When they are not busy bribing or threatening other governments into cooperating with operation "Big Mistake", American diplomats should look at the public reaction to the war plans abroad. Which is not pretty. Anti-American sentiment is on the rise everywhere.
The question for opponents as well as supporters of the war plans: Just how high is the political price to be paid in lost good will worldwide? I have a simple comparison.
I don't think America has ever lost so much in world opinion in so short time. And I am hard pressed to find examples of other world powers nuking their own good will on the same grand scale.
The best parallel I can offer is the Tiananmen massacre of June 1989. This unfortunate event extremely chilled Chinese good will worldwide.
The question now: Will the American political cost for the illegal war be higher or lower, compared to the damage to Chinese good will by Tiananmen?
I don't remember 10 million people demonstrating against China in summer 1989. And while it is immoral to use tanks against civilians, the Chinese were slaughtering their own citizens. Certainly operation "Big Mistake" will kill more Iraqi citizens than Tiananmen has killed Chinese students.
So I suspect that the political cost for America will be higher than that of Tiananmen for China was.
And again, I refuse to take part in the coming great wave of anti-American hate. I call for sympathy for America by pointing out: The misguided policy of the present American government is unfortunate. But America is more than that government. Most Americans didn't even vote for Bush.
Posted by Karl-Friedrich Lenz at March 4, 2003 08:08 PM | TrackBack