> ....Chirac and Schroeder may have
>deliberately crafted this proposal so that the Iraqis would feel obliged to
>reject it...
So for the ex-Trotskyists of Mr. Paulsen's WWP, "the Iraqis"=Saddam Hussein.
But really, is there anyone on this planet who doubts that an honest referendum of the Iraqi people would give quasi-unanimous support to the Chirac/Schroeder/Putin proposal?
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things."
Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
>As an alternative to the U.S. conquest of Iraq, the French and German
>imperialists, displaying some boldness and creativity IF you take them at
>face value (but see below), are coming up with a plan for the European
>conquest of Iraq. It's no wonder that Bush and Rumsfeld are reacting with
>"scorn" and "fury" to this plan.
>
>The key elements of the plan are the deployment of more inspectors, the
>deployment of "U.N. Troops" throughout Iraq, and the designation of all of
>Iraq to be a "no-fly zone". These terms ought to remind us all of the
>Rambouillet ultimatum directed against Yugoslavia. Really they amount to
>the surrender of Iraqi sovereignty to "the U.N." under conditions in which
>"the U.N." would not embody the will of the US imperialists, but of a
>Franco-German-Russian imperialist coalition.
>
>Really, again assuming you take all this at face value, the U.S.
>imperialists have the right to treat this as an attempt by Chirac and
>Schroeder to stage a virtual coup d'etat within the United Nations - to
>wrench the U.N. out of the hands of the US and take it in their own hands.
>
>Objectively it is a good thing for the victims when the robbers start
>fighting over the spoils before the spoils are in hand, but those of us who
>can see what is really going on have to somehow try to get the message
>across to our peace movements that this "peace plan" is really an ultimatum
>to Iraq: "If you surrender to us European imperialists, we will try to
>protect you from the lunatic and murderous United States imperialists." The
>corollary is that if Iraq does NOT surrender to this "plan", the Chirac and
>Schroeder will wash their hands of Iraq and support Washington's genocidal
>war.
>
>All of this assumes that Chirac and Schroeder intend their plan to be
>accepted by the Iraqi government. However, since these are imperialists,
>you always have to look beneath the surface. One of the shrewd aspects of
>this "plan" is that if Iraq accepts it, Chirac and Schroeder have not only
>advanced their own imperialists' interests, but get to pose as heroes of
>peacemaking to their own people and to the colonial world; whereas if Iraq
>rejects it, they will tell their own anti-war populace that they have done
>their best but that the responsibility for the war now falls on that
>irrationally stubborn man, Saddam Hussein. In fact, this MIGHT be the real
>idea. The similarity to Rambouillet - an ultimatum which was -intended- to
>be rejected - may be very precise. Chirac and Schroeder may have
>deliberately crafted this proposal so that the Iraqis would feel obliged to
>reject it, in order to legitimize their participation in the U.S. war drive
>and to neutralize their own people's opposition to the war. So you might
>not have to believe that Chirac and Schroeder are bold enough to challenge
>the US for domination of the UN. You might only have to believe that they
>are crafty and cynical enough to stage a phony "peace plan" to deceive their
>own people. (Of course there may be a mixture of motives.)
>
>(In fact, I suppose you can't absolutely rule out the idea that the whole
>thing is a "good cop / bad cop" scheme with the full cooperation of the U.S.
>If that's the case then Rumsfeld is playing his part with unaccustomed
>acting skill, assuming he is in the know. I don't see any convincing
>evidence that this is true, but I'll keep an open mind.)
>
>The socialist and anti-war forces in the "old Europe" have a clear duty to
>say: "We will not accept any excuses; we are against your war on any terms.
>We say, not 'occupy Iraq', but 'hands off Iraq!'" Here in the United
>States, we have a duty to fight any tendency toward thinking that Iraq has
>any moral duty to accept the "Franco-German peace plan", or toward
>demoralization and resignation to war if they it does not.
>
>Lou Paulsen
>Chicago
>