had contributed to Europe's decline.

It's actually amazing how early America, too, was stereotyped as a money-grubbing commercial land and Americans a money-grubbing people. Francois La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, who traveled in the United States in the 1790s, declared, "The desire for riches is their ruling passion." In 1805, a British visitor observed, "All men there make [money] their pursuit." "Gain! Gain! Gain! Gain! Gain!" is how the English philosopher Morris Birbeck summarized the American spirit a few years later. In 1823 William Faux wrote that "two selfish gods, pleasure and gain, enslave the Americans." Fourteen years after that, the disillusioned Russian writer Mikhail Pogodin lamented, "America, on which our contemporaries have pinned their hopes for a time, has meanwhile clearly revealed the vices of her illegitimate birth. She is not a state, but rather a trading company."

Each wave of foreign observers reinforced the prejudice. Charles Dickens described a country of uncouth vulgarians frantically chasing, as he first put it, "the almighty dollar." Oswald Spengler worried that Germany would devolve into "soulless America," with its worship of "technical skill, money and an eye for facts." Matthew Arnold worried that global forces would Americanize England. "They will rule [Britain] by their energy but they will deteriorate it by their low ideas and want of culture." By 1904, people around the world were worrying about American cultural hegemony. In that year the German writer Paul Dehns wrote an influential essay called "The Americanization of the World." "What is Americanization?" Dehns asked. "Americanization in its widest sense, including the societal and political, means the uninterrupted, exclusive, and relentless striving after gain, riches and influence."

In the 20th century the Americans' aggressive commercialism was symbolized by the unstoppable spread of jeans, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Disney, and Microsoft. America, in the bourgeoisophobes' eyes, is the land of Bart Simpson, boy bands, boob jobs, and "Baywatch." The land of money and guns. Of insincere smiles and love handles. So by the time Osama bin Laden came along, hatred of America was well rehearsed, a finished product just waiting for him to pick it up. In 1998 bin Laden declared war on "the crusader-Jewish alliance, led by the United States and Israel." He added, "Since I was a boy I have been at war with and harboring hatred towards the Americans." He was only echoing Toynbee, who 30 years earlier said, "The United States and Israel must be today the two most dangerous of the 125 sovereign states among which the land surface of this planet is at present partitioned."



FOR THE bourgeoisophobe, then, the question becomes, how does one confront this menace? And on this, the bourgeoisophobes split into two schools. One, which might be called the brutalist school, seeks to reclaim the raw, masculine vitality that still lies buried at the virile heart of human nature. The other, which might be called the ethereal school, holds that a creative minority can rise above prosaic bourgeois life into a realm of contemplation, feeling, art, sensibility, and spiritual grace.

The brutalist school started in Germany, more or less with Nietzsche. In "Thus Spake Zarathustra," Nietzsche has a character declare that he is turning his back on the whole world of degenerate "flea-beetles," the ones who spend their lives "higgling and haggling for power with the rabble." Salvation instead is found in the will to power. The Ubermensch possesses force of will. He can thus be "a mighty . . . hammer" who will smash, "break and remove degenerate and decaying races to make way for a new order of life."

The brutalists urged sons--"the explosive ones"--to revolt against their fathers. They romanticized insanity as a rebellion against convention. They looked back nostalgically to the crude, savage, and proud men of Homeric legend, Germanic history, and Norse myth. They looked for another such hero to emerge today, a virile warrior who would demolish the stale encrustations of an overcivilized world and revive the raw energy of the species. "We do not need ideologues anymore," Oswald Spengler argued, "we need hardness, we need fearless skepticism, we need a class of socialist master men." This, of course, was the path that led to Mussolini, Hitler, Saddam Hussein, and bin Laden.

Meanwhile, the ethereal bourgeoisophobes were emerging in Paris and later London and the United States. They argued that people in decaying cultures should not try to reclaim their former economic and military power. It was wiser to accept the decline of their worldly power and embrace the contemplative virtues. Toynbee acknowledged that Europe's virile, self-assertive days were over. Europeans would have to choose between spending their money on comfortable welfare states and spending it on militaristic "war-making states." They could not afford both. He predicted (in 1926) that they would choose welfare states--and be forced to accept being "dwarfed by the overseas world which [Europe] herself had called into existence."

The Europeans should therefore turn inward. As Arthur Herman notes, the human ideal Toynbee described looks a lot like Toynbee himself: "diffident, sensitive, religious in a contemplative and otherworldly sense, a man who shuns the world of violence and barbarism to pursue the 'etherealization' of himself and society." Toynbee denounced patriotism, commercial striving, and the martial spirit. Artists and intellectuals, the "creative minority," should lead until "the majority is drilled into following the minority's lead mechanically."

Though Toynbee despised the United States, his books sold well here. His lecture tours were lucrative, and his picture was on the cover of Time magazine. When Hitler came along, Toynbee was an enthusiastic appeaser. He met Hitler in 1936 and came away deeply impressed (the two men hated some of the same things). He told his countrymen that Hitler sincerely desired peace. For, just as the brutalist school of bourgeoisophobia led to Hitler and Saddam, the ethereal school led to Neville Chamberlain and some of the European reaction to George Bush's Axis of Evil.



