[R-G] World Opinion Is Against a War

[DavidMcR at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/7/03 12:43:54 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
portsideMod at netscape.net writes:

<< 
 Let's Hear It For Democracy
 ==============================
 By Carl Bloice
 Left Margin
 posted to Portside
 
 If the people of the world had anything to say about
 it, there wouldn't be any war. In a showdown vote over
 whether the U.S. - and whatever "coalition" it could
 cobble together - should invade Iraq, the conclusion
 would be overwhelming. Ultimately, it ought to be the
 people who inhabit this planet who decided its fate.
 But for now, perhaps, that's too visionary. However,
 with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Washington
 last week to talk war with President Bush, one can only
 marvel at the spectacle of the grinning Blair teaming
 up with smirking Bush for an adventure that is opposed
 by nearly three quarters of the people of his own
 country. Which raises an interesting question for those
 of us committed to democracy: when is the opinion of
 the people going to be taken into consideration?
 
 A poll published this week by Gallup International says
 that in Britain 41 percent of the people oppose an
 attack on Iraq under any circumstances, 39 percent
 would support a United Nations-sanctioned military
 action and only 10 percent favor a unilateral action.
 The same poll found that only about a third of the
 people in the U.S. favor a unilateral attack and nearly
 a quarter are opposed to any war on Iraq at all. While
 a sizable minority of the people of France, Germany and
 Russia give positive marks to an internationally -
 sanctioned assault, half or more of the respondents
 reject the idea of going to war at all.
 
 If a "regime change" through armed intervention takes
 place in Iraq without the approval of the United
 Nations it will be against the wishes and better
 judgment not only of world public opinion, but the
 opinion of most of the people in the countries whose
 governments are most likely to lead the charge.
 
 This week media attention has been focused on Europe in
 a way that would never be focused on public opinion in,
 say, China or Brazil. That's not unrelated to the fact
 that most of the people in Europe are white and
 therefore their opinions are seen as counting for more.
 But it also has to do with the reality that if the
 nations of the Atlantic Community were to go to war in
 the Middle East, the sons and daughters of European
 families would be dispatched to fight it, many of them
 not to return.
 
 Europeans oppose going to war. To quote Gallup: "...an
 average of 50 percent of the people polled in 10 of the
 European member states said there were 'no
 circumstances' under which they favored military
 action. An average of 54 percent of the people polled
 in 11 other European Countries agreed." The people of
 both "old" and "new" Europe are of one mind on this
 one. It's some of their leaders and their elites that
 are not.
 
 The Italian government may back Bush but according to
 the British daily The Guardian, "Italian polls show
 that roughly 75 percent of the nation is against a war.
 And opposition leaders and national papers say that now
 France and Germany are opposing a war, Italy is jumping
 to America's command." A recent poll in Spain found
 that 70 percent of that nation's people are opposed to
 the war.
 
 It appears that the statement released this week by 11
 European leaders backing the Bush Administration's
 threatened war was hastily and secretly put together to
 provide a fig leaf of support on the Continent for
 Blair as he departed for Washington. It was meant to
 counter the positions of Germany and France in
 opposition to any non-UN approved war. The British
 daily The Independent called it "more a sign of
 weakness than of strength." It produced some excellent
 political cartooning and a comment from Robert Scheer
 of the Los Angeles Times that Italy and Spain had been
 lined up along with a handful of countries that could
 be traded on E-Bay. "The problem for Mr. Blair is that
 the Franco-German position is closer to the center of
 gravity of what Europeans feel about the possibility of
 war in Iraq," said The Independent, adding that the
 arguments of the "eight 'new' Europeans" carries little
 weight."
 
 It's clear that the near polar opposition of positions
 between Washington and the leading European capitals
 goes well beyond the division over Iraq. Reporting from
 the World Economic Forum in Davos, Boston Globe
 columnist H.D.S. Greenway noted that most the
 resentment against the Bush Administration came from
 the Western Europeans to whom the U.S. "more and more
 is seen as an arrogant, unilateralist bully."
 
 If the trotting out of a Potemkin village of European
 support for Administration policy was laughable, the
 last minute effort to provide it with intellectual
 camouflage was pathetic. On the day Blair arrived in
 our capital, the Washington Times trumpeted the news
 that in Europe "a group of 17 prominent leaders and
 intellectuals has come forward to express its support
 for the removal of Saddam Hussein." The first problem
 was that most of the names were of "former" this or
 thats, and very few would be recognized by anybody
 reading the newspaper. Except maybe one: "British
 Author Christopher Hitchens." Hitchens has lived in
 Washington and written for U.S. publications for years
 but, then, there had to be someone else listed from the
 old country, other than Baroness Emma Nicholson.
 
 "The 'European street' is more anti-American that ever
 before," wrote Robert Kagan in the Washington Post this
 week, even stronger than during the war in Vietnam.
 Kagan went on to praise the supposed "moral courage" of
 new Europe's eight leaders "willing to sail head-on
 into such gale-force winds." Certainly, effective
 leaders sometime go against ill-informed or irrational
 public opinion and try influence it in another
 direction. However, there comes a point when a minority
 position is a minority position and the will of the
 majority should hold sway. At least, I think that's
 what democracy is all about.
 
 --------------------------------------------
 Carl Bloice is a journalist in San Francisco
  >>