TheAgitator.com
You Light My Cigarette, I’ll Light Yours
Thursday, September 4th, 2003I foresee a deal being struck. If Americans can take care of this little problem in New York, the UN will help with this. Yay cigarette diplomacy.
Link props to Samizdata.
7 Responses to “You Light My Cigarette, I’ll Light Yours”
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do you really get your news from http://www.namibian.com ? Powell said this story was garbage: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25510-2003Sep4?language=printer
Actually, the link you have provided in no way discredits anything in the Namibian article, nor anything in my post. You would know that had you taken the time to read the links in question before trying to prove me wrong.
Powell was complaining about what he called a conspiracy theory: that he and the joint chiefs were trying to “press” the president into returning to the UN. That’s what he was calling absolute fiction. The article he dismissed as “garbage” ran in this morning’s Washington Post, not on Namibian.com. The article I linked to in the post doesn’t even mention Powell and the joint chiefs, nor does it outline any kind of conspiracy.
The Namibian article is in no way suspect. It just highlights that it looks to Europeans as though Bush is going hat in hand to the UN now that he realizes his vision for Iraq was poorly conceived. Indeed I think it looks that way to most rational people. I don’t see any problem in having gone with Namibian as a source on this one. The point was to do it from a non-American point of view, as the post is about non-American UN members wanting to smoke in the UN building. Makes sense to me.
Speaking as a New Yorker, screw the U.N. These “diplomats” come here from their fucked-up country, and get to treat NYC like it was their personal frat house. If they are going to live in NYC, then live by our laws. And Iâ??m not just talking about the smoking law.
fair point. i shouldnt have made such a snap judgement about namibian.com. It is a pretty interesting site. I especially enjoyed the article about the drop in maize meal prices. Interesting to get news from a different perspective.
That said, I still take issue with this sentence from the Namibian report “Iraq’s post-war torment has deflated the airy predictions of Bush administration hawks.” I dont think any reasonable Iraq war advocate claimed rebuilding Iraq would be easy, which is what i assume is meant by ‘airy predictions’. This cheap shot is far to common in some antiwar circles.
Further, the UN (as bloodily attested by the recent bombing) has been working in Iraq for months. The biggest reason that this story had legs yesterday was the Powell conspiracy theory promulgated in yesterdays Post. That’s why the earlier link is relavent.
Exactly why do people characterize Bush going to the UN with his hat in his hands? Didn’t we go to the UN prior to invasion? Going back doesn’t mean we were wrong in going to war, it means we were wrong in our estimations of the cost. Yes that’s important, but to characterize it as a total defeat is stupid and dishonest.
If the U.N. denies the Iraqi people help now, then the U.N. will be hurting their own reputation far more than it will hurt us.
This is just a Reuters article that was carried by The Namibian.
I still think Bush is going hat in hands. It seems abundantly clear that he now realizes that taking unilateral or even bilateral action was unwise and he wants help to clean up the mess he’s made. I’m not at all surprised that France and Germany have given the resolution a ‘no’ in less than a day–why would they agree to help with the clean-up of a project they thought was foolish and they didn’t want to undertake in the first place?
I don’t think that it should be characterized as total defeat, but I certainly don’t think there is any room for discussion anymore that Iraq was the success we thought it would be.