SINCE SEPTEMBER 11, there has been a great deal of analysis of the roots of Muslim rage. But to anybody familiar with the history of bourgeoisophobia, it is striking how comfortably Muslim rage meshes with traditional rage against meritocratic capitalism. The Islamist fanatic and the bourgeoisophobe hate the same things. They use the same words, they utter the same protests. In an essay in the New York Review of Books called "Occidentalism," Avishai Margalit and Ian Buruma listed the traits that enrage al Qaeda and other Third World anti-Americans and anti-Westerners. First, they hate the city. Cities stand for commerce, mixed populations, artistic freedom, and sexual license. Second, they hate the mass media: advertising, television, pop music, and videos. Third, they hate science and technology--the progress of technical reason, mechanical efficiency, and material know-how. Fourth, they hate prudence, the desire to live safely rather than court death and heroically flirt with violence. Fifth, they hate liberty, the freedom extended even to mediocre people. Sixth, they despise the emancipation of women. As Margalit and Buruma note, "Female emancipation leads to bourgeois decadence." Women are supposed to stay home and breed heroic men. When women go out into the world, they deprive men of their manhood and weaken their virility.

If you put these six traits together, you have pretty much the pillars of meritocratic capitalist society, practiced most assertively in countries like America and Israel. Contemporary Muslim rage is further inflamed by two additional passions. One is a sense of sexual shame. A rite of passage for any bourgeoisophobe of this type is the youthful trip to America or to the West, where the writer is nearly seduced by the vulgar hedonism of capitalist life, but heroically spurns it. Sayyid Qutb, who is one of the intellectual heroes of the Islamic extremists, toured America between 1948 and 1950. He found a world of jazz, football, movies, cars, and people obsessed with lawn maintenance. It was a land, he wrote, "hollow and full of contradictions, defects and evils." At one point Qutb found himself at a church social. The disc jockey put on "Baby, It's Cold Outside." As Qutb wrote, "The dancing intensified. . . . The hall swarmed with legs. . . . Arms circled arms, lips met lips, chests met chests, and the atmosphere was full of love." This was at a church social. You can imagine how the September 11 al Qaeda hijackers must have felt during the visit they made to a Florida strip club shortly before going off to their purifying martyrdom.

The second inflaming passion is humiliation--humiliation caused by the fact that in the 1960s and 1970s, many Arab and Muslim nations tried to join this bourgeois world. They tried to modernize, and they failed. Some Arab countries continue to pursue the low and dirty modernizing path, continue to ape the sordid commercialists and even to accept the presence of American troops on Arabian soil. And this drives the hard-core Islamic bourgeoisophobes to even higher states of rage. As bin Laden himself notably put it, protesting the presence of American troops on Saudi land: "By God, Muslim women refuse to be defended by these American and Jewish prostitutes." The Islamist response to humiliation has been worship of the Muslim man of force. Islamist extremists romanticize the brutal warrior, just as the German bourgeoisophobes did, only the Islamists wear robes and clutch Korans. Like European and Japanese brutalists before them, the Islamists celebrate violence and build a cult of suicide and death. "The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death," declared al Qaeda's Mualana Inyadullah after September11. Jews "love life more than any other people, and they prefer not to die," declared Hamas official Ismail Haniya on March 28 amidst a rash of suicide bombings.

A lot of my experience and a lot of my thoughts are to be found here:

Caught in the Iraqi Dramatics
By DAVID BROOKS


During the first half of the 90's, I spent some time on the "Whither NATO?" circuit. I'd sit in stately European palaces with diplomats, parliamentarians and multilateral men who used the word "modality" a lot, and we'd discuss the post-cold-war international order.

There were disquisitions on multipolarity, subsidiarity and post-nation-state sovereignty. I recall a long debate on whether the post-cold-war United States would face east or west, as if we were phototropic.

The people at these conferences tended to be paranoiaphiliacs. They believed there was a secret conspiracy running the world, but they were in favor of it because they thought they were it.

But even as we were ratiocinating in those palaces, the Russians were tossing out Gorbachev, the Ukrainians were breaking away from Russia and the Serbs were massacring their neighbors.

Far from mastering events, the poor souls who attended summits found history moving in unfathomable directions. Their careful negotiations over a new global architecture often had nothing to do with reality. The economic-reform plans they proposed for Russia had nothing to do with a country that was being taken over by mafioso. I recall the dispiriting moment — at a stately manor in Oxfordshire, I believe — when I realized I didn't really believe in foreign policy. Most problems are domestic policy to the people who matter most.

