Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Australia, Editorial from the Sydney Morning Herald
It should not have come to this. The international community should not have failed to disarm Iraq peacefully. The United Nations Security Council should not have failed so spectacularly. The United States and Britain should not have been left to go it alone. And when the moment of truth arrived, Australia should not have been so deeply committed to a course set by the United States and Britain that it had no choice. We could only confirm the already promised support and are now in a deeply regrettable war.
Australia has, however, gone further than its interests and its international obligations require.
Australia's support in the process that has led to war should have been more circumspect. We were right to cooperate with U.N. sanctions for peace and to support the creation of a broad international alliance. We were also right to lend symbolic support in the military build-up which tried, but failed, to make Saddam disarm.
Australia was wrong, however, not to have foreseen the danger of becoming so deeply committed that in an instant we find ourselves committed not to a broad and united coalition of forces, but a venture led by the United States and supported by Britain, Spain and to a much less and symbolic degree by a few others. Australia's military capacity, always more symbolic than strategically vital in a conflict such as this, is now committed on a distant stage. It would be better applied closer to home. Unfortunately, it is too late for that. Unfortunately, Australia is committed to this war.
Ghana, Editorial from Accra Mail
What would such a war mean to the distressed economies of Africa?
A lot. For starters, if the war should drag, and the price of oil soars, Africa's fragile economies would be hardest hit.
Even if the war is short-lived, Africa would still lose out because the reconstruction of Iraq would take top billing like the "emergent democracies of Eastern Europe" have been enjoying since the '80s.
Right now Africa is grappling with the concept of the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD). It is highly unlikely that NEPAD would make any headway should the guns roar and tanks roll into Iraq. NEPAD would as well consider itself part of the collateral damage of this war.
Israel, Editorial from Haaretz
It would, without a doubt, have been preferable if American diplomacy had succeeded in gaining more widespread military and diplomatic support for the campaign against Iraq. For a short moment, following 9/11, it had seemed that the nations of the world planned to join forces in the battle against global terrorism. But with time, it transpired that selfish concerns of certain states -- in particular, the temptation to gnaw at the puissance of a wounded superpower -- have overcome even the universal interest in stripping a tyrant like Saddam Hussein of his ability to strike.
To the good fortune of the Iraqi leader's victims, the United States has not weakened in its resolve to oust Saddam, despite the problems and disappointments encountered en route. Israel, which has placed itself firmly in the pro-American camp, hopes for a hasty outcome, with a minimum of losses.
Russia, Boris Kagarlitsky in the Moscow Times
The issue is no longer Saddam Hussein or even Iraqi oil. If the United States doesn't go to war now, it will in effect be admitting that its foreign policy over the past year was utterly pointless. President George Bush could apply some spin, of course, by declaring that only the pressure brought to bear by the U.S. military buildup forced Hussein to disarm.
This is the hope of European and Arab leaders. But they view the Iraq crisis in the context of international politics, whereas for Bush the war in Iraq is a domestic issue ... If the war that everyone is expecting doesn't happen, American patriots will be deeply disappointed. Like all nationalists, they will only be fully satisfied when the blood starts to flow. Somehow it just wouldn't seem right if the administration's stated goals were achieved without a shot being fired. National pride demands human sacrifice ...
War has become a riveting made-for-TV extravaganza. The average American is used to watching CNN footage of wars in obscure countries where the good guys crush the bad guys with high-tech weapons. Bush has promised to serve up the same kind of entertainment, only on a bigger scale. Now he has to stand and deliver.
Iran, Parviz Esmaeili in the Tehran Times
The silence of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and other U.N. officials also seems to confirm the idea that the U.N. has been stripped of its authority to decide about the world, which has actually been transferred to a real axis of evil with Bush as its head ...
In fact, instead of allowing the U.N. and the international community to disarm Iraq, the Bush administration and its lackeys are disarming the U.N. and the international community.
History shows that the bitter smell of gunpowder also bothers dictators. No dictator has ever succeeded in conquering the world. Warmongering will not lead to U.S. supremacy in the world and instead will bring about the collapse of the Western superpower. A Persian proverb says: "It may come early or late but it will finally come."
