Another “Yer Wot?” moment, this time brought to us in one of those ‘From our own correspondent’ semi-personal pieces by Bridget Kendall. This is the bit that had me Yer Wotting:
The French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, another formidable orator, took the floor.
His speech was equally ardent, arguing that the world did not necessarily have to follow America’s lead.
Then something extraordinary happened.
As he finished there was a ripple of applause. Not something usually allowed in the Security Council chamber.
It felt like a muted gesture of open revolt.
Cor, she makes it sound like Moses laying low the Egyptian overseer or Rosa Parkes refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. Did I miss something or wasn’t upshot of the momentous day she describes that… that’s right, I remember now! The US said ‘thanks but no thanks’ to M Villepin and toddled off and invaded Iraq anyway. OK, there’s a respectable argument that the US, in enforcing compliance with the million and a half UN resolutions violated by Saddam Hussein was actually saving the United Nations from itself, but, even so, “The day the UN didn’t matter” might have been a better heading.
Yes – Bridget Kendall’s long piece drew exactly the wrong conclusion.
The “moment of truth” was not de Villepin leading the world in reining in the US. The actual truth was that the US – and the wider coalition – told Villepin and his third-world lackeys to piss off !!
Prediction – at the end of this year, M. de Villepin may well not be French Foreign Minister. But Bush will have won the Presidency again.
“Formidable orator” indeed.
Perhaps Bridget is correct and we should follow the historic and noble French lead of selling nuclear reactors (with enough capability to create excess material for a nuclear bomb) to Iraq.
Perhaps the UN mattered when the Russians threatened to veto any UN resolution on Kosovo.
Perhaps the UN will never matter. It seems as though every country will ultimately act in its own interests. The French and Russians just as much as the US. The UN only matters when it is likely to agree with your own politics.
See Oxblog’s comment on this article
http://www.oxblog.blogspot.com/
It is not the first time that I have felt that BBC journalists have invented incidents to suit their story.
Humphrys regularly uses the device in his Sunday Times column. He puts words & opinions in the mouths of (imaginary) third parties that he could not possibly express himself.
Ms Kendall writes:
“The US found it could no longer rely on the unquestioning support of countries who had been its partners through the Cold War and beyond.”
Presumably, she’s unaware of events like the Reagan era US bombing of Libya – where the USAF F111s based in the UK had to fly a tortuous route in order to avoid the airspace of its ‘coldwar partners’. Presumably she’s unaware that France was only a peripheral member of NATO for most years. Presumably she’s unaware that France was allied to Nazi Germany in WWII and US GIs were killed by Vichy French troops (and even the self-appointed French leader on the allied side drove the US President to distraction with his scheming).
The US has never been able to rely on the unquestioning support of any country, not even the UK – in the UN or any other arena. Presumably Bridget Kendall is simply unaware of – history.
Ms Kendall asks rhetorically, to support her notion that “the wounds have not really healed”.
“Why else would the US say countries allowed to bid for American-funded contracts to rebuild Iraq will embrace peripheral allies like Micronesia, Eritrea and Uzbekistan, but not key Nato partners like Canada, Germany and France?”
Oh, we’ve suddenly moved from the UN mattering to NATO mattering. Of course, it is membership of the Coalition, not of NATO (or the UN, or the WTO…), that defines whether countries are allowed to bid for US funded reconstruction contracts. Micronesia, Eritrea and Uzbekistan may be “peripheral” allies in that respect, but Canada, Germany and France are not allies at all.
Incidentally, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States of America form a majority of NATO partners who happen to be able to bid for contracts by dint of being i
– in the Coalition of the willing.
.