All of this comes to mind as President Bush goes to the U.N. to discuss a resolution on the reconstruction of Iraq. The U.S. and the Iraqis face a series of tortuous problems together: how to quickly strengthen the Iraqi military, but not in a way that allows it to dwarf Iraqi civilian rule; how to respect the Shiite clergy without allowing clerical domination of education and social policy; how to open the nation up for foreign investment, but not in a way that the locals feel their country is being plundered. Nation-building is too grand a phrase for much of the work that is being done; it's neighborhood-building in all its granular specificity.

But the talk around the Security Council is 8,000 miles above all that. There are discussions about which flow chart the U.S. administrator Paul Bremer should fit into. There are lofty and vapid formulations about moving from the "logic of occupation" to the "logic of sovereignty." This weekend, Dominique de Villepin published an essay in an Austrian paper in which he (of course!) called for an international conference to supervise the administration of Iraq.

The more you look at the Security Council negotiations, the more they resemble one of those horrible divorces in which the children get ignored because the parents are caught up in the psychodrama of each other's perfidies. You've got the usual Franco-American dramatics. You've got the Germans trying to make everyone like them. Meanwhile, the actual needs of actual Iraqis never seem to come in for much discussion.

It's time to acknowledge that the reconstruction of Iraq is too important to be left to the foreign policy types, who are trained to think too abstractly to grapple with the problems that matter.

The good things that are happening in Iraq are taking place far below the level of grand strategy. On Sunday, 18 bankers and civil servants from 11 central and Eastern European countries came to Iraq to describe the lessons they had learned in moving from tyranny to democracy. Every day, U.N. humanitarian workers, far removed from the marble halls of the Security Council, risk their lives to feed and clothe Iraqis. Every day, U.S. military officers spend millions of dollars building schools and tackling neighborhood issues. That's the work that gives Iraqis hope. Seventy percent of Iraqis expect their lives to improve over the next five years, and two-thirds want coalition forces to stay for at least a year, according to a recent Zogby poll.

Over the long term, we need to create an apolitical reservist force, made up of of businesspeople, administrators and police officers who have concrete experience in moving societies from dictatorship to democracy. In the meantime, we need to focus on serving the Iraqis first, second and last. We don't need to get caught up in a distracting round of lofty debates among the world's Walter Mitty Metternichs, who treat the Iraqi people as pawns in their great game-power struggles.

A view from one of our main supporter's capital:
U.S. Bid for UN Support Means End of "Best Political Climate" for Poland By Radek Sikorski


Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw)
Publication Date: September 13, 2003

The first shots fired in Iraq at our soldiers coincided in time with the George W. Bush Administration's decision to take a new draft resolution to the United Nations. This thereby brings to an end the period of the best political climate for such countries as Poland, which were bold enough to support United States without waiting for a UN resolution, and there is nothing to be heard about us particularly standing to gain from this. Everything indicates that we are on the best way to scoring another unutilized victory.

There is already talk in Washington that Russia will have to be paid for its support of a new resolution, through recognition of the contracts the country signed with the Saddam regime, and also through the payment of a portion of Russian debts. France and Germany make no secret of the fact that their price will be involvement in the reconstruction of the country. One doesn't have to be overly astute to understand what this means. It is interesting insofar as both countries are already so militarily engaged in Afghanistan and Africa that it will be difficult for them to send a contingent to Iraq bigger than the Polish one, even if their leaders decide to take a radical turn. They will attempt to gain influence over a key region of the world and multi-billion-dollar concessions at the expense of having their ambassadors raise their hands in New York. France and Germany have the advantage that their votes will enable the U.S. to benefit from the assistance of such countries as India and Pakistan, which make sending their personnel to Iraq specifically contingent upon a UN decision. If Paris or Berlin manage to do so, this will be no small diplomatic success. What does Polish diplomacy look like against this backdrop? Several months ago, when foreign policy seemed to be perhaps the only field in which the Leszek Miller government behaved decently, I publicly supported its decisions on the issue of Iraq. I argued that it was a good idea to invest in the Polish-U.S. alliance. And this was not only about creating a sense of mutuality with Washington with regards to Polish security needs. I argued that if we achieve success in the Iraqi operation, Poland's bargaining position would improve within the EU itself. Instead of being treated as a poor cousin, one that is accepted at family celebrations out of a sense of pity, we could become a player that cannot be ignored. Here we achieved a certain progress, although it will prove to be a Pyrrhic victory if France and Germany, in order to punish Poland and Spain for their pro-Americanism, manage to revise the decisionmaking principles in the EU set forth by the Treaty of Nice.

I also indicated that in exchange for support of the U.S. position at the moment when the United States needed it most, just before starting to deal with Saddam Husayn, countries like Bulgaria, Turkey, and Israel received tangible aid in the form of the payment of Iraqi debts and economic support. But I haven't heard, on the other hand, about Poland gaining anything more than what was allocated in the Pentagon budget for assisting with transport and equipping the forces to support the U.S. Army.

I thought that perhaps behind-the-scenes agreements had been made, the results of which the government would dazzle public opinion with at the appropriate moment. But successive convenient moments have passed--President Bush's visit to Krakow, Poland's takeover of command over the international division--but there is nothing to be heard about serious decisions. A bit more, and one will have to come to the conclusion that the government sent the Polish Armed Forces on their greatest operation abroad since the time of the disgraceful invasion of Czechoslovakia 1968 in exchange for a good word. If so, this is not only a reprehensible failure of Polish diplomacy, it also does irreparable harm to Polish-U.S. relations. I hasten to explain why.

In its relations with United States, Poland is interested in three main issues. Firstly, we should strive to conclude a bilateral, Polish-U.S. military agreement after the model of those that the United Kingdom, Spain, or Germany have. Such agreements normalize and regulate in detail the practical side of the alliance between these countries.

It lies in our interest to ensure that future U.S. bases on the territory of new NATO members will not just be arms storehouses, but rather centers of true military cooperation, and that their construction and outfitting will be contracted to our companies, and that Poland will retain the right of veto with respect to the way in which the forces stationed at them can be utilized. It should be important to the United States for the agreement to allocate financing for the Polish program to build expedition forces. If the Polish Armed Forces are supposed to be a valuable ally in the field, they have to have equipment and training compatible with the U.S. Armed Forces, and it is clear that we do not need to build armed forces of this sort for our own needs.

It does not need to be spoken of loudly, but it is a fact that a bilateral agreement would also be an additional warranty of our security in the event that the tendons of the North Atlantic alliance should begin to loosen.

Secondly, it would be an unacceptable situation if countries that sabotaged the sanctions imposed upon Saddam's regime by the UN for entire years, that sold him arms and strategic raw materials, and opposed his being removed by force up to the last minute, should now obtain more advantageous political and commercial conditions in Iraq than the states that supported the Iraqi nation and the United States in its confrontation with the dictator. The United States are under the huge pressure of the situation in Iraq and of world and domestic public opinion, which is demanding the greater engagement of international forces in normalizing the situation.

U.S. leaders, on the other hand, undoubtedly know that we in the countries of the anti-Saddam coalition remember whether it is worth being a friend to the United States in time of need, or whether it is more advantageous to kick it while it is down and to wait until it agrees to our demands. And let's not let ourselves be deceived that the entire effort should rest with the Polish companies striving for contracts. They have solid services to offer, as well as references from many years of activities in Arab countries. But the decisions about who will spend the tens of billions of dollars the White House asked Congress for to rebuild Iraq, and how they will be spent, will be made by the United States.

Thirdly, the time has come to settle the issue of visas for Poland.

This issue is not new, and not easy in the present climate of tightened control over U.S. borders. On the other hand, in light of the sympathy that Poland has enjoyed in Washington since the time the appearance of Solidarity, if there is no progress on the issue of visas now, another opportunity may not come soon. Poles have a right to ask why, if Poland is such a good ally, they have to pay $ 100 for the privilege of submitting an application for a U.S. visa, when the French and the Germans travel to the states freely.

Indicative this context is parliamentary deputy Roman Giertych's appeal that visas be introduced for U.S. citizens. Generally the head of the Sejm Commission for Ties with Poles Abroad acts reassuringly with regards to plans to introduce reciprocity in visa relations between Poland and the United States, realizing, after all, that many of our compatriots in the United States only hold U.S. passports, and the introduction of visas would complicate their visiting the country. The U.S. authorities should appreciate the level of Polish society's irritation on this issue, seeing as even the head of this commission is proposing that sanctions be introduced.

Besides, as an individual who supervised the work of the Foreign Affairs Ministry's consular department for three and a half years, I believe that the introduction of visas for U.S. citizens is a move that we should keep in reserve. It would suffice if, after the model of Turkey, we introduced a border fee equal to the amount of the fee for applying for the U.S. visa. This would signal our dissatisfaction, and would put a stop to our country's subsidizing of the U.S. borders service. Veterans, those decorated with orders, and members of Polish emigre organizations should be exempt from the fees. I once conducted interministerial consultations on this issue, and a ready plan for the necessary organizational action is to be found in the Foreign Affairs Ministry archives.

The government was mistaken if it thought that by agreeing without bargaining, it would score points in Washington. In international relations, just like in interpersonal relations, what comes too easily is not appreciated. Turkey has for years been considered a particular ally of the United States, but despite this, when it came down to the decision to allow a U.S. division to enter Iraq across its territory, Turkey demanded not only political guarantees in northern Iraq, but also financial aid to the amount of $ 90 billion. After bargaining it secured $ 24 billion, but it did not receive these funds only because the deputies of the Turkish parliament decided that the proposal was insufficient, and the decision to allow the forces in was a few votes short of being passed. Against this backdrop, one can only hang one's head at the passiveness of the leaders of our Foreign Affairs Ministry.

The ongoing costs of the U.S. occupation of Iraq come to $ 3.9 billion per month. Dividing this by 130,000 U.S. soldiers, this means an average of $ 30,000 per soldier per month. This, in turn, means that our contingent of 2,500 soldiers means a savings in the order of $ 900 million per year for the U.S. budget. It would be a good idea for the Polish defense minister and foreign affairs minister to demand at least a fraction of the sum.

It is possible to escape in a forward direction. The United States requires additional patrol and police forces in Iraq. Given the proper financing, we should be capable of sending a few thousand additional soldiers and police officers. Without money, on the other hand, the Polish Armed Forces could have trouble preparing the brigade that will have to relieve the present contingent. Those who do not anticipate this, and do not act in time, reduce the chances for the success of the Iraqi operation, and thereby harm the interests of the United States and Polish-U.S. relations.

As the latest polls of public opinion in Europe show, the image of the United States in general, and that of President Bush in particular, are significantly better in Poland that in Europe. We have reasons for this. It was thanks to the United States that Poland was resurrected after WWI. It was President Ronald Reagan who stood up to Communism and helped us regain our independence. It was thanks to the United States that Germany recognized our western border and paid out compensation to the slave laborers of the Third Reich. It was thanks to the United States that we joined NATO, despite Russia's objection.

Nevertheless, in a democratic country--such as ours, thanks, among other things, to U.S. support--foreign policy depends in large part on the position of public opinion. I have the impression that support for the government's policy in Iraq is shallow, and could evaporate quickly once we suffer the first--I fear inevitable--victims. Then Polish public opinion will not be satisfied with platitudes about international solidarity and about bringing peace. It will want to hear about what concrete benefits the Polish Armed Forces are gaining for us. If opinions are then promoted that complicate or prevent our continuation of the Iraqi mission, the guilt will lie with those who did not prepare a convincing response in time.

Radek Sikorski is a resident fellow at AEI.

Please free them of this man!

May the poor people of the West Bank and Gaza find themselves in a position to rid themselves of this idiot! Now that he thinks he's back in charge, he candidly tells us he can stop all attacks on Israel.... nobody had managed to convince me Sharon night have been right... .. Arafat has now done the job!

I thought I heard you say it had all been for oil.....

Economic Overhaul for Iraq
Only Oil Excluded From Foreign Ownership

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 22, 2003; Page A01


BAGHDAD, Sept. 21 -- The U.S.-led occupation authority here has ordered the overhaul of fundamental elements of Iraq's socialist economy and instituted wide-ranging free-market reforms that will allow full foreign ownership in every sector except oil, U.S. and Iraqi officials said today.

The new policy, enacted on Saturday by U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer, allows foreign firms to enter and potentially dominate key elements of the economy, from banking to manufacturing, that had been off-limits to outside ownership. Although the sale of businesses to foreigners could prove controversial in this fiercely nationalistic country, U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said the plan offered a "real promise" of economic revival in Iraq, which is struggling to cope with rampant unemployment, crumbling infrastructure and unproductive state-run industries.

The imposition of free-market reforms in Iraq has long been a goal of the Bush administration. The decision to enact the changes now is part of an American effort to accelerate the recovery of Iraq's decayed economy, which U.S. officials hope will help promote stability.

But Snow warned, as many independent analysts have, that the restoration of security in the country is an essential prerequisite for economic recovery.

In a reminder of Iraq's continuing security problems, the U.S. military said three soldiers were killed in two attacks on Saturday night west of Baghdad, where resistance to the U.S. occupation among Sunni Muslims has been stiff. The deaths brought to 165 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq since President Bush declared major combat operations over on May 1.

A car bomb exploded early Monday at a checkpoint behind the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, killing one policeman and the bomber, and injuring several others. It was not immediately clear whether any U.N. personnel were injured in the blast.

The U.N. compound, housed at the Canal Hotel, was devastated by a car bomb attack last month that killed 22 people, including the chief U.N. representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

A U.S. military official said two soldiers from the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade were killed when mortar shells fell inside the grounds of the Abu Ghraib prison at 10 p.m. Saturday. The official said 13 other soldiers were wounded in the incident, one of the largest casualty tolls from a single attack.

Abu Ghraib, which once housed thousands of political detainees but since has reopened as a U.S.-run detention center, has been targeted by insurgents. In August, several mortar rounds were fired inside the prison, killing six Iraqi inmates and wounding almost 60 others.

No prisoners were hurt in Saturday's attack, the official said.

Military officials said the incident demonstrated the increasing accuracy of mortars, which have been employed with greater frequency against U.S. forces in centers of resistance west and north of Baghdad.

Shortly before the prison attack, a soldier from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment was killed near the city of Ramadi, about 60 miles west of Baghdad, when a roadside bomb exploded near his Humvee, the military said.

The latest U.S. deaths followed the attempted assassination on Saturday of Akila Hashimi, one of three women on the 25-member Governing Council and a leading candidate to become Iraq's representative at the United Nations. Hashimi, a career diplomat, was shot in the abdomen by gunmen as she was being driven to work.

An official with the occupation authority said Hashimi was in critical but stable condition at a military hospital on the grounds of a palace that once belonged to former president Saddam Hussein. The official said Hashimi underwent a second operation at the military hospital after initial surgery at an Iraqi hospital immediately after the shooting.

Douglas Brand, a British adviser to the Iraqi police, said U.S. and British investigators were conducting an "extensive investigation" into the incident with Iraqi police officers. He called the shooting, the first assassination attempt against an Iraqi political leader appointed by the U.S. occupation authority, "a cowardly attack."

Hashimi was planning to travel to New York this week with a small delegation of Iraqi leaders to attend the U.N. General Assembly, where members of the Security Council will discuss a new U.S.-sponsored resolution aimed at encouraging more nations to send troops to Iraq.

Iraq's new finance minister, Kamil Mubdir Gailani, said at an international banking conference in the United Arab Emirates that the new rules would create a "free and market-oriented economy" that would be unprecedented in the Arab world. He pledged that the reforms would "promote Iraqi economic growth and raise the living standards of all Iraqis as soon as possible."

Gailani said Iraq would "allow up to 100 percent foreign ownership in all sectors except natural resources." He said Iraq's oil reserves -- the world's second largest after Saudi Arabia's -- would remain in government hands for now. Other Iraqi officials have said decisions on privatizing the oil industry, which is forecast to generate $14 billion in revenue next year, would be decided after a democratically elected government is seated.

Gailani said six foreign banks will be permitted to purchase and fully take over Iraqi banks. Other foreign banks will be allowed to purchase 50 percent stakes in local banks, he said.

Foreigners will be permitted to lease land for as long as 40 years, he said.

The new economic policy also will slash Iraq's top tax rate for individuals and businesses from 45 percent to 15 percent starting Jan. 1. Collecting even that revenue could be challenging: Hussein's government never enforced tax collection from most people, and there is no real tax remittance system in the country.

In an effort to create sources of government revenue beyond oil sales, Gailani said, all goods except humanitarian supplies that are brought into the country will be subject to a 5 percent "reconstruction surcharge."

During three decades of Baath Party rule, Iraq had one of the world's most centrally controlled economies. Most large companies were state-owned or state-operated. The government also managed the import of most goods into the country.

Foreign investment was severely restricted under U.N. economic sanctions imposed after Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait in 1990.

"The true source of our problems stems from decades of economic mismanagement and corruption by Saddam Hussein," said Gailani, adding that the changes would provide "Iraqi citizens the freedom and opportunity they were denied for so long."

But the new policies, which were developed by the occupation authority in consultation with Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council, could prove controversial among the many Iraqis who have not aligned themselves with the United States. Some Iraqi businessmen have expressed concern that well-capitalized foreign firms will enjoy an unfair advantage and siphon profits out of the country.

Snow also warned that a restoration of security would be essential to attract investment. "Capital is a coward," he said in Dubai, where the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are holding their annual meetings this week. "It doesn't go places where it feels threatened. Companies will not send employees to places that aren't secure."

The World Bank's Iraq country director, Joseph Saba, told the Associated Press that the steps outlined by Gailani were "major steps forward in terms of creating an environment for investment."

Some thoughts from someone that actually opposes EU integration as planned in Brussels:

Sweden's vote marks turning point for the EU


JANET BUSH: "If the collective imperiousness of Europe's political elites continues, they will face a big shock" (Photo: New-Europe)
Will they ever listen? Sweden's decisive rejection of the euro - and by clear implication the tide of European political integration - was swatted aside, as usual, by Romano Prodi.

You cannot be in and out of Europe, the Commission President told the Swedes. Same goes for Britain. Outside the euro, you will lose influence. We will freeze you out. The European Union is now a take-it-or-leave it political entity. There is no scope any more for national choice based on democracy. The people are, quite simply, an aberration and a nuisance.

This is the politics of the playground bully.

The EU establishment has reached a pretty pass when the will of the people - whether it is expressed in Sweden, Denmark or Switzerland - is dismissed if that will rejects the project of "ever closer union" whose most important catalyst is the single currency. But if the people go with the flow, as in Estonia, that is acceptable. Who is Romano Prodi to make such a judgement? He is an appointed civil servant, engaged as the servant of the peoples of the EU, not as our master.

But let's not personalise this - the same critique goes for many of Europe's political leaders, representatives of Europe's nation states, who forget that they only have their jobs because of us, the people, when integration is challenged.

If the collective imperiousness of Europe's political elites continues, they will face a big shock. The cherished new constitution will fail to be ratified and the EU will become a fractured and fractious collection of states, wholly ineffective in projecting its interests and values in the world and useless as a counterbalance to the United States, the fond wish of so many integrationists.

Without the people's consent and enthusiasm, the EU signifies nothing.

It has to change and some of the more intelligent integrationists now recognise this.

I really believe that - despite the determination of the political establishment to bury bad news - the Swedish vote may signal the high water mark of the integrationist project and Europe will be the better for it.

There have only been two referendums explicitly on membership of the euro - in Denmark and Sweden - and both have been lost. In both these cases, business was squarely in favour of the euro along with large swathes of the political establishment, including the media. Yet the people rejected their blandishments (and in the case of Sweden, an overwhelming advertising spend by the Government).

The reason for voting no was not racism or xenophobia which at times seemed to be the main campaign theme chucked at no voters by the Swedish yes camp.

The no vote was based on evident rationality about the economic costs and benefits of euro entry and about the centralising direction of the EU political project. The Swedish people looked at a Eurozone which is stagnating, which has failed miserably to tackle mass unemployment and in which smaller countries with less clout are forced to comply with the budget restrictions of the Growth and Stability Pact while the large countries flout the rules with ever more reckless abandon. Then they looked at their own economy, with relatively healthy growth, low inflation and low unemployment as well as generous social and welfare provision. In all honesty, is it surprising that Sweden voters decided to stick with what they have?

And then there is the political unease. Sweden was told it would lose influence if it failed to join the euro - and yet a survey of top European diplomats found that Sweden was the fourth most effective Member State, punching way above its economic weight despite being outside the euro. Inside the euro, the fear of being sidelined by the bigger boys in the playground again appears to have ample justification.

All these arguments apply to Britain too and we now have a real prospect that there will be EU members in the euro permanently and EU members outside, permanently.

There is at least hope now that Europe will, despite the best efforts of the establishment, develop in a different way (although this will be far more difficult if the EU constitution is adopted, given its granting of legal primacy to the EU over national legislatures). It will have "flexible geometry"; Member States will opt into some cooperative policy areas and opt out of others, so reflecting their different political and social traditions. And so the EU will be strengthened - it might even start appealing to people.

As the Swedish people went to cast their votes on the euro last weekend, the World Trade Organisation meeting in Cancun was seeing something quite extraordinary. Finally, large developing countries such as India, China and Brazil stood up to the United States and the EU which have had their way on agricultural subsidies and punitive one-sided trading practice for too long. The WTO broke up, dramatically, without agreement. In Cancun and Sweden, the worm turned.

Both in our European politics and our world politics, I am allowing myself to think that the future looks that bit brighter after the events of the past few days.

Straight from the ass's mouth:
And what an ass he is!

THE FRENCH LEADER
Chirac Urges a Transfer of Power
By ELAINE SCIOLINO

PARIS, Sept. 21 — President Jacques Chirac called today for the immediate transfer of sovereignty in Iraq to the Iraqi people, and indicated that France would approve only a new United Nations resolution that recognized this need.

In an hourlong interview at ?lysée Palace, Mr. Chirac for the first time laid out a two-stage plan for Iraqi self-rule, the first stage being a symbolic transfer of sovereignty from American hands to the existing 25-member Iraqi Governing Council, followed by the gradual ceding of real power over a period of about six to nine months.

The French president added that if the Security Council, France included, could agree on empowering Iraqis at once, France would be ready to train Iraqi police officers and soldiers — either in or out of Iraq. Mr. Chirac also said France had no intention of sending troops to be part of the American-led occupation force, although he suggested that circumstances could change.

"There will be no concrete solution unless sovereignty is transferred to Iraq as quickly as possible," Mr. Chirac said in the interview, speaking just before he left for New York, where he will meet President Bush on Tuesday.

The Bush administration is proposing the United Nations resolution to attract more foreign troops and international funds to Iraq. [Over the weekend, three more American soldiers were killed in Iraq, and at least one person died in a car bombing Monday outside the United Nations mission in Baghdad.]

Mr. Chirac made clear that he did not intend to veto that resolution, unless it became "provocative." He explained, "We don't have the intention to oppose. If we oppose it, that would mean voting `no,' that is to say, to use the veto. I am not in that mind-set at all."

But he said France would vote for the resolution only if it included a deadline for the transfer of sovereignty and a timetable for the transfer of power, as well as a "key role" for the United Nations. Otherwise, he said, France will abstain.

Without Iraqi self-rule, he said, there is the dangerous situation of a "governor who is Christian and foreign" administering an Arab and Muslim country, and that is "a very difficult situation for any people to accept in the 21st century."

As for sending French combat troops to Iraq, Mr. Chirac said, "We are talking about training, and not sending troops to Iraq, of course."

But at another point, he was slightly less categorical. After saying, "As things are now, there is no situation where I can imagine that France would send troops to Iraq," he added, "Everything could change. I don't have a crystal ball. But for the moment, this is the position of France and the position of a number of countries."

It is not clear whether Mr. Chirac intended to hold out the possibility of deploying French troops — however slight — as a means of negotiating a resolution more palatable to France.

The United States has ruled out any plan to strip the American administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, of his power, saying a hasty transition to Iraqis would be counterproductive and dangerous. Britain, America's main ally in the war, has expressed similar concerns.

The sharp divergence between the United States and France over the management of postwar Iraq reflects both the scars of a yearlong conflict between two old allies and their profoundly different visions of the place of American power and the role of the United Nations.

Mr. Chirac's proposal suggested that it would be difficult for the two sides to agree on the wording of a resolution that Washington introduced in draft form early this month. Washington put it forward in an attempt to secure the United Nations blessing necessary to attract more foreign troops and more international funds to Iraq.

The Bush administration argues that the Iraqis are not ready to take power, and that the only beneficiaries of a quick transfer would be former Iraqi exiles who are politically active but enjoy little support among the Iraqi people.

While Mr. Chirac believes that continued governance of Iraq by the United States will produce more violence and require a longer presence of foreign troops, the United States believes that the relinquishing of any authority will create more chaos.

Still, Mr. Chirac seemed eager to appear conciliatory, saying three times that whenever American soldiers are killed in Iraq, "it hurts us," and rejecting any suggestion that the aim of his proposal was to provoke the United States. "I want you to understand that I'm not saying `white' because the Americans say `black,' " he declared.

Rather, he said, his goal was to engineer in Iraq a system similar to the one in Afghanistan, where the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, has full sovereignty over the country, while the United States and its coalition partners keep the peace through the presence of their troops.

"I am not inventing anything extraordinary, as I have read somewhere, simply to annoy the United States," he said of his ideas for ways out of what he called an increasingly dangerous situation in Iraq.

In an indication that France's negotiating position is fluid, Mr. Chirac refused to articulate a precise timetable for Iraqi self-rule except to say that sovereignty should be transferred as quickly as possible.

Last week, however, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin laid out a plan under which Iraq would establish a provisional government in a month, write a constitution by the end of the year and hold elections next spring, all under United Nations auspices. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell quickly dismissed Mr. de Villepin's proposal as "totally unrealistic."

Mr. Chirac is also seeking to avoid a repetition of the diplomatic fiasco last March when, nine days before the war began, he went on national television to say France would veto any United Nations resolution paving the way to war. That declaration contributed to Washington's failure to get a resolution justifying the war, damaged France's relationship with the Bush administration and sparked outrage among the American people.

Even if France abstains this time, the United States is likely to receive the nine votes necessary to pass the resolution.

Mr. Chirac said France would be willing to provide financial support and military and police training for Iraq once sovereignty was transferred to the Iraqis.

Of the estimated 152,000 troops in Iraq, 127,000 are American, and the United States is eager to have other countries share the burden. France has about 36,000 troops deployed around the world. In Afghanistan, for example, France has 500 regular troops under NATO command, 200 special forces under American command and several dozen troops training Afghan soldiers.

Although Mr. Chirac was relaxed and spoke easily throughout most of the interview, conducted in French, the subject of postwar Iraq was so sensitive that he referred to typewritten talking points highlighted in yellow when he spoke about it.

Mr. Chirac took exception to the Bush administration's conviction that the overthrow of the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, would provide the catalyst for the spread of peace and democracy in the Middle East. "I'd like to think so, but frankly, I don't believe so," he said, calling the war "traumatic for this region and culture."

Despite his insistence on a quick, symbolic transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis, Mr. Chirac stated paradoxically that elections had to be handled with care, because the majority of Iraqis belong to the Shiite branch of Islam.

"Are the Shiites in this analysis the real symbol of tomorrow's democracy?" he asked. "It is not so obvious."

Mr. Chirac confessed that his own experience as a lieutenant in the French Army during Algeria's war for independence had influenced his thinking about Iraq, because it proved to him how a vast and powerful army could be defeated by a small group of determined adversaries convinced of the right to run their own country. "We know from experience that imposing a law on people from the outside hasn't worked for a long time," he said.

The French president defended his position before the war that United Nations weapons inspectors should have been given more time to complete their work before war was waged. He noted that no unconventional weapons, which the Bush administration used as the main justification for going to war, had been found inside Iraq.

Mr. Chirac said it was "absolutely not" wrong to overthrow Mr. Hussein, but that he should have been overthrown "without a war."

Asked whether he had been tempted to tell Mr. Bush, "You were wrong," he replied: "On subjects as complex as this, it is always wrong to think that you are right and the other person is always necessarily wrong. This is a serious mistake, and you always pay the consequences."

Mr. Chirac defended his outburst in February, when he berated Central and Eastern European countries poised to join the European Union for missing an opportunity to "keep quiet" after they signed letters supporting American policy in Iraq before the war.

"I don't regret it; I should regret it, but I don't," he said, adding, "You can take your own position if you want to, that's not the problem, but at least warn us first so we don't look ridiculous." Such an approach, he said, is "not the way that Europe is made."

Mr. Chirac also defended the concept of a common European defense policy outside the framework of the NATO alliance, a development that the United States opposes.

"There is nothing unpleasant about it for the Americans," he said. "It suggests ignorance of the way things are to imagine it would be against them."

Mr. Chirac cited America's insistence that Europe take charge of keeping the peace in the Balkans, and said, "We can do this, but how? With a flute